Re: UKNM: Legal Responsibility of Content

[Sam Michel]

Hello Craig,


At 18:34 21/09/98 +0100, Craig Pickup wrote:

>I may be mistaken but my understanding is that if someone takes any role in

>policing content before it appears in a medium, then they become liable

for all

>the content appearing via that medium. This is an important area not just for

>its relevance in this list but for any area where the "public" are able to

>contribute content dynamically whether it be an email list or a web page.

They

>legal position is different I believe were a "moderator" takes action

after the

>publication of the content to remove it.

>

>Does anyone have a definitive position on this or know where there is further

>information to be had?


The last legal action I recall on this subject did suggest something along

these lines although I don't know whether it would stand up now. The

alternative scenario, which I may well have to now put in place is for each

person signing up to the list to be sent terms and conditions for use of

the list with a much more tightly defined list policy. I've seen this done

on a couple of American lists, but only a couple.


>Another interesting legal question often overlooked with email is whether

it is

>subject to the same rules of communication as other forms of business

>correspondence - for instance, should it carry company registration number

and

>registered address, etc? How do you differentiate between a private and

company

>email message when they are sent from the same address?


I don't think you can tell, as we all know email is insecure and can quite

easily be faked. There has to be a level of trust between parties using it

in a setting such as this. I don't want to even get into malicious use, I'm

sure you all can imagine some bad situations. The only real way to

differentiate between addresses would be to use PGP on all messages, but

it's hardly practical at this stage when most people aren't using it and

many can't figure out how to install it.



Toodle Pip


Sam

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