>Doug <dherbert@tradskin.org> wrote:
<snip>
>
>> David seems to feel that it's better to ask everybody to add the
>> disclaimer to their faq rather than risk hurting the feelings of the
>> select few for whom the disclaimer would add any real value.
>
>
>Is it really such a hard thing to do?
>
Tim,
Reading the rest of Doug's previous email, I believe he was arguing on
principle. Sure, it isn't hard to write a short paragraph of 50 or so words
discaliming libelous intent. But his point was that it was never the intent
of the FAQ approval process to do quality control for libelous content. My
submission of the FAQ only shows that my submission was correctly done and
won't jam the computers at RTFM's end. It is strictly a technical approval,
and there is nothing in the literature (help requests I've read, for example,
that any legal weight is EVER implied in the approval process.
Apart from that, any imposition of such requirements to disclaim is inherently
un-enforceable. RTFM is volunteer-run, and I am not sure if there would be
enough volunteers to search every FAQ for adequately-written disclaimers, and
weeding out poorly-written ones (requires some legal training to be sure), as
well as weeding out FAQs that really *ARE* libelous (requires that every FAQ
be read from top to bottom - by volunteers, remember).
Thirdly, by whose laws are we defining libel, in order to write the proper
disclaimer? If I defame or slander a Canadian, and I write the FAQ from
India (which has no extradition treaty with Canada), of what effect (or use)
is a disclaimer at all?
In Canada, the RCMP (the Royal Canadan Mounted Police) and other government
bodies such as the CRTC (the Canadian Radio and Telecommunications Commission)
have taken what I consider to be a sensible stand on libel, slander, and
copyright on the Internet. Simply prosecute violations exactly the way you do
in the print media. The web, and in fact the internet in general,, have been
analogous to a library, where the individual authors are *solely* responsible
for the content, not the carriers, not the ISPs, not anyone else. RTFM is
nothing more than just such a collection of electronic text, and should be
likened to a library, where the resposibility for content rests on the authors
alone.
This was fleshed out in a study done for a government depertment called
Industry Canada, called the "Internet Contnent Liability Study", which studied
the whole question of legal liability on the Internet in general. I am sure
there are much more such studies done by the US Government (which I believe,
define things even more loosely), and still more by the British government.
Paul
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