From: Karee Swift (karee@tstonramp.com)
Date: Sun Nov 19 2000 - 14:03:36 PST
<rant>
BAh. What do you know, the first time In weeks i've been able to get
to FoRK, and I've missed all the good political wars going on:) I've
determined that school is causing me to regress in my bit intake. I
think i'm going to petition UCI to allow FoRK to be an online-
learning class, simply so I'm forced to keep up, and get the units it
deserves.
:) Thought i'd throw this out to anyone who cares. I'm currently
undertaking a paper dealing with the legality of linking to websites
of questionable nature (read DECSS). I've been scouring the net for
the relevant bits here and there, but I'm curious what the FoRK
community thinks on this particular issue? I've been hitting up
random folks, and some insights have come out, that I most likely
would not have reached on my own. I'm working with a few central
premises:
1) Linking to a site (good or bad) with nothing more than just the
link, and no other compelling forces (suggestions, information, etc)
is no different than a library card catalouge listing the whereabouts
of say, the Anarchist's cookbook, or otherwise questionable
information.
2) If individuals can be held liable for simply linking, the function
of the net as an informational resource ceases.
And part of what I want to look at, is the concept of vicarious
linking, where say, I have a webpage that links to 2600, and they
decide to link to DeCSS (hypothetical), but I don't know this, can
I/should I be held liable for the link?
I know some of you all are a bit more knowledgable on the tech
aspects of this, but I'd really appreciate any ideas anyone has. Its
mostly becoming a hobby of mine, but i'm failing to see many
individuals talk about this in the illegal aspects of linking (DECSS,
other malicious code). There have been snippets from individuals like
Mr. Berners-Lee, but thats about it. What do you think?
Enjoy,
BitBitch
</rant>
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Sun Nov 19 2000 - 14:09:06 PST