Ronald J. Mann & Seth R. Belzley of the University of Texas Law School's Center for Law, Business and Economics have published The Promise of Internet Intermediary Liability (April 2005).

From the abstract:

We argue that the pervasive role of intermediaries calls not for a broad scheme of exoneration, premised on passivity, but rather for a more thoughtful development of principles for determining when and how it makes economic sense to allocate responsibility for wrongful conduct to the least cost avoider. The rise of the internet has brought about three changes that make it more likely that intermediaries will be least cost avoiders in the internet context than they previously have been in offline contexts: an increase in the likelihood that it will be easy to identify specific ntermediaries for large classes of transactions; a reduction in the information costs that make it easier for the intermediaries to monitor the conduct of end-users; and the anonymity that the internet fosters makes remedies against end-users generally less effective. Accordingly, in cases in which it is feasible for intermediaries to control the conduct, we recommend serious attention to the possibility of one of a series of three different schemes of intermediary liability: traditional liability for damages; takedown schemes (in which the intermediary must remove offensive content upon proper notice); and “hot list” schemes (in which the intermediary must avoid facilitation of transactions with certain parties).

posted by James DeLong @ 12:12 PM | Internet: P2P, Search Engines...

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