Patrick, You’re confusing the FCC’s definition of common carrier for telecom regulatory purposes, and the DMCA definition, which specifically grants ISPs protection from litigation through its Safe Harbor provision, as long as they operate as pure common carriers:
“Section 512(a) provides a safe harbor from liability for ISPs, provided that they operate their networks within certain statutory bounds, generally requiring the transmission of third-party information without interference, modification, storage, or selection. [emphasis mine] http://jolt.law.harvard.edu/articles/pdf/v27/27HarvJLTech257.pdf -mel On Aug 5, 2019, at 8:43 AM, Patrick W. Gilmore <patr...@ianai.net<mailto:patr...@ianai.net>> wrote: Mel: My understanding is ISPs are not Common Carriers. Didn’t we just have a big debate about this w/r/t Network Neutrality? I Am Not A Lawyer (hell, I am not even an ISP :), but if any legal experts want to chime in, please feel free to educate us. Put another way, ISPs are not phone companies. Moreover, ISPs - and CDNs and hosting providers and etc. - can have terms of service which do not allow certain types of content on their platform. Again, that is is my understanding. Happy to be educated by someone who specializes in this type of law. I know there are a couple such people on NANOG-l. -- TTFN, patrick P.S. Interesting choice equating a group founded on the principals that “Nazis are bad” and a group espousing Nazi ideas. But that’s very off-topic, so if you want to discuss, please do so directly. On Aug 5, 2019, at 11:13 AM, Mel Beckman <m...@beckman.org<mailto:m...@beckman.org>> wrote: Mehmet, I’m not sure if you understand the terms under which ISPs operate as “common carriers”, and thus enjoy immunity from lawsuits due to the acts of their customers. ISPs such as Cloudfare can no more disconnect customers for legal, if offensive, content than the phone company can, without losing that common carrier status. Cloudfare is being foolish, and hypocritical. They freely, for example, carry the equally offensive content of Antifa. Are they going to cut them off too? In America we have the right to free speech, and the right to use common carriers to carry that speech. If a common carrier chooses to censor legal speech, which is what Cloudfare has done, then it loses its CC status and can now be sued for that speech. -mel beckman On Aug 5, 2019, at 8:06 AM, Keith Medcalf <kmedc...@dessus.com<mailto:kmedc...@dessus.com>> wrote: On Sunday, 4 August, 2019 21:41, Mehmet Akcin <meh...@akcin.net<mailto:meh...@akcin.net>> wrote: Most of us who operate internet services believe in not being the moderator of internet. We provide a service and that’s it. Obviously there are some established laws around protecting copyrights, and other things which force us to legally take action and turn things down when reported. What can we do better as network operators about hate sites like 8Chan? I applaud cloudflare’s (perhaps slightly late) decision on kicking 8chan off its platform today after El Paso attack. https://blog.cloudflare.com/terminating-service-for-8chan/ I am sure there are many sites like this out there, but could network operators do anything to make these sites “not so easy” to be found, reached, and used to end innocent lives? I do not quite understand this. In days of yore, nutters used to send their screeds to Newspapers, TV and Radio stations. Did you shut them down or move them to frequencies that could not be received with COTS TVs and Radios? Did you ban the newspapers, put them out of business, or make it so their broadsheet was only available by travelling by aeroplane for 8 hours before breakfast? Of course not, you silly duck! There is an advantage to having all the nutters congregating on one place -- you know exactly where to find them. Granted, the advantage is not exactly the same as we apply to politicians (or lawyers) who are kepts all in one place so that kinetic weapons can dispatch the whole lot at one go if necessary. However, your solution of sweeping things you do not like under the rug is ill-conceived if not brain-dead in conception and you must not be permitted to carry out your objectives. The fate of the free world depends on it. However, do not worry. US AG William Barr is doing a fine job deploying his "backdoors". Why just the other day one of them was used to shut down the Georgia State Public Safety Services, and prior to that his "backdoors" were used to shut down several city computer systems in Florida and even the City of Baltimore. Good work with those backdoors, Mr. Barr. Job well done! It is nincompoops who do not think about what they are doing that create such a bloody mess of things. They should let the adults take care of it. Now, enough of this off-topic stuff and back to our regularly scheduled programming. -- The fact that there's a Highway to Hell but only a Stairway to Heaven says a lot about anticipated traffic volume.
