Duties of US ISPs

Tue Jun 12 15:15:08 UTC 2007

On Mon, 11 Jun 2007, John Levine wrote:
> Also, ISPs in the United States are not common carriers.  Even the
> ISPs that are owned by phone companies (which are common carriers for
> their phone service) are not common carriers.

The Communications Decency Act, Digitial Millinium Copyright Act, 
Electronic Communications Privacy Act and even ISP's own Terms of Service 
give operators substantial protection for "Good Samaritan" acts to filter, 
screen, allow, disallow or report objectionable material.

In addition, under 42 USC 13032, US public electronic communication 
providers (also known as ISPs) have the *DUTY* to report, not monitor, 
child pornography to the National Center for Missing and Exploited 
Children.  Failing to file a report could result in a fine of $50,000 or 
more, except due to a quirk in how the statute was written, apparently no 
US government agency was given the authority to issue the fines.

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