Brief opinion: ISPs and the RIAA

Maybe it’s just my unin­formed opin­ion, but Internet ser­vice providers should not be held account­able for what sorts of infor­ma­tion flows over their networks.

Several analo­gies have popped up online in com­ments about this, espe­cially in com­ments on RIAA law­suit sto­ries. For exam­ple, toll booth oper­a­tors are not held liable for ille­gal dri­ving that takes place on the roads they monitor.

The point is this: those who pro­vide access to net­works (of what­ever kind) aren’t respon­si­ble for polic­ing those net­works. They are respon­si­ble for pro­vid­ing access to the networks.

Another thing: Yes, pirat­ing music and movies is ille­gal. Yes, the pirates should be sued or oth­er­wise held account­able for their crimes. But while we, a a soci­ety, a com­pelled to live within the bounds of the law, or face pun­ish­ment, we are not com­pelled to help enforce that law. ISPs are run by pri­vate indi­vid­u­als and are usu­ally pri­vate com­pa­nies. They should not be com­pelled to enforce the law any more than a sin­gle cit­i­zen should be.

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1. Rumor has it