Re: AT&T bans anonymous messages

[tcmay@got.net (Timothy C. May)]

At 3:02 AM 6/26/96, Intense wrote:
>On Tue, 25 Jun 1996, Rich Graves wrote:
>
>> given username. If you send a message traceable to AT&T, they are held
>> accountable. I think it's reasonable for them to demand that you make
>> messages traceable to yourself so that you are held accountable.
>
>Under the common carrier law, i do not think that would apply


I agree that ISPs are unlikely to be held liable for messages passing
through their systems, but not because they have been determined to be
"common carriers." So far as I know, no ISP has been so classified.

(I'm not even sure what is involved in being classified as a common
carrier. Perhaps someone out there knows about these matters.)

However, it seems to me that the "Electronic Communications Privacy Act,"
the ECPA, gives an ISP a good defense. The ECPA forbids the interception of
electronic mail (usual caveats about special exceptions), and so an ISP
ostensibly is not supposed to be reading e-mail messages. Thus, an ISP
would seem to have a pretty good defense in court, claiming that the ECPA
explicitly precluded it from seeing what users were saying in e-mail.

(But I am not a lawyer, and it would not surprise me at all if an ISP is
someday held liable, despite the ECPA. "You can't read the mail, but you're
still responsible. You should have known. Or at least we can go after you
and shut you down.")

--Tim May

Boycott "Big Brother Inside" software!
We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, we know that that ain't allowed.
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Timothy C. May              | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
tcmay@got.net  408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
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