Legal liability, take II

Subject: Legal liability, take II
From: Geoff Hart <Geoff-h -at- MTL -dot- FERIC -dot- CA>
Date: Thu, 5 Aug 1999 11:53:05 -0400

Eric Dunn, responding to my original query about legal
liability, observed <<We would be paying for membership in
a club. If I pay 500 a year to be in a golf club, I can't sue
anyone for advise they gave me. We'd pay to get in the door.
Not one penny of what we would pay would go to anybody
for their advise.>>

While I'd like to agree with you, your example misses the
mark; the comparable situation would be if you paid your
$500 to join the golf club, asked the staff golf pro how to
swing, and he showed you the wrong way to do it and you
hurt your back. Under those circumstances, you could
probably sue him. The difference between us and a club is
that (i) our discussions revolve around work that may affect
the safety of others (e.g., writing instructions for the use of
heavy equipment) and (ii) even though technical writing is
not formally a profession on the level of doctors and lawyers,
we nonetheless consider ourselves professionals and thus
have a professional's responsibility for due diligence.

Again, let me reiterate: I'm not saying that techwr-l is one big
lawsuit waiting to happen. What I am saying is that as soon as
money is involved, we may incur the same legal liabilities
and responsibilities as any other paid forum for publishing
information. Consider the example of magazines (including
newspapers). As soon as we start paying for our subscription,
Eric and Deb (whether personally or via Raycomm) become
the de facto publishers of techwr-l, and are thus responsible
for its content as publishers of this "magazine" (and what else
would you call the digest form of techwr-l)? Furthermore,
using the magazine model, authors who write columns for
commercial magazines (in this case, people like me who write
for techwr-l) can be sued jointly or severally along with the
publisher that prints and distributes their columns.

There is considerable debate in the legal community over
responsibility for e-mail sent via service providers such as
AOL, and the legal precedents are still being established. Let's
continue with the magazine analogy: AOL is like your corner
bookstore, because although they may be held liable for
stocking illegal "magazines", they will probably never be held
liable for stocking _legal_ magazines that contain actionable
material; in the latter case, the lawsuit would focus on the
magazine publisher, not the store that carried the magazine.

--Geoff Hart @8^{)} Pointe-Claire, Quebec
geoff-h -at- mtl -dot- feric -dot- ca

"The text's out of joint, oh cursed spite/that I was born to set it
right."--Prince Hamlet, early Danish editor

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