"Historically, American law has divided operators of communications systems into three categories", he says, and he describes the third category as:
"Platforms, such as telephone companies, cities on whose sidewalks people might demonstrate, or broadcasters running candidate ads that they are required to carry."
His description of the liability rules for platforms:
"Platforms weren't liable at all. For instance, even if a phone company learned that an answering machine had a libelous outgoing message (see Anderson v. N.Y. Telephone Co. (N.Y. 1974)), and did nothing to cancel the owner's phone service, it couldn't be sued for libel. Likewise, a city couldn't be liable for defamatory material on signs that someone carried on city sidewalks (even though a bar could be liable once it learned of libelous material on its walls), and a broadcaster couldn't be liable for defamatory material in a candidate ad."
If you see a difference between that and "common carrier" that is relevant to whether an entity considered a traditional platform would have to carry spam or porn, what is it?
"Historically, American law has divided operators of communications systems into three categories", he says, and he describes the third category as:
"Platforms, such as telephone companies, cities on whose sidewalks people might demonstrate, or broadcasters running candidate ads that they are required to carry."
His description of the liability rules for platforms:
"Platforms weren't liable at all. For instance, even if a phone company learned that an answering machine had a libelous outgoing message (see Anderson v. N.Y. Telephone Co. (N.Y. 1974)), and did nothing to cancel the owner's phone service, it couldn't be sued for libel. Likewise, a city couldn't be liable for defamatory material on signs that someone carried on city sidewalks (even though a bar could be liable once it learned of libelous material on its walls), and a broadcaster couldn't be liable for defamatory material in a candidate ad."
If you see a difference between that and "common carrier" that is relevant to whether an entity considered a traditional platform would have to carry spam or porn, what is it?