Should ISP be held liable?

[GrandOldTeam]

Should internet service providers be held liable for what their customers do online?

 

[Bruce Wayne]

No, of course not. The only person that should be liable is you.

 

[GrandOldTeam]

By liable Bruce I meant should they be given some responsibility for monitoring what their customers do online, ie, report to the police if a customer is actively engaging in illegal activity.

Currently data protection laws mean peadophile rings/terrorist activity etc are harder to break - if ISP were told they would also be held liable for failure to moderate their customers activity, then surely that would go a long way in aiding the police?

 

[everythingisgood]

the problem is it's a great idea for catching terrorist and peadophile rings but given the power of entertainment business the laws would be used for catching illegal downloaders.
I know downloading is illegal but in my opinion it shouldn't be and anyway, its not exactly a crime on the scale of child pornography or terroism

 

[Vim Fuego]

It's a potential can of worms, yes i agree when it comes to catching Paedo's and online bullies but there's a fine line between monitering and personal intrusion, so yes, but no, but yes.

 

[Bruce Wayne]

Stopping paedophile/terrorist rings isn't what this is about at all. Legislators regularly overhype threats to take away liberty.

The Internet is a precious piece of freedom in our surveillance culture. Lets leave it alone shall we. After all, Britons are already more spied upon than Russians.

 

[SuitsBlue]

By liable Bruce I meant should they be given some responsibility for monitoring what their customers do online, ie, report to the police if a customer is actively engaging in illegal activity.

Currently data protection laws mean peadophile rings/terrorist activity etc are harder to break - if ISP were told they would also be held liable for failure to moderate their customers activity, then surely that would go a long way in aiding the police?

have you got any idea about the size of the resources necessary to monitor every internet connection in britain alone?

there are levels of free encryption that can slow down any investigation if used properly.

if there was a huge british cyber police force, who would police them?

 

[GrandOldTeam]

Yes Suits, I have. Reasoning behind this thread was I recently spoke to a police officer who described the situation to me.

He said it wouldn't be hard to do at all, certain keywords and websites would simply alert ISPs, also 'dummy, fake websites' could also be used and when accessed, ISPs are alerted.

Haven't got the time to go on, but I was assured lack or resources is not a argument and from what I was told, it seems fairly logical to me.

Oh, and there are already 'cyber police' and specialist online investigators. Not surprising considering 'cyber crime' is the UKs fastest growing crime. And your missing the point, the police would just have to respond to ISP reports. There wouldn't be a vast amount of police surfing the web...

Japan have a similar system with regards to Suicides;

Following the world’s first internet suicide pact in Japan in 2003, suicide sites and forums proliferated. To combat this the has country developed cyberpatrols, web whistle-blowers and a special online suicide-watch police division. Software has been created that monitors chatrooms for keywords that suggest a suicide is imminent. While Japan’s overall suicide rate remains high, the pandemic of internet suicides has been very effectively ended.

 

[TX Bill]

Should phone companies be held liable for illegal activity conducted over the phone?

Should brewing companies or car manufacturers be held liable when someone gets drunk and gets behind the wheel, injuring or killing someone in the process?

Should the gun manufacturers be held liable when someone shoots someone?

No.

Therefore ISP's should not be held liable either.

 

[Bruce Wayne]

It's a nonsense. Lets say for instance a hacker sends out a trojan that effectively grants the hacker control of several thousand PC's that he then uses to surf nefarious sites. What happens then?

As Benjamin Franklin once said “Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both.”

 

[Seamus Colemole]

Should phone companies be held liable for illegal activity conducted over the phone?

Should brewing companies or car manufacturers be held liable when someone gets drunk and gets behind the wheel, injuring or killing someone in the process?

Should the gun manufacturers be held liable when someone shoots someone?

No.

Therefore ISP's should not be held liable either.

True. But i dont think its a case of them being held liable for their users actions, thats just unworkable and ridiculous just like your examples above.

If somehow an ISP finds out thats its customers are using the internet to partake in illegal activity then should they have to reveal that to the police?

If they knew of someone using child porn sites should they by law have to inform the police?

Its a difficult one because there are so many issues involved.

I'd probably be more in favour of it then against it.

 

[GrandOldTeam]

At the end of the day, putting it simply, data protection laws are preventing the police and authorities from shutting down annorexia websites, fraud scams, peadophile rings, terrorist websites etc etc

Its not hard for ISP to alert authorities/police if certain computers are actively visisting websites of a certain nature.

 

[evertonianstu]

This is a hypothetical question?

Whose been a naughty boy here

Im not an expert on this tbh. I just log on, look at the sites i like to look at (Everton...... and Swedish stuffb)) and im not to clued on how it all works. Is it possible for every site to be vetted and cleaned up on a regular basis?

 

[Bundy]

Is it illegal to download a football match? Or stream a football match through p2p tv?

 

[atrottel]

Stopping paedophile/terrorist rings isn't what this is about at all. Legislators regularly overhype threats to take away liberty.

The Internet is a precious piece of freedom in our surveillance culture. Lets leave it alone shall we. After all, Britons are already more spied upon than Russians.

Hear, hear, Bruce. It may only be on one thing politically, but in this case we agree.