The Increased Accessibility of the Internet - Essay Example

INTERNET SERVICE PROVIDERS The internet is a collection of diverse networks inter joined to appear like one complete and similar network. The networks making up the internet have been configured in the same way in terms of software and architectural components. (National Research Council, U.S 29). Internet service provider is a company that gives the service of accessibility to the internet at a fee. In recent times the internet was only available to the government and specific parts of some universities. Internet provision has developed to become a big business with its operations growing far and large due to the need and change for technology. For individuals and small individual internet is provided by use of cables, broadband wireless, dial up, integrated services digital network (ISDN) and several other methods. For large organizations, Ethernet, gigabit Ethernet, asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) is used. The services that ISP provides are, provision of a world wide web, electronic mail service, internet relay chat for customers to chat with third party, servers that allow customers and interested parties to share on a forum or a certain topic online and a file transfer protocol that enables customers to store their data and other documents and for third parties to retrieve them Internet security has in recent times deteriorated because security measures have not been appropriately taken keen off especially by the individuals and small business owners who leave loopholes for fraudsters and boot-nets who then conduct malicious activity and send large amounts of spam. Some content that have been made available are threatening, malicious and even sexually violating. Internet service providers have been protected by the communication decency act sec 230 that free them of liability caused by irrelevant material posted by third party on the websites. The liability of an ISP may arise when a third party publishes malicious material on their communication infrastructure. With the increased accessibility of the internet to millions of people every day, the internet has become a big gateway of information to diverse people. The information that flows through it has content enough for any operation whether positive or negative. Therefore there is a need and a big one at that to provide protection for the people who use it at any given time. The communication decency act, section 230 provides immunity for internet service providers against material posted by third party. The section states that, “No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.” It is a common law that the person bearing the means of the defamatory or offensive in other ways statement is as guilty as the actual person who has published the statement. However the ISPs are shielded against such claims. They are protected against malicious postings that may defame, are obscene, violate civil rights are derogatory remarks or cause emotional disturbance. For example when an individual posts some obscene language or pictures that are considered harmful to others on his internet account, let’s say facebook, only he will be held liable and Facebook will not be responsible even though they are the main channel of the information. (Paxton, 195) In a case that a person has affected by any of these, they normally sue the website and the publisher of the material. However the state protects the service providers against these cases. The court provides immunity to the providers in the case where a party provided the information to be posted in a reasonable way for the service provider to assume it was meant for genuine publication (Scott, 18). This protection by law has made ISPs less concerned in offering protection services to its customers. Internet service providers have taken advantage of this protection and have become negligent of irrelevant materials that have been posted on the websites and spam that are regularly being sent and have the potential of being harmful to any party. They also make gains from materials that they are posting. Content is available to even underage persons because there are no measure to limit accessibility in terms of age restrictions. Irrelevant and outdated material is also made available. Internet service providers are not held accountable for noxious material on their sites while simple media like newspapers are questionable for such content. The internet is a large and widely used form of communication that people use for so many purposes and it is sensible to have the providers take the responsibility of protecting it by all means. The fact that the government is protecting them makes them care less because they know no liability will fall on them. The protection that they are being given should be lifted if not completed unveiled for them to take some responsibilities for actions they would otherwise have done to protect their customers. They should bear the liability of infringement of the integrity norms that any person who allows the happening of an indecent activity should be held liable for the act even if they have not done it themselves. (Marie, 157) Their reluctance of protecting the customers have cost individuals and businesses enormous amount of money through fraud. Why should they be protected from such liability if they permit such material to be posted on their websites while other publishers like news papers are held responsible for content in their publications? (Saul X, 156). Why should they be the only group insulated while low value speech is discouraged everywhere from classrooms to public places. Even though it is a fact that it is the widest known and easily accessible source of information available today, its protection measures are minimal mass compared to others that are less utilized for information search. It is ironical that it is so because the other way would be better. The harm caused in the cyber space is serious enough because it is permanent and available to everyone to access at any given time. Their carelessness has cost some people thousands of dollars in suing defamatory blogs and their founders. If the service providers had in the first place taken measures to avoid this nothing of such sort would happen. They are the distributors of the harmful material and therefore have participated in the defamation or malicious content provision. Their reluctance to protect their networks has given fraudsters and scam people to Action should be taken against them in case they are aware of the presence of harmful material and not taking adequate and quick measure to remove the information with or without a request by the defamed party to remove the offensive content. The service providers can only be veiled by section 30 only when, they had no knowledge of defamatory material posted, did not have reason to suspect the information could be harmful or when it was not negligent of the material that had been posted. ISPs should take their network reins and make efforts to prevent if not completely eradicate malicious damage by bot-nets. They can do this by monitoring traffic on their networks and identifying in case there is a surge of activity beyond normal and expected flow. These spikes are mainly caused by worms and spam. They can offer internal and external external security services that will help the customer avoid insecure blogs and sites. For example advising customers on how they can set up a firewall that will protect their software, how they can regularly update their software by using free antivirus and also monitoring of the content by a user or a group of users and incase they violate the required rules, their privileges are withdrawn (Nagpal 204). Interception of messages should be avoided as this gives a third party authority and ability to alter a message. Privacy of communication should also be ensured (Jacob 45). The government must also lax their protection cover by authorizing that any service provider who violates security measures, will have to surrender their equipment, services and network. Internet service providers are supposed to take advantage of economies of scale to provide security at a low cost especially for individual users and small businesses. The main hindrances that keep ISP from providing adequate security measures are legal and technical issues. It being costly to provide these measures should not be enough reason because large number of people uses their services. Recently countries have started shifting the task of policing their websites to the ISPs because they realize the gap that the laws protection has created in security and ethical measures. Work Cited   Michael Dennis Scott, James N. Talbott, Scott on multimedia law. Aspen publishers online. 1997.Print  Saul X. Levmore, Martha Craven Nussbaum. The offensive Internet: privacy, speech, and reputation. London. Havard University Press. 2011.print Rohas Nagpal, Cyber crime and digital evidence: Indian perspective. India. 2008.Print Oneil, Mark. Web services. United States of America. . Mc Graw professional. 2009.Print Stuart Jacob, Engineering Information Security: The Application of Systems Engineering Concepts to Achieve Information Assurance. United States of America. John Wisley & sons. 2011.Print Read More