Re: [ga] Time to put Baptista online

["Michael Froomkin - U.Miami School of Law" <froomkin@law.miami.edu>]

[This will be my last post on this subject for a while.  Life is too
short.]

On Mon, 20 Dec 1999, Kent Crispin wrote:

> The "illegal benefit" is use of computer resources you are not
> authorized to use.  Ie, theft of resources.  I don't know the specific
> statutes, of course, but recall that Morris was successfully prosecuted
> for releasing the Internet Worm. 

Slight difference in scale.  And the worm actually *damaged* the computers
it infected by crowding out other jobs.  And (if I recall, haven't
checked) there were federal computers hurt, which is a crime in itself.
Remember that "the law does not concern itself with trifles."

Let's not lose sight of the main points here:

1) Every minute we waste on this is a deadweight loss of no benefit to
anyone.  (The irony, of course, is that there is not much evidence to
support the proposition that the substantive discussion on these lists
actually affects ICANN or NC policy...)

2) ICANN/DNSO should be like Caeaser's wife, that is above suspicion.
Thus, regardless of what others do, it should have clear transparent well
administered policies that maximize access and openness.  Current list
management practices do not meet this very high standard or even, quite
frankly, some lower ones.  While individuals can blackhole or ignore ISPs,
ICANN/DNSO should not be party to such exclusionary practices; excluding a
single user, for a fixed period of time is serious enough.

3) Little if anything is gained by attempting to criminalize Internet 
disputes.

FWIW, I might add that I find the approach of "transferred intent" - that
is blaming an ISP for acts of a user, and censoring accordingly, to be
wildly inappropriate for a closed list (whether it's appropriate for MAPS
RBL is a separate, utterly separate, issue).  

OBSubstance: What happened at the NC teleconference last week?

-- 

A. Michael Froomkin   |    Professor of Law    |   froomkin@law.tm
U. Miami School of Law, P.O. Box 248087, Coral Gables, FL 33124 USA
+1 (305) 284-4285  |  +1 (305) 284-6506 (fax)  |  http://www.law.tm
                        -->It's warm here.<--