These cases are going to make some huge determinations on whether or not system operators are going to be held liable for what their subscribers do. It affects the entire way service will be provided in the future. It’s as if a telephone company was going to be held liable for the content of telephone messages.
Predictor: Steele, Shari
Prediction, in context:In a 1995 TV article in the New Orleans Times-Picayune, reporter Elizabeth Wasserman describes the controversy over Internet service provider liability for communications posted by subscribers. Wasserman writes: ”In a flurry of surprise raids recently, members of the Church of Scientology have accompanied authorities into the homes of their most prolific critics in cyberspace, seizing computers, disks and cartons of materials. They have gone as far as Finland to pursue the identity of someone who allegedly had stolen their secret sacred texts and violated U.S. copyright laws by then using a re-mailer, which masks the identity of the sender, to publish them on the Internet. The flurry of activity brought by disciples of L. Ron Hubbard, who founded Scientology 40 years ago, amounts to what legal experts say could pose the greatest challenge yet to unbridled free speech on the Internet. Free speech proponents also fear that the litigation may have a chilling effect on the Internet, silencing critics of the church and requiring on-line services to police the electronic messages of their subscribers. But none of the Scientology cases is being watched as closely as the one filed in February in U.S. District Court in San Jose against a minister-turned-critic, Dennis Erlich, and the on-line service that provided his access to the Internet, Netcom On-Line Communication Services Inc. ‘These cases are going to make some huge determinations on whether or not system operators are going to be held liable for what their subscribers do,’ said Shari Steele, legal counsel to the Electronic Freedom Frontier, a nonprofit group seeking to protect civil liberties in cyberspace. ‘It affects the entire way service will be provided in the future. It’s as if a telephone company was going to be held liable for the content of telephone messages.’ … Such a ruling would have a chilling effect on on-line providers and would greatly reduce the number willing to take on the liability for policing subscribers’ use of copyrighted material, said Steele of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.”
Date of prediction: January 1, 1995
Topic of prediction: Controversial Issues
Subtopic: Defamation/Libel
Name of publication: New Orleans Times-Picayune
Title, headline, chapter name: Scientologists Trying to Silence Cyber Critics; Chilling Effect on Internet Feared
Quote Type: Direct quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
National; Page A26
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Anderson, Janna Quitney