On Mon, May 17, 1999 at 10:01:21AM -0700, Mark Willis wrote:
> Many admins are a little hard to convince to install "censoring"
> filters that censor by CONTENT - In the US at least, lots of people feel
> anything that might infringe on free speech is a BAD Thing, and you
> wouldn't want a wrongly set up filter [...]

At least in the US, one aspect of this is that, if you
*attempt* to filter posts, then you damned well better
do a good job.  For if you attempt to do something, and
you claim that you are doing that something, then there
is a good chance that you can be held liable if you fail
to do that something. Thus, if a list admin says that he's
filtering viruses, but one gets through, then a judge might
have to think long and hard before concluding that it was
not the admin's fault that someone's PC got a virus off
that list (this would probably hinge in part on whether
the admin took an appropriate level of care in this task,
with "appropriate" being to a large extent a function of
the admin's compensation -- or lack thereof -- for running
the list.)

If, OTOH, you do *not attempt* to filter viruses, and make
no claim that you are filtering viruses (or virus warnings)
or perhaps even *claim* that you make no attempt to filter
viruses or virus warnings, then it would be more clear
that the list admin is not responsible for the fact that
such are propigated via the list.

>   I 've learned to never downplay Virus/Worm warnings, they ALWAYS hurt
> someone far worse than I'd think at first.

In fact, in many cases, it seems that the virus warning
*is* the virus, with uneducated users acting as the vector.

--Bob

--
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Bob Drzyzgula                             It's not a problem
bob@drzyzgula.org                until something bad happens
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