Phrase Domain

Phrase Domain

Would ISPs Trade Net Neutrality for Safe Harbor? (readwriteweb)

What keeps Internet service providers from being responsible for, and perhaps prosecuted for, the content trafficked over their networks is a provision of a law that Web advocates ironically opposed while it was being argued in 1998: the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. As long as ISPs do not take interest in the nature or technical breakdown of that content, then its creators and publishers can't hold them liable for intellectual property theft - this is the "safe harbor" provision. That law isn't going away any time soon. Meanwhile, the recording and publishing industries - stymied by the ineffectiveness of prosecuting individual IP violators - know that the ISP is the one remaining place where they can attack the problem of IP theft. (Certainly they can't prosecute themselves and their own partners for ineffective security.) _Sponsor_ In order for the U.S. Justice Dept. to prosecute Web-based offenders, it has to get at them. The current draft of the PROTECT-IP Act being debated in the Senate would enable prosecutors to go after the _assets_ of suspected illicit traffickers who may reside offshore, just the way they do with drug trafficking suspects: by commencing an _in rem_ action. But it ...

readwriteweb

All About A Keyword Rich Domain