On Fri, 07 Jul 2000 16:57:38 EDT, Shawn McMahon <smcmahon@eiv.com> said:
If the Pope received faulty information that Disney was sacrificing babies inside Snow White's castle, and called for all Catholics to boycott but didn't say they had so, just that they should, could Disney sue the pope for preventing them from doing business?
At least in the US, it's illegal to attempt to manipulate stock prices by spreading rumors about a company, and saying "you should sell before it tanks". The Pope might not be liable if he acted in good faith (sorry for the pun) and had reason to believe the information was true. However, the person who intentionally gave the Pope the information would quite likely be in for a bad time. And note that even if Disney can't sue the Pope, it could still have an effect on Disney's bottom line. Apply this thought experiment: Pick a *large* provider. AOL, Sprint, British Telecom, Yahoo - anything that a lot of people use. Now assume that the blackhole list is in common use (since it's not effective if it isn't). What's the impact on the net if said large provider *does* get black-listed? If I was clever and pissed at AOL, I'd certainly look for a way to create enough evidence that AOL needed black-listing. What a nice DOS that would be ;) -- Valdis Kletnieks Operating Systems Analyst Virginia Tech