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From: kay@flame.UUCP (Kay Dekker)
Newsgroups: net.news,net.ai,net.motss
Subject: Re: The cost of moderating satellite News
Message-ID: <312@flame.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 7-Jan-85 13:03:05 EST
Article-I.D.: flame.312
Posted: Mon Jan  7 13:03:05 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 10-Jan-85 07:06:22 EST
References: <1314@eosp1.UUCP> <20980040@cmu-cs-k.ARPA> <1319@eosp1.UUCP>
Organization: VLSI Group, Warwick University, UK
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Xref: watmath net.news:2932 net.ai:2455 net.motss:1409

[[][]]

>.........  You may write about anything you  please,
>but you know that any article that might conceivably
>be libellous or illegal will be scanned by a human
>moderator.  Your artcile will be screened by a
>computer program to determine whether moderation
>is necessary.  For the sake of this discussion
>I assume that a moderator never edits your text,
>but simply determines whether it is legally safe to
>broadcast it.  

Excuse me, but I think there may be a problem here.  Both obscenity and
libellousness are rather difficult to screen for.
1) According to English law, 'obscene' is defined as 'having a tendency to
deprave and corrupt'.  This is extremely knotty: the 'Lady Chatterley' and
'OZ' cases illustrate this.
2) There are cases where seemingly-libellous material may in fact not be so.
For example, of the publication is 'in the public interest', or is 'fair
comment'.

I cannot see software (or even moderators) being able to screen articles for
'obscenity' or 'libellousness': it has taken juries many days to argue over
these points.

Furthermore, I gather that the laws which govern permissible public utterances
vary wildly between countries.  The screening rules must then have knowledge
of the different regulations that apply over the various countries into which
net-contents enter.  For example, in England, we have a law which makes illegal
'Blasphemous Libel'.  Prosecutions for this offence are extremely rare:  it was
last trundled out in 197[67] by our protector of public propriety, Mrs. Mary
Whitehouse.  She was offended by a poem by James Kirkup, "The love that dares 
to speak its name", which appeared in the British gay newspaper, "Gay News".
The prosecution was successful, and the editor and the paper were fined heavily
and the editor given a suspended prison sentence.

How many other archaic laws and regulations would this screening software have
to know about?

							Kay.
-- 
"But what we need to know is, do people want nasally-insertable computers?"
			... mcvax!ukc!flame!kay