Date: Sun, 18 Jun 1995 12:56:27 +1000 (EST)
From: Richard Murnane (richardm@zeta.org.au)
Subject: Prodigy paranoid reaches Tasmania?

The following recent news release from the Wireless Institute of Australia suggests that some people are getting very nervous, following the Prodigy defamation case in the USA:

The name of the gateway is just one of those ironic little twists. :-)

PACKET GATEWAY DEMANDS STAT. DEC. FROM AMATEURS

The Launceston Institute of TAFE [Technical and Further Education] in northern Tasmania, which runs an amateur radio packet-to-Internet gateway known under the acronym of LITGATE, is requiring radio amateur users to file a statutory declaration with them.

The relevant wording of the declaration says: "That I agree to take full personal responsibility for any information or data which is sent from my station, or from a station operating under my callsign.

"That I will not hold the Launceston Institute of TAFE responsible for the content of data received through the LITGATE, whether such data is of an offensive, improper, illegal or other unacceptable nature."

Basically, what the Launceston TAFE requires is that radio amateurs wanting access to LITGATE must say they will accept responsibility for all messages under their callsign, whether pirated or not, and agree they will absolve the Launceston TAFE from responsibility for any material placed on its system.

Whether such a statutory declaration is legally binding would be a matter of conjecture. (Thanks to Victorian Division President, Jim Linton VK3PC, for details on that item).

[end]

I hope somebody can convince these people of the stupidity of their decision, as they clearly don't understand some of the technical issues. For those not involved in Amateur Radio, we "hams" operate our own computer network, using our radios as the physical layer.

In some places, known as "wormholes" or "gateways", operators transport message over long distances via Internet, replacing the slower chain of short-range VHF or UHF radio links. The traffic leaves the net again at some remote point and rejoins the Amateur packet radio network.

It's important to realise that the wormholes and Internet are merely being used as a medium for conveying this traffic from one part of the Amateur packet network to another; the Amateur traffic is effectively "quarantined" from other Internet traffic because Amateur Radio licence conditions forbid non-Amateurs (e.g. other Internet users) from conveying message by Amateur Radio. So, it would be very hard to argue that LIT is a "publisher" of any Amateur packet radio traffic passing through its gateway.

I might add that it is a trivial matter to "pirate" another Radio Amateur's callsign.

-Richard Murnane (Amateur station VK2SKY)