Xref: utzoo news.sysadmin:2202 news.groups:8368
Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!bbn!bbn.com!cosell
From: cosell@bbn.com (Bernie Cosell)
Newsgroups: news.sysadmin,news.groups
Subject: Moderators' legal exposure
Message-ID: <37743@bbn.COM>
Date: 24 Mar 89 19:47:22 GMT
Sender: news@bbn.COM
Reply-To: cosell@BBN.COM (Bernie Cosell)
Organization: Bolt Beranek and Newman Inc., Cambridge MA
Lines: 22

What do we think the current situation is WRT the legal exposure of newgroup
mdoerators?  In a funny way, this *whole* r.h.f<->GEnie morass is made MUCH
more complicated (for me, at least) because of the intertwining copyright
issues.  *IF* r.h.f were not copyrighted by Brad, the case for arguing that
what he's doing with GEnie is unethical is virtually moot (IMHO: the reason
is that *anyone* could do the same, and there is no "moderator's privilege"
that Brad could be accused of abusing).

BUT.  That "copyright" on r.h.f came as a result of Brad's having to CHA in
the face of a (threatened??, I forget) lawsuit.  There are two questions to 
me on this:
  a) IF we make moderators agree NOT to copyright or otherwise 'control'
      their newsgroups, what legal defenses and barriers WILL we allow?
OR 
  b) if we're going to argue "NONE", is that _really_ appropropriate?  Must
     it be the case that the ONLY folks eligible to be moderators should be
     those that are either lawsuit-proof or foolhardy?

   __
  /  )                              Bernie Cosell
 /--<  _  __  __   o _              BBN Sys & Tech, Cambridge, MA 02238
/___/_(<_/ (_/) )_(_(<_             cosell@bbn.com