The Morality of Safe-Harbor?
Category: Soapbox
Do you sue Fedex for sending stolen merchandise through the mail ? Do you sue AT&T for getting a telemarketing call ? So should an Internet Service Provider (ISP) be in trouble for allowing illegal activity to go down on the pipes they run? I think not, but I know there is more to it.
The issue here is that the companies that are trying to fight the ISPs are major corps that have greedy interests to keep in mind. Also, the ISP doesn't walk up to the door and come to get my music to send to another user. If they did would it be a responsibilty of the ISP to know what is copy protected and what is not?
Another reason this is huge, there are ways for the companies to find what is being sent through the pipes, as they need to know this information in the likely future possibility that there will be multiple tiers of internet access divided for multiple purposes. AT&T doesn't want you to do internet calling via skype while you are on an AT&T line, they would lose money. The technology is there, the support of the user isn't and hopefully never will be.
When Janet showed her breast on television the network got sued, not the NFL, not Janet. But when a television show uses video footage of an NFL game without permission, the show gets sued, not the network, not cable provider. In these instances there lies some ambiguity to the location of the blame...
What does this mean for me?
I never want to see the rules of Safe Harbor changed for ISPs. I am upset whenever we face this issue. Someone would have to decide what is ok to stop and what is not, and when that happens, we lose control of our internet. This is the US of A and not China!
That is all