[LINK] Liability of Publisher v. ISP/Space-Lessor

[rchirgwin at ozemail.com.au]

Roger Clarke wrote:

>
> Indian schoolboy's phone sex prank reverberates around the world
> The Sydney Morning Herald
> Date: December 22 2004
> http://www.smh.com.au/text/articles/2004/12/21/1103391774573.html
>
> To the Indian schoolboy, it must have seemed like an ingenious if 
> indelicate use of new technology. But when the 17-year-old used his 
> mobile phone camera to record his girlfriend giving him oral sex he 
> could have had little idea of the far-reaching global consequences.
>
> By this week his ungentlemanly act had provoked a scandal that was 
> dominating every Indian newspaper, the chief executive of a large 
> company had been jailed, and a diplomatic row was brewing between 
> India and the US, with Condoleezza Rice to the fore.
>
> The boy himself has been tracked down by police, faced court on Monday 
> and has been expelled from his school.
>
> The trouble started a few days after the teenager made the recording, 
> when someone tried to sell a video clip of him and his 16-year-old 
> girlfriend on the Indian online auction site Baazee.com. The firm is a 
> subsidiary of the US auction giant eBay.
>
> Indian officials were not amused. On Friday detectives arrested 
> Baazee.com's chief executive, Avnish Bajaj, a US citizen and Harvard 
> graduate. Soon afterwards, the police arrested the 17-year-old as well.
>
> [What law has the the lad breached?  Non-consensual sex?  Recording 
> sexual acts?  There seems to be no evidence that he *published* the 
> record]

The police mindset in this case seems to be "somebody published 
something. Arrest everybody and let the courts work out who is the 
publisher."

> [What law has Bajaj breached?  EBay isn't the publisher, but a renter 
> of space.  Depending on the terms of contract with posters, might 
> Bajaj have breached the law had he taken it down or blocked it without 
> due cause?]

We'd need to know how Indian law defines "publisher", I guess... come to 
think of it, we'd also have to know how eBay defines itself in India.

Maybe the kid who made the video should sue his (presumably former) 
friend for breach of copyright?

RC