cryptoanarchy.wiki

Arise, you have nothing to lose but your barbed wire fences!

1993-10-02 - Re: PGP in FIDO

Header Data

From: Mike Godwin <mnemonic@eff.org>
To: pmetzger@lehman.com
Message Hash: 47af3b044703379e309949e9ad953cc0b8ef7ff5df4a577f2c6a1097fa0f2cec
Message ID: <199310022322.AA02641@eff.org>
Reply To: <9310022011.AA19354@snark.lehman.com>
UTC Datetime: 1993-10-02 23:24:26 UTC
Raw Date: Sat, 2 Oct 93 16:24:26 PDT

Raw message

From: Mike Godwin <mnemonic@eff.org>
Date: Sat, 2 Oct 93 16:24:26 PDT
To: pmetzger@lehman.com
Subject: Re: PGP in FIDO
In-Reply-To: <9310022011.AA19354@snark.lehman.com>
Message-ID: <199310022322.AA02641@eff.org>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


 
Perry writes:

> 1) The ECPA *DOES* apply to the BBSes whether they want it to or not.
>    All the hoping in the world doesn't make a statute go away. Merely
>    declaring that the ECPA doesn't apply to you doesn't work -- try
>    declaring the tax laws don't apply to you some time and see if that
>    works.

That said, it should be noted that sysops can contract with users for
users to waive their privacy rights under ECPA. But I think sysops should
do this *explicitly*, and should not justify doing so because of vague
perceptions of vaguely understood legal liability.

I also have to take exception to the statement by some people here that
sysops never allow private e-mail. I knew sysops who routinely did so when
I lived in Austin. But maybe Austin is more enlightened than the rest of
the country.

> 2) The BBS operators are NOT liable UNLESS they censor the mail. If
>    they censor the mail, they are liable for anything they fail to
>    censor. If they do not censor, they are common carriers, and have
>    no liability.
 
I wouldn't say this quite so strongly, but Perry has the gist of it right.
If you take on the duty of monitoring e-mail, you risk creating liability
for yourself if something problematic doesn't get censored. And the sysops
here generally admit that they don't real *all* e-mail.


--Mike

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