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| Author |
Message |
| 25 new of 129 responses total. |
robh
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response 100 of 129:
| 
Nov 22 02:38 UTC 1995 |
Since when is a landlord held responsible for crimes committed by
their tenants? That's a new one on me.
<robh thanks kerouac for knowing the difference between "liable"
and "libel">
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adbarr
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response 101 of 129:
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Nov 22 02:41 UTC 1995 |
Hmm. Perhaps some insurance is in order. Are all the directors and staff of
Grex judgement-proof?
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rcurl
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response 102 of 129:
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Nov 22 04:02 UTC 1995 |
My homeowner's "umbrella" provides liability insurance for my activities
with Grex, though I think that the probability of ever having a suit,
with wht we do, is very small (as long as no one causes intentional
injury or damage).
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mta
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response 103 of 129:
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Nov 22 20:10 UTC 1995 |
<an aside, yes, Valerie's right. It's Larry's mother's wedding that I'm pla
planning and that's keeping me hopping until the 17th of Dec.)
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kerouac
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response 104 of 129:
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Nov 22 23:33 UTC 1995 |
The risks are out there. all that needs to happen is for one little
girl to meet the wrong person on the party conf and grex will have
the same problems AOL and prodigy have had. This little girl gets a
date with bad person through grex and gets hurt, her parents might well
sue both the cyberspace inc. board of directors for giving
unprotected and unmonitored access to compromising material and
communications to a child, and grex's landlady for providing the
physical facilities while knowingly aware of Grex's potential to cause
such problems.
This may sound silly but in fact AOL (which is based in suburban DC near
where I work) has been sued more than once for similar circumstances.
I'm sure they havent had to pay out a dime in claims, but they have
a legal staff, while Grex would bankrupt itself paying for one lawyer
without insurance. Grex can afford a monthly insurance premium, and it
might be worth it if the secret service is going to come around and
make people like this landlady so paranoid.
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adbarr
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response 105 of 129:
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Nov 23 02:00 UTC 1995 |
Doesn't sound silly to me. Worth talking to a good insurance agent, methinks.
"You can't stop dancing."
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rcurl
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response 106 of 129:
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Nov 23 06:41 UTC 1995 |
Yes, Grex should carry liability insurance. Its been looked into several
times, but hardware needs have been given priority so far. However, in
regard to the *probabily* of the risks cited by kerouuac - think meteorites.
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mdw
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response 107 of 129:
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Nov 23 12:56 UTC 1995 |
AOL is also several orders of magnitude larger, richer, and they likely
have policies that are somewhat less "friendly" (whatever that means)
towards their users. An insurance company can't cover us for any of the
risks we might incurr vis-a-vis the secret service so the real risk is
that of an insane user & shady lawyer. Unfortunately, I doubt there's
enough data for an insurance company to even assign a dollar value to
the risk, which would make insurance hard to get. AOL is very probably
self-insured for much if not all of that risk.
Incidently, the kind of risk that Kerouc is talking about would appear
to be the sort that the Exxon telecommunications act was supposed to
address; if you'll remember, that's the one that would have explicitely
criminalized such acts - and the language kerouac uses suggests a
criminal violation. You can't insur against criminal acts, & no
insurance can keep the secret service away. In both cases, the real
risk is small, but anybody who is at all concerned about these risks
should certainly not be on the grex board or staff, probably shouldn't
be a member, and possibly shouldn't be using grex at all.
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scg
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response 108 of 129:
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Nov 23 18:54 UTC 1995 |
If I'm remembering correctly from my high school law class, there's a legal
concept called "deep pockets", which means you don't sue somebody with no
money, and when there are several different possible people or organizations
to sue, you go after the one with the most money. AOL has lots of money.
Grex does not. I suppose some people on the board might have enough money
to be worth suing, but speaking as one board member, I don't have enough to
be worth suing. If the rest of the board feels strongly about protecting
themselves it might be a good idea, but I don't consider it to be a big issue.
OTOH, if Grex did have insurance, that would give us said "deep pockets" and
might make us worth suing.
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rcurl
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response 109 of 129:
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Nov 23 21:29 UTC 1995 |
The first thing you get from having insurance is lawyers to defend you
from frivolous suits. That is worth more than the insurnace money involved.
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robh
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response 110 of 129:
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Nov 23 22:22 UTC 1995 |
I'm quite confident that AOL has more insurance than we ever will.
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chelsea
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response 111 of 129:
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Nov 24 00:29 UTC 1995 |
So, it would be a good thing for Grex if only poor people
got on the Board.
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mdw
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response 112 of 129:
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Nov 24 02:44 UTC 1995 |
No, it only minimizes an already low risk. If our resident law experts
are right, you would be better off worrying about the risk of being
involved in an automobile accident first. It's both far more likely,
and the consequences more serious (and no insurance can keep you from
getting killed.) In the end, however, it boils down to an individual
decision, that each board member, staff person, member, and user has to
make. Each of us picks our brand of poison. I personally think this is
a justifiable and low risk (and I speak as a non-smoking organic foods
volvo-driving person), but I would urge anyone who is seriously
concerned about the risk not to become a staff or board member.
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rcurl
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response 113 of 129:
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Nov 24 05:35 UTC 1995 |
Well, I wouldn't get that dramatic about it. Everyone, everday, is running
greater risks than the little they would add by being a Grex board member.
It might even reduce risk, by not doing what you would be doing instead.
Life is like that.
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janc
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response 114 of 129:
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Nov 24 06:15 UTC 1995 |
I can't imagine that our landlords could be liable for anything that happens
on Grex. Cyberspace Communications, and probably the individual board members
could possibly be.
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mdw
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response 115 of 129:
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Nov 24 19:35 UTC 1995 |
I think it's an irrational fear, but that doesn't make it any less real
to the person who has it. This is really one of the fears that drove
Mike Myers to give up m-net; he was clearly quite uncomfortable even
thinking about lawyers, and just didn't want to deal with it. Of
course, he was also running a greater risk; he was running m-net as an
unincorporated business, so all of his assets would have been at risk.
Even his risk was pretty low, but certainly a grex board member is in
far better shape today.
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adbarr
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response 116 of 129:
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Nov 24 20:41 UTC 1995 |
Most lawyers I know are more boring than frightyMening.
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steve
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response 117 of 129:
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Nov 24 21:30 UTC 1995 |
At one point long ago I asked an insurance company about insurance
for Grex in terms of liability. After finally getting through to them
as to what Grex was, the answer I got for insurance was "lots". The
whole concept of this was nebulous enough to them to give them little
shivers about this. They normally did things like insuring hardware
items.
But, someone should try again and see if its any more feasable now
than in 1991.
I do wonder though, how might are chances of being used by someone
be changed if we had a nice, fat policy to "protect" us?
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adbarr
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response 118 of 129:
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Nov 24 22:17 UTC 1995 |
Good point. Perhaps Grex should have the lawyer for Grex look at
http;//www.hvcn.org - About HVCN - and look at the bylaw provisions there.
Some provisions about liabilty for volunteer directors etc. Then
talk to a knolwedgeable insurance agent -- and be ready to go a step
higher to the carrier. Be ready to document what you do to prevent problems.
A concern I have is the electrical equipment in the Dungeon going keflonkers
and a little conflagration starting. Is possible?.
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mdw
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response 119 of 129:
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Nov 24 23:58 UTC 1995 |
It's very easy to price insurance. The simplest method is to multiply
the risk by the loss, and consider that a minimum price. If, for
instance, the potential loss is $5000, but is only going to happen once
every 50 years, then a fair insurance rate would certainly be over
$100/yr. If the risk is more uncertain, then the price goes up.
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adbarr
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response 120 of 129:
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Nov 25 00:26 UTC 1995 |
Er, perhaps #118 should suggest the Articles, also, for your reading
pleasure.
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ajax
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response 121 of 129:
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Nov 25 11:58 UTC 1995 |
Re 119, the tough part is in determining the two numbers. Grex is
probably unique enough to make the uncertainty (and cost) pretty high.
Re 108, if there are several possible targets for the lawsuit, the
rule of thumb I've heard is "sue them all," not just the richest.
Re 114, scenario where the landlord and Grex might be jointly liable:
if Grex's equipment causes an electrical fire, killing a tenant. (Not
sure we'd both be liable, but there might be something *like* that.)
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adbarr
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response 122 of 129:
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Nov 25 12:14 UTC 1995 |
Ajax, yes the general rule is sue everyone if there is any possible rational
basis for liability. It has to be a good-faith analysis, or should be, but
there is usually some accepted therory of liability upon which to base a suit.
A lawyer that did not sue Grex in the tenant-death-by-computer-caused-fire
scenario would be negligent.
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mdw
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response 123 of 129:
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Nov 25 23:58 UTC 1995 |
The unknown risk and lack of history is probably why the
insurance company essentially laughed in STeve's face.
Really, the only way to proceed here is to talk to
other larger organizations that have hopefully faced
this issue (other free-nets, bbs systems that have
been sued, or even the big guys if we can find somebody
who will talk to us), and see if we can get a
better handle on the risk.
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steve
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response 124 of 129:
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Nov 26 00:15 UTC 1995 |
Probably true. If we try it again now, we're likely to have
people at little more understanding of computer things. The world
has changed a lot since 1991 in terms of public knowledge of
computers.
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