Re: [silk] John Gilmore (of the EFF) on theregister.co.uk - sad, really

[Suresh Ramasubramanian <silk@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Suresh Ramasubramanian got onto a soapbox and declaimed:

> ISPs are considered "Enhanced Service Providers".  Search for that term
> and "common carriers", and you'll hit plenty of reading material.  Just a
> few links to get you started:
 
Here's the authoritative cites - and if I ask friends who work / own ISPs
stateside if they want to be common carriers, they ask me if I'm crazy or
something :)

47 USC 223 subsection (e), available at
<http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/47/223.html>.  Concludes "Nothing in this
section shall be construed to treat interactive computer services as common
carriers or telecommunications carriers." 

Also, _CompuServe Inc. v. Cyber Promotions, Inc.,_ 962 F. Supp. 1015, 1025
(S.D. Ohio) (1997) ("[a]s a general matter, the public possesses a privilege
to reasonably use the facilities of a public utility, but Internet service
providers have been held not to be common carriers").

That John Gilmore thread seems to be snowballing on
news.admin.net-abuse.email (and likely, on other lists such as bugtraq) -
none of the responses seem to do him all that much credit (the most polite of
them is a question whether he knows about SMTP AUTH or not).

	-s

-- 
Suresh Ramasubramanian + suresh@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Sysadmin, OyeIndia.Com + http://oyeindia.com
Any woman is a volume if one knows how to read her.