In message <199408111645.KAA07094@suod.cs.colorado.edu> Patrick Juola writes:
Perry sez: UUNET, among others, considers itself to be a common carrier.
My understanding is that, legally speaking, "considering [oneself] to be a common carrier" amounts to exactly nil -- that it requires a special act of some governing body to declare you to be a common carrier. One might just as well consider oneself to be an accredited diplomat and therefore to have diplomatic immunity.
The area is a bit grey. Quoting from other correspondence:
Current case law, most notably Cubby vs. Compuserve, suggests that a BBS can have either publisher or common-carrier status depending on what content-control policies it implements. There is precedent for this in other media; one important case involved fraud liability on an un-controlled supermarket bulletin-board (the cork kind). No control, no liability (that is, the cork-board was ruled to be a common carrier).
The reply was:
I'd be very surprised if you put two attorneys in one room and they agreed on to what extent common carrier protection applied to IP providers. There just isn't enough legal precedence so it is an still uncertain area.
We have two attorneys on staff and I've heard them talk about this in the same room. ;-)
-- Jim Dixon