Internet Service Providers Protection and Cyber Crimes - Essay Example

Affiliation The internet service providers are responsible for domain and website hosting services. Sites hosted by these companies may contain illegal information or infringement on the right of third parties. The ISPs get protection from being liable for such defaming or illegal information in the view that they are just the intermediaries and not the authors or editors of this information (Litchman, 2004). This has resulted in to debates on whether the ISPs should take responsibility for material posted on their websites. This paper will focus on the ISPs protection and highlight on the reasons as to why the ISPs should take the responsibility of materials posted on websites by their subscribers, by bringing down information that is a violation to civil rights law from their websites. The ISPs do not have the responsibility of protecting the world from the information put up on the website (Harper, 2005). This is because they are the intermediaries and do not take time to read the information posted by their clients. As a result, they might host information that can be defaming or a violation of civil rights law. Their protection comes from the argument that they are not the source of information. However, some of them have taken advantage of protection and are posting this information with the aim of getting human traffic to their websites for more profits. It is essential that the protection of the ISPs under section 230 be reduced to enhance ethical internet business. The ISPs should take the responsibility of regulating of the material put up on websites to protect the rights of the third parties. Though they should not be directly liable for the mistakes committed by their clients, there should be the implication of indirect liability, where one party is in a position of stopping the negligent acts of the other party (Litchman, 2004). In this case, the ISPs are to be responsible for bringing down all rights violating information upon notification by users or their discovery. According to the current internet environment, there are many crimes happening online, which have led to security threats and illegal dealings. As a result, internet service providers face potential liability for the acts of their subscribers. This will be the regulation of information uploaded to the sites under them by users with the aim of reducing crimes and inappropriate use of internet by subscribers. This will come at a cost to the ISPs as it will consequently reduce their revenues, but is indispensable for development of ethical internet usage (Tian, 2009 p. 175). Information regulation role of the ISPs should be a part of their social responsibility to protect the rights of their users, other than taking advantage and using this information to benefit themselves. Their responsibility is essential to help in the fight against vices like child pornography and cyber crime. In this case, the ISP being the intermediaries, it is easy for the government and non governmental bodies to use them in the fight against human rights violations and children abuse, hence reducing cyber insecurity. Internet service providers, who take advantage of the protection rights to benefit themselves, do not care about the third parties, and have a tendency of putting up information that is defaming to third parties with the main aim of attracting online users to their sites for more profits. The regulation of this information will only come at a cost, which is the level of traffic and the amount of profits made by the company. These postings include computer viruses that cause harm to computer user who depends on the internet for communication and business. With ISP regulations, those involved in the making and posting of viruses can be identified and arrested (Posner & Lichtman, 2004). According to the communications decency act of 1996, section 230, the intermediary service providers are not to be treated as the writers or editors of information provided by another company. This ensured the protection of the ISPs from mistakes that of their clients. The act did not consider the fact that the ISP may be receiving direct financial benefit from defamatory information posted on their websites. This has led to the increase of cyber crime and ISPs need to be placed under the law, so as to ensure regulated, and ethical use of internet resources (Lichtman & Posner, 2004). The problem of illegal distribution of copyrighted material by ISP subscriber has become a main problem. This can be prevented by the ISP’s supervisory activities that should ensure only legitimate products on sale on their website. Just like the shop owner, who is indirectly responsible if other traders use his shop to trade counterfeit products, so should the ISP be indirectly responsible for stoppage of illegal sale of copyrighted materials through their site to help in the fight against digital information piracy. The EU directive provides that ISP should take liability for illegal material posted by their subscribers, and should immediately take action by bringing them down from the websites. The bringing down of this defaming or illegal information should be done by the ISPs as soon as they discover the presence of such material in the websites that they host (Tian, 2009 p. 192). This directive does not compel the ISP to be monitoring the general activities of their clients, but ensures that they are alert in case of any infringing information; they will be able to bring it down and hence creating an ethical operation environment that is suitable for all users. Many crimes continue to happen on the internet because the condition makes it hard and expensive to punish the individual wrong doer, without knowing who they are or where they are. In this case, the indirect liability is beneficial the ISPs to identify possible wrong doer and deter them from committing criminal activities. This is because they will be better positioned to enable the monitoring and control of the activities of individual users of their services. This can be done by monitoring of a subscriber’s patterns of actions online such as messaging, and the ISP can stop the service before the client uses it to commit a crime. The breaking into government and companies intranets through the internet can be controlled by the ISPs by use monitoring tools. These tools are to scan all packet data transmitted in a network for the presence of any problematic communications. When this happens, they can then deploy the packet sniffers that will thoroughly inspect the data and record all the information. This is crucial as it can be used in solving many cyber crimes before they take place. However, this can only be possible if the ISPs accept to take the indirect liability of the actions of their subscribers. Cyber pornography is also a significant problem among the young people and its happening due to availability of the materials all over the internet. The sites get hosting from specific ISPs, who do not bring down information, so as to maintain their traffic level and their earnings. These sites are platforms for illegitimately downloading and transmission of pornographic materials. With ISP taking responsibility, it will be possible to bring down such material from their sites and help in fighting moral indecency and crimes such as child pornography. The ISP should be able to create filters for children using the internet to protect them from pornography, gambling, hate speech and drugs (Campbell, 2010). There are people who have argued against the ISP liability, they state that according to the communications decency act of 1996, section 230, the ISPs get the definition as the intermediaries. This means that their work is to facilitate the relationship between producers and users of information on the internet. In this regard, they are not the source of the information and are also not the editors and hence in the law they are not responsible for any accusations made over the information. As a result, indirect liability is crucial as it enables them to act as watch dogs stopping either of the other parties from committing cyber crimes. Others base their argument on the fact that, liability will reduce the revenues of the companies due to bringing down of material that might have the potential of increasing traffic to their websites. In addition, the ISPs have numerous customers and monitoring each and everyone proves to be a hard task. However, this complication can still be solved through the use of computer programs to monitor individual client trends. The programs record their performance and send notifications in case there is any form of suspicious activity from the users for the ISP action (Harper, 2005). In conclusion, the ISP protection has led to some companies taking advantage to post defaming or information that is against individual civil rights on the internet for their income generation benefit. As a result, a control of the same is necessary for protection of individual rights, establishment of an ethical internet usage platform and a control of cyber crime. Therefore, the ISPs should take responsibility of the material posted by individual clients, and prevent chances of cyber crimes taking place. References Campbel, A. (2010). Cyber Crime Strategy. Internet Security Threat Report, 1-38. Retrieved from http://www.official-documents.gov.uk/document/cm78/7842/7842.pdf Jim, H. (2005). Against ISP Liability.Telecommunications and Technology, 30-33. Retrieved from http://www.cato.org/pubs/regulation/regv28n1/v28n1-5.pdf Lichtma & Posner, (2004). Holding Internet Service Providers Accountabl. The Chicago Working Paper Series, (217), 1-50. Retrieved from http://www.law.uchicago.edu/files/files/217-dgl-eap-isp.pdf Lichtman, D. (2004). Holding Internet Service Providers Accountable. Telecommunications and Technology, 54-59. Retrieved from http://www.cato.org/pubs/regulation/regv27n4/v27n4-7.pdf Middleton, G. L. (2005). Liability of ISPs for Online Copyright Infringement. Copyright Conundrum, 1-10. Tian, Y. (2009). law models of ISP liability and their implementation. In Re-thinking intellectual property: the political economy of copyright protection in the digital era. NewYolk, United States of America: Routledge-Cavendish. Read More