Intermediary Liability

Intermediary Liability

Definition of an ISP - see Discussion pagelink title

There are at least a couple of ways to examine intermediary liability. One is to examine the role of intermediaries on an issue-by-issue basis. These include:

1. Copyright
2. Trademark/domain names
3. Net neutrality/network management
4. Spam, phishing and Internet harms
5. Defamation
6. Hate speech
7. Child Pornography
8. Other “illegal” content
9. Other “offensive” but legal content
10. Free speech/content filtering
11. Broadcasting regulations
12. Telecommunications regulations
13. Privacy
14. Cybercrime

Alternatively, intermediaries can be examined based on the role they play in addressing these legal issues. Possibilities here include:

1.Content removal

• a.Copyright – notice and takedown, notice and notice
• b.Defamation – upon warning or not at all (CDA Section 230)
• c.Child pornography

2.Content blocking

• a.Spam, phishing, Internet harms
• b.Child pornography
• c.Hate speech
• d.Copyright infringing content
• e.Domain name level blocking (trademark or other IP)

3.Content and application management

• a.Net neutrality
• b.Broadcast (broadcast regulations)
• c.Telecom (VoIP)

4.Liability for hosted Content

• a.Intermediary’s own content
• b.Third party content
• c.Linked-to content

5.Privacy

• a.Subscriber name and address disclosure
• b.Subscriber activity disclosure
• c.Subscriber content disclosure

See also Hosting_liability