Post Tagged with: "content monitoring"

Mark Zuckerberg's original Facebook profile by Niall Kennedy (CC BY-NC 2.0) https://flic.kr/p/apNav2

Be Careful What You Wish For: The Risk of Ceding Online Content Monitoring to Internet Giants

As elected officials place Internet giants such as Google and Facebook under an increasingly intense microscope, the pressure mounts on those companies to play more proactive roles in policing content on their networks. In recent weeks, the demands have come from seemingly every direction: privacy commissioners seeking rules on the removal of search results, politicians calling for increased efforts to address fake news on Internet platforms, and Internet users wondering why the companies are slow to takedown allegedly defamatory or harmful postings.

My Globe and Mail op-ed notes Internet companies can undoubtedly do more, but laying the responsibility primarily at their feet poses its own risks as governments and regulators effectively cede responsibility for content moderation and policing to private, for-profit companies. In doing so, there is a real chance that the Internet giants will become even more powerful, limiting future competition and entrenching an uncomfortable reliance on private organizations for activities that are traditionally conducted by courts and regulators.

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April 19, 2018 10 comments Columns

Ole Calls for ISP Monitoring of Customer Content

Ole, a Canadian music publishing firm, has called on the Canadian government to establish a ISP monitoring system of content viewed by subscribers.  Saying that ISPs should mimic cable/TV, it argues that ISPs could track content and pay rights holders for what is viewed.  The word "privacy" does not appear […]

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July 14, 2010 6 comments News

ISPs Face New Role in Network Control

My weekly technology law column (Toronto Star version, Ottawa Citizen version, BBC version, homepage version) focuses on the failure of the DRM, content-locking strategy and the move toward locking down the Internet. I note that this approach envisions requiring Internet service providers to install filtering and content monitoring technologies within their networks. ISPs would then become private network police, actively monitoring for content that might infringe copyright and stopping it from reaching subscribers' computers.

The support for locking down the Internet revives an old debate – the appropriate role and responsibility of ISPs for the activities that take place on their networks. 

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January 29, 2008 15 comments Columns

Is Content Filtering the New DRM?

There was a time when Internet service providers would not touch the idea of blocking or filtering content, particularly after the Stratton Oakmont decision in the U.S., which intimated that ISPs that got into the content monitoring business would face potential liability for legal issues arising from such content.  No […]

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June 13, 2007 13 comments News