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From: lear@aramis.UUCP
Newsgroups: news.stargate
Subject: Re: I am not a lawyer, but a lawyer isn't a computer scientist either
Message-ID: <554@aramis.RUTGERS.EDU>
Date: Wed, 29-Apr-87 16:23:34 EDT
Article-I.D.: aramis.554
Posted: Wed Apr 29 16:23:34 1987
Date-Received: Fri, 1-May-87 02:19:36 EDT
References: <965@vortex.UUCP> <7946@utzoo.UUCP> <7947@utzoo.UUCP> <205@brandx.klinzhai.RUTGERS.EDU> <1597@munnari.oz>
Distribution: world
Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J.
Lines: 43
To: kre@munnari.oz
Posting-Front-End: GNU Emacs 18.41.20 of Sun Apr 26 1987 on aramis.rutgers.edu (berkeley-unix)


From: kre@munnari.oz (Robert Elz)
Date: 28 Apr 87 16:29:45 GMT

> Nonsense.  You get called as a witness (there's no "5th amendment"
> in civil matters) and asked.  If you lie you risk being discovered
> sometime, and that's perjury.

It is extremely hard to prove that any person sent any particular
message on a network such as this one.  Good luck in taking any form
of action against anyone when it requires that you prove said person
actually sent a message.

> There is nothing in the world that has "nothing to do with their [lawyers]
> world".  Nor will there ever be.  Nor should there ever be.  Lawyers
> decide what is part of their world, and its in their own interests to
> expand that as much as possible.

Because it is very hard to verify that any given person was actually
involved with any given event, lawyers would be very wise to rely upon
other source of income.  They may attempt to expand as much as it is
their right to, but lawyers will always be limited by the validity of
evidence presented to them.  This is not to say that there aren't
interesting questions regarding use of information propagated by
electronic means - just that such issues are more complicated when a
violation cannot be pinned on a person or even a site.

> And as to whether the posters of articles necessarily agree that they
> are a good thing to have posted .. nonsense .. I'm sure that in about
> 5 minutes I'll be certain that this was not an intelligent idea at
> all, if only this newsgroup was moderated the moderator could dump
> this trash into the waste pile where it belongs.  Everybody would
> be better off.

Who am I to argue with this statement?  Only, I enjoy the silliness
that goes on in this group.  It is better then net.bizarre or
talk.religion.misc ever were!  Thanks for the entertainment, guys!
I am sure the stargate crew is enjoying it, too!

-- 

[lear@rutgers.edu]
[{harvard|pyrnj|seismo|ihnp4}!rutgers!lear]