Newsgroups: comp.org.eff.talk
Path: utzoo!utgpu!watserv1!maytag!looking!brad
From: brad@looking.on.ca (Brad Templeton)
Subject: Re: EFF and Prodigy
Organization: Looking Glass Software Ltd.
Date: Thu, 20 Dec 90 18:10:29 GMT
Message-ID: <1990Dec20.181029.29613@looking.on.ca>
References: <1990Dec10.211625.9536@eff.org> <1990Dec17.195846.6364@looking.on.ca> <13281@milton.u.washington.edu>

In article <13281@milton.u.washington.edu> cyberoid@milton.u.washington.edu (Robert Jacobson) writes:
>
>window.  Weren't the people issuing messages on Prodigy, particularly
>if they were multiple messages, publishers of a sort, too?  

No.  According to Prodigy's official stand, they are the authors of letters
to the editor of a magazine.  As such, they have no rights, other than the
right not to have their message altered to say other than what the author
intended it to say.

Prodigy takes this stand because it is a well defined stand in the law.
In a posting I made to comp.org.eff(.news) a month or two ago, I defined
4 classes of electronic interaction, of which is this is one extreme,
and something alike to a common carrier is the other.    We have little law
yet to deal with the middle classes, in which things like GEnie,
rec.humor.funny and USENET belong.

Whatever their customers believe, my own readings of statements from Prodigy
officials, and my own brief chats with them at the VIA conference, they
want to sit firmly in the publisher end of the spectrum, no doubt because
it is the only one that is well defined.   There is some question that they
have misled their users on this -- that would be up to a court.
-- 
Brad Templeton, ClariNet Communications Corp. -- Waterloo, Ontario 519/884-7473
