In message <199408061404.KAA02300@cs.oberlin.edu> Spencer Mullen writes:

Jim Dixon writes:

...

Commercial remailers would probably be very concerned with legal issues, both criminal (pornography, etc) and non-criminal (copyright violations).

It would seem that remailers shouldn't be anymore accountable for passing on illicit pornography than the postal services are today.

I really do not want to try to argue the legal issues here; I am not a lawyer and claim no expertise. At a practical level, if you were running, let us say, an Internet Service Provider (ISP) and offered remailer services, you would in time attract the business of people who used your services for various unlawful purposes. You could not stop this without going through everyone's private mail. This would itself probably be illegal and certainly would lose you business. I understand that Playboy magazine spends lots of money pursuing people for copyright violations, and that criminal charges have been filed by the authorities in Tennessee or Arkansas against someone in California who sent them pornographic materials over a telephone line. The Post Office has what is called in the UK "crown immunity" against such prosecutions. So do "common carriers" in the USA. They are given special legal status. I do not know, but I believe that the telephone companies are legally common carriers. As a remailer gateway operator, you would probably have to argue things out in court, which could be very expensive. In the case of criminal charges, you would have to expect to lose your equipment for some time, and perhaps your freedom. I suspect that legally the key step would be to never store messages for any period of time. It would be prudent to erase them as soon as their receipt was verified. This would also save disk space, and it would be in line with the 'trust in silence' ethic. I would do this and then publicize the fact that I did so widely. This would discourage public prosecutors, who really don't like to do futile things. And I would incorporate the gateway and make sure it wasn't worth a great deal. This would discourage civil suits; clients get very irritated when they win the lawsuit and find that after all their legal expenses the target has filed for bankruptcy. -- Jim Dixon