Sorry. I was unclear. I was comparing U.S. citizens with citizens of another country who are living in that country. If a U.S. citizen living in the U.S. is running an ISP, I would argue from principle that he has a right to distribute writings (I like Jeanne's bookstore analogy) penned by citizens of another country. -Declan At 16:38 -0800 11/18/97, Colin A. Reed wrote:
At 05:59 PM 11/18/97 -0500, Declan McCullagh wrote:
My take on it is that overseas citizens have no Constitutional rights. However ISPs in the U.S. have rights that U.S. laws recognize and protect.
Actually I seem to remember that U.S. citizens have full constitutional protection (only from the U.S. government of course) no matter where they reside, non-citizens have full protection within the borders of the U.S., and non-citizens have partial protection outside the borders of the U.S. I don't remember how much is covered by the last though.
If a U.S. law prevented an ISP from contracting to put a web site online, it would be like a law that prevented a U.S. book company from publishing a book penned by a German. Or the Netly News from publishing an article written by our London correspondent. Such a law would be facially unconstitutional.
Perhaps the analogy between an ISP and publisher is inexact, but that's the type of analysis I'd pursue.
-Declan
At 23:33 +0100 11/18/97, Peter Herngaard wrote:
Does the First Amendment prevent the Congress from passing a law that would make it illegal for anyone who is outside the United States to set up a web site in the U. S. in violation of a local speechcode? For example, a German nazi organization could establish a WWW site in California out of reach of German law. Would it be constitutional to make a law barring foreign citizens from violating the speech codes of their home countries using a U. S. ISP?
-Colin