Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!bloom-beacon!gatech!hubcap!ncrcae!ncr-sd!hp-sdd!ucsdhub!sdcsvax!ucsd!ucbvax!agate!garnet!weemba
From: weemba@garnet.berkeley.edu (Obnoxious Math Grad Student)
Newsgroups: news.admin
Subject: Re: Malicious posting worries and lawsuits
Message-ID: <11591@agate.BERKELEY.EDU>
Date: 2 Jul 88 18:00:44 GMT
References: <266@octopus.UUCP> <3331@s.cc.purdue.edu> <272@octopus.UUCP> <3333@s.cc.purdue.edu> <274@octopus.UUCP>
Sender: usenet@agate.BERKELEY.EDU
Reply-To: weemba@garnet.berkeley.edu (Obnoxious Math Grad Student)
Organization: Brahms Gang Posting Central
Lines: 63
In-reply-to: pete@octopus.UUCP (Pete Holzmann)

In article <274@octopus.UUCP>, pete@octopus (Pete Holzmann) writes:
>This issue has been hashed out many times in the past. The net continues to
>be at theoretical legal risk for all kinds of real or imagined offenses.
>If anyone actually attempts legal recourse for solving any of these problems,
>it is likely that a major portion of the net would die.

It depends on the potential lawsuit.  If it were over third parties trans-
mitting a virus via binaries, a lot of sites might quit, but a lot might
just stop getting binaries.

>							 Practically speaking,
>most other net-offenses are much more likely to be the cause of such legal
>action. Why? Because malicious postings/programs are extremely rare.

I would expect that libel/slander charges will continue to be thrown about,
and that not a single lawsuit will come of it.  Translating net.flamage
into *KNOWINGLY* stating false facts is absurd.

As an example, based on an actual lawsuit threat, I still wonder if Tim
Maroney actually believes that we at Brahms really and honestly DO think
that Timbo is a genius, and our calling him "stupid" and "Captain Carnage"
and "incapable of reading" was a DELIBERATE oversight, having nothing to
do with the honest opinions we got from reading his articles.  With USENET,
it would have been trivial to find perhaps hundreds of volunteers for a
court-paid trip to sunny California to testify that they too thought
little of Tim's intellect based on his postings.

>	        None were things that any reasonable person would even
>*consider* filing a lawsuit over. None resulted in even a hint at legal
>action. Yet every week it seems we see a threat of legal action because
>of some libel/slander/etc due to arguments getting overheated.

But the common wisdom--right or wrong--is that actual damage from flames
on the net is ZERO.  Quite simply, most "damage" of the type covered by
libel/slander is done by opening one's own mouth.  As a trivial example,
I'm certain that I've convinced people that I'm an "obnoxious supercil-
ious prick" far more effectively than anyone else on the net ever could
by flaming me over it.

Now, what is the possible legal danger from passing a virus in a binary?
*ACTUAL* damage--as opposed to the ego-war "so-and-so insulted me" cry-
baby garbage--can be done, and only time will tell if someone will be
motivated to try and recover some such *ACTUAL* damage via a lawsuit.

See the difference??

>It is my opinion [as owner of a half-million dollar company, and S/A to
>boot, not that it matters a bit, mind you, especially since I'd hardly
>call my operation 'major' :-)] that the risk/benefit factor for binary
>postings on the net is far more favorable than for the political/social/
>talk/etc groups.

As I said in a previous posting--I agree that you should evaluate your
own risks.  While prognosticating future Usenet legalities is an impos-
sible task, I think it's pretty clear that the two kinds of risks are
not so directly comparable.

>		  They generate much more ill-will between net-readers than
>the binary postings ever will.

Ill-will is one thing.  Money lost is quite another.

ucbvax!garnet!weemba	Matthew P Wiener/Brahms Gang/Berkeley CA 94720