Part 3 - The Law Changes Again

Here's the major problem with common carrier status: it seems that the safest way for you to insulate yourself from litigation or prosecution is never to interfere with your BBS in the slightest, knowing that one move to do so can make you responsible for every posting in your system. But what happens when there are postings that it is in your best interest to remove? For example, what if some Internet predator posts a message trying to solicit minors? Aside from members of NAMBLA, this represents the one universally accepted justification for censorship (constitutional law also permits censorship of obscenity and inciteful speech, among a few others). It wouldn't be wrong in a moral or ethical sense to remove such an unacceptable posting (in fact, it could be said to be mandatory), but it doesn't seem right that doing so could leave you vulnerable to legal attack on everything else in your BBS (much of which you might have removed if you were not a common carrier).

To offer a solution to this dilemma, Congress included broad protection in the Communications Decency Act (CDA), which was intended to protect minors from undesirable material. Their goal was to encourage the utilization of blocking and filtering technology by parents to "restrict their children's access to objectionable or inappropriate online material." In addition, in response to Stratton Oakmont, Congress provided a safe harbor for online operators to also encourage them to monitor cyberspace for "objectionable" material without impinging on the freedom of discourse and commerce that the net provides. As you can imagine, these are not always compatible goals.