From: Anonymous <anon@anon.efga.org>
Date: Fri, 3 Oct 1997 02:03:30 +0800
To: cypherpunks@cyberpass.net
Subject: CDA protects against liability
Message-ID: <066c1dbe1946e2f31eaf54f722772af6@anon.efga.org>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



Another case where the CDA protected against liability.  Remailer ops
should look into this.

http://www.wired.com/news/news/politics/story/7361.html:

A San Francisco judge has ruled that a lawsuit that
sought to force an Internet service provider to silence a Usenet
participant is barred by the federal Communications Decency Act. 

At issue was a claim by San Francisco Satanists Michael and Lilith
Aquino that San Diego-based ElectriCiti Inc. "breached its duty to the
[plaintiffs] and to other Internet users" by failing to take action against
an anonymous Usenet poster. 

The newsgroup participant allegedly harassed Michael Aquino, a
former US Army lieutenant colonel and the leader of the Temple of
Set, and his wife, Lilith. The claimed harassment took the form of
messages referring to the Aquinos' involvement in a ritual child-abuse
investigation in San Francisco in the 1980s. The couple was never
charged with any wrongdoing. 

Superior Court judge David Garcia accepted ElectriCiti's contention
that the lawsuit violated a little-discussed and still-in-force CDA
provision that exempts ISPs from liability for content transmitted on
their networks. The law states that "no provider or user of an
interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker
of any information provided by another information content provider." 

The decision is one of three such cases nationwide that have been thrown
out because they attempted to hold ISPs responsible for subscribers'
speech, said ElectriCiti's attorney, Roger Myers.