[IP] more on ICANN ordered by Illinois court to suspend spamhaus.org

[David Farber <dave@farber.net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Bryan Webb <bwebb@optivus.com>
Date: October 11, 2006 9:59:17 PM EDT
To: dave@farber.net
Subject: [IP] more on ICANN ordered by Illinois court to suspend  
spamhaus.org

Dave,

For IP, if you wish...

Thanks for publishing Prof. Ezor's response.  I found his reference  
to 47
USC 230 ("Protection for private blocking and screening of offensive
material") most interesting.

http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode47/
usc_sec_47_00000230----000-.html

By my reading of it, DNS is an "Interactive Computer Service", and  
SpanHAUS,
ICANN, and TuCOWS are "Information Content Providers".

47 USC 230 (c) says

(c) "Protection for “Good Samaritan” blocking and screening of offensive
material"

(1) "Treatment of publisher or speaker"

No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be  
treated as
the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another  
information
content provider.

(2) "Civil liability"

No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be held  
liable
on account of—

(A) any action voluntarily taken in good faith to restrict access to or
availability of material that the provider or user considers to be  
obscene,
lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise
objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally  
protected;
or

(B) any action taken to enable or make available to information content
providers or others the technical means to restrict access to material
described in paragraph (1).


If we agree that spam and UCE are "otherwise objectionable", then the
filtering actions of ISPs generally is protected and unactionable  
under the
law, and SpamHAUS is specifically protected by subpart (B).  SpamHAUS
wouldn't exist and it would surely not be so popular if spam and UCE  
were
not objectionable.

While the law is geared toward restricting access to material  
inappropriate
to minors, it does appear to be broad enough to encompass protections  
for
SpamHAUS and ICANN, and probably the other registries.

--Bryan Webb

This is not an automated signature.  I type this at the bottom of every
message.



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