At 02:20 PM 12/03/1997 -0000, Charlie Comsec wrote:
You start to tread on dangerous ground when you concern yourself with the content (body) of a post. If, for example, you start to filter on content, then you're implicitly approving anything that you do allow to pass through. That sets a precedent that's hard to contain and exercising editorial control over the contents increases the remailer operator's legal liability for material posted.
If some victim of forged hatemail to Usenet requests that your remailer block all email containing her name and address, is that legitimate? Or if somebody's forging death threats with her name at the bottom? I think yes, assuming the forgee is not a sufficiently public figure like Hillary Clinton or Janet Reno that would lead to obvious disbelief. (If Gary Burnore makes the same request, you've got a tradeoff between doing the safe thing, and blocking, or doing what he deserves and also reposting copies run through some jive filter. :-) I agree that blocking postings based on content that isn't specifically targeting someone who's requested in advance is probably not a good idea. Thanks! Bill Bill Stewart, stewarts@ix.netcom.com Regular Key PGP Fingerprint D454 E202 CBC8 40BF 3C85 B884 0ABE 4639