Roundup: ISP Dropped From Wrongful Death Suit Involving NAMBLA

A Colorado couple has dropped an Internet service provider from a lawsuit involving their young son's death and the North American Man-Boy Love Association's website... The advisory commission which prodded Congress to block Internet taxes has another proposal Congress may approve - ending an antique telephone tax... And no matter when they finally nail the culprits behind the Love Bug, they're not likely to face severe punishment thanks to Philippine law... The Web Roundup drops a dime on the usual unusuals? nrnBOSTON - An Internet service provider in Colorado is no longer a co-defendant in a lawsuit brought by the parents of a ten-year-old murder victim. Verio, Inc. said May 17 that attorneys for Jeffrey Curley's parents have filed to drop them from a $200 million federal lawsuit, after the parents learned the ISP had not hosted the Website of the co-defendant - the North American Man-Boy Love Association. Barbara and Robert Curley hold the NAMBLA site partly responsible for their son's murder because his convicted killers visited the site before abducting their son. Verio hosted the NAMBLA Website beginning after Curley's October 1997 murder. They disabled the site May 17 when they found the site violated their acceptable practices policy. Barbara and Robert Curley filed the federal suit earlier this week, charging NAMBLA with encouraging its members to rape male children. An alleged NAMBLA member, Salvatore Sicari, was convicted of first degree murder in the killing, while another, Charles Jaynes, was convicted of first degree murder and kidnapping. The Curley suit charges Jaynes visited the NAMBLA Website just before he and Sicari lured their son by promising him a new bicycle. Jeffrey Curley was molested and suffocated before being stuffed into a container and dumped into a river in Maine. nrnARLINGTON, Va. - The Advisory Commission on Electronic Commerce could be forgiven for thinking it's winning big. No sooner did the House approve extending a moratorium on Internet taxes for five years - the ACEC recommended against any Net taxes entirely - than the House Ways and Means Committee approved a measure to repeal an antique 3 percent Federal telephone tax. That recommendation was part of the same report which recommended against Net taxes, and the ACEC said repealing it would relieve tax burdens on Net connections, cut Net access costs, and help close the digital gap. The bill now goes to the full House. How antique is the tax? It was first passed - as a luxury tax, since few Americans then owned telephones - in 1898 to help finance the Spanish-American War. nrnMANILA - No matter who turns out to be the real culprits behind the Love Bug - and authorities are considering as many as 50 possible suspects - Philippine law means they won't get much more than minor charges at best. That's because existing laws only allow malicious mischief charges, with maximum six year jail sentences, despite investigators wanting to charge suspects with using access devices to break into telecommunications systems - which carries up to 20 years behind bars. The latter falls under the Access Devices Act which tackles credit card fraud, but can't be used in computer hacking cases. And the Philippines, as we told you previously, doesn't yet have explicit computer hacking laws. For now, the probe stays focused on the activities of computer school graduate Michael Buen, his classmate Onel de Guzman, and an underground programming group known as Grammersoft to which they belonged. nrn--- Compiled by Humphrey Pennyworth