LawMeme LawMeme Yale Law School  
LawMeme
Search LawMeme [ Advanced Search ]
 
 
 
 
ISPs not liable for transmitting 'hostile code'
Posted by James Grimmelmann on Thursday, January 23 @ 11:38:21 EST Media Regulation
It's been a good-news, bad-news kind of month for ISPs in the courtooms. Right as they were getting slapped around by the DMCA in the Verizon case, another Court of Appeals gave them a break under the CDA. The Third Circuit ruled last week that the CDA's blanket immunity for ISPs applies not just to offensive speech but to computer code.

This interpretation means that ISPs are not liable for transmitting viruses, spyware, worms, or other malicious software at the request of users. But note the irony: if that malicious software happens to be copyrighted, the immunity doesn't apply. Welcome to our dystopian future.

Full story here (but note that the lead paragraph is wrong; it was the Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, not a District Court, that issued the rulling.)

 
Login
Nickname

Password

Don't have an account yet? You can create one. As a registered user you have some advantages like theme manager, comments configuration and post comments with your name.
Related Links
· here
· More about Media Regulation
· News by James Grimmelmann


Most read story about Media Regulation:
TiVo is ''God's Machine''

Options

Printer Friendly Page  Printer Friendly Page

Send to a Friend  Send to a Friend
"User's Login" | Login/Create an Account | 1 comment | Search Discussion
Threshold
  
The comments are owned by the poster. We aren't responsible for their content.

Re: ISPs not liable for transmitting 'hostile code' (Score: 0)
by Anonymous (Name Withheld on Advice of Counsel) on Friday, January 24 @ 12:27:15 EST
Is not not the case that everything not in the public domain is the copyright of someone, somewhere? ... and that the default disposition of material, including software, is that its copyright is owned by the author? ... and that only an explicit statement from the author or the expiration of the copyright can put it in the public domain?

In that case, I would be hard pressed to find malicious code that is not copyrighted.

So a money-making scheme for someone outside the reach of American justice might be:
- Create a virus and release it.
- Hire a lawyer in the US to sue all the ISPs that transmitted the copyrighted code.


[ Reply to This ]

"User's Login" | Login/Create an Account | 1 comment | Search Discussion
Threshold
  
The comments are owned by the poster. We aren't responsible for their content.


Leges humanae nascuntur, vivunt, moriuntur
Human laws are born, live, and die

All stories, comments and submissions copyright their respective posters.
Everything Else Copyright (c) 2002 by the Information Society Project.
This material may be distributed only subject to the terms and conditions set forth in the Open Publication License, v1.0 or later (the latest version is presently available at http://www.opencontent.org/openpub/).
You can syndicate our news using backend.php