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