Quote:Indeed.
Now, on the subject of corporations and money, here is another interesting bit of information from the IS front. Once you control what is flowing through the pipe, you are responsible for what is flowing through the pipe. The legal implications of this are very far reaching; especially as most US laws on pornography are based around a fatuous notion called contemporary community standards. This means that you are enforcing a law on a nebulous, undefined, concept. Expect very loud and vocal groups to be loudly protesting thing that they dont like; and the internet providers moving to block them for everyone. Likewise political dissent; social dissent or alternate news feeds. This isnt paranoia at all; merely good business. The article cited earlier shows some rather piquant examples of this behavior and this is before legislation was introduced to allow such behavior.
As it stands now, an ISP has Common Carrier status, same as a telephone provider. What this means is that they hold no liability wrt what their users do with that service.
The Common Carrier principle is based on the fact that a provider has no knowledge of what the customers do with their service, and thus no responsibility to act on it.
This law undercuts that by making that knowledge available to the carrier. Once it is accepted that that knowledge is available to the carrier, the legal responsibility to act on it exists.
Hypothetical scenario: A group uses e-mail to plan a get-together so that they can commit a crime. A Common-Carrier provider has no idea what they're doing and no responsibility to act on it. A non-CC provider, however, is liable for the use to which their service is put, and can be charged as an accessory to the crime for having facilitated it.--
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