From: mnemonic@eff.org (Mike Godwin) Newsgroups: comp.org.eff.talk Subject: Re: Q Date: 26 Oct 1993 15:52:24 -0400 Message-ID: <2ajv5o$dbp@eff.org> In article <9310260238.A5042wk@chrysalis.org>, wrote: > > >what are the legal requirements for claiming status as a Common Carrier? You become a common carrier only if the legislature or a regulatory body grants you that status. No BBS or network site can qualify. --Mike -- Mike Godwin, (202) 347-5400 |"In our sleep, pain which cannot forget mnemonic@eff.org | falls drop by drop upon the heart until, Electronic Frontier | in our own despair, against our will, comes Foundation | wisdom through the awful grace of God." ----------------------------------- Newsgroups: comp.org.eff.talk From: kadie@cs.uiuc.edu (Carl M Kadie) Subject: Re: Q Message-ID: Date: Tue, 26 Oct 1993 17:33:46 GMT thomas.hughes@chrysalis.org writes: >what are the legal requirements for claiming status as a Common Carrier? I'm not a laywer, but I believe that to be common carrier you must fall under some specific common carrier law. For example, I think there is one for telephone companies and one for package delivery companies. I don't know of one that covers BBS's or internet sites. These laws give companies more limited liability in exchange for having to accept all qualified customers and other regulation. Note that Compuserv has been protected from suit w/o having to be a common carrier. - Carl ANNOTATED REFERENCES (All these documents are available on-line. Access information follows.) ================= law/cubby-v-compuserv ================= * Expression -- Liability -- Cubby v. Compuserv Report of a federal district court case which said CompuServe could not be held liable for the defamatory content because it exercised no editorial control. ================= ================= If you have gopher, you can browse the CAF archive with the command gopher gopher.eff.org These document(s) are also available by anonymous ftp (the preferred method) and by email. To get the file(s) via ftp, do an anonymous ftp to ftp.eff.org (192.77.172.4), and get file(s): pub/academic/law/cubby-v-compuserv To get the file(s) by email, send email to archive-server@eff.org. Include the line(s) (be sure to include the space before the file name): send acad-freedom/law cubby-v-compuserv -- Carl Kadie -- I do not represent any organization; this is just me. = kadie@cs.uiuc.edu =