ATC of Near-Miss over BOS

Marco Leon (at) wrote:
Saw this over at LiveATC.net forums. Thought it may be of interest.

I thought the controller was very professional and avoided an over the air
arguement nicely.

Wow... I listened to the transmission and watched the replay on
passur.com, and have a question: if both planes respond to the
controller that they have the other in sight, and the controller tells
them to maintain visual separation (which it sounds like was done in
this case), does that eliminate the standard IFR separation rules? It
looks like the AA pilot was right in that the LJ came within 300 feet,
but since they were both "seeing and avoiding", is that technically an
FAR violation? i.e., was the controller still obligated to provide
separation?

--
Guy Elden Jr.