[MUD-Dev] AOL lawsuit

[shren]

On Thu, 6 Sep 2001, Marian Griffith wrote:
> In <URL:/archives/meow?group+local.muddev> on Sat 01 Sep, Matt Mihaly wrote:
>> On Sat, 1 Sep 2001, John Robert Arras wrote:

>> A quote from the prosecution's lawyer:

>>   "In light of the growing significance of the Internet, a public
>>   chat room should fall within this category as a place of
>>   entertainment and therefore should be free of harassment,"

> I am not a lawyer, but even I can shoot this argument full of
> holes.  The most significant being that it is not the job of the
> manager to keep the "place of entertainment" free of
> harassment. That job does fall to the police.  The fact that the
> internet (it does not deserve capitalisation ;) is increasingly
> significant has no bearing on the case.  Given the mechanics of
> the internet a public chatroom is just that.  Public.  There is no
> good way (in fact there is no way at all) for the manager of a
> chatroom to control who enters. In that it is more like a public
> street.  While those, too, should be free of harass- ment, there
> is no argument that you can not take the city council to court
> over infractions.  There is severe doubt that a chatroom is a
> place of entertainment, which is a crucial conjecture in this
> lawyer's case.  In what res- pect does the chatroom offer
> entertainment?  As far as I can see it does not. The chatroom is
> passive and is merely a means to exchange messages between people.
> Of course there might be a juridical term involved here, but in
> that case the concept is so broad that every- thing is a 'place of
> entertainment' and any claim that can be deri- ved from labeling
> something as such is meaningless.

Ugh.  No offense, but I think I can shoot *this* full of holes.

First of all, it's not public.  Nothing on the internet is public.
Everything happens on somebody's server.  There is no sidewalk or
street connecting places.  If you want a chat network with no
liability, adopt Napster style technology to make serverless IRC.
(I've been meaning to do this for about a year.)

Second of all, there have been lots of occurances of buisnesses
being punished under the law for crimes done under thier own roof by
a customer.  All you have to do is prove a pattern of behavior -
that, intentionally or unintenionally, the place has become a haven
for crime.  I'm thinking of Napster and various instances involving
Drugs, Raves, and Nightclubs.

--
  You can't be afraid of words that speak the truth!   - George Carlin

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