Some speak of the urgency of “empowering” Internet hosts. a ort review. Various people currently require that civil and criminal liability of Internet player’s techniques should be strengthened. Basically, there are:1. Companies press, through their editorials, complain that web sites can do what they would be prohibited. Targets: Wikipedia. 2. Officials, political or otherwise, who say they were victims of defamation via the Internet and require stronger measures. Targets: Wikipedia, various bogs. 3. Owners or managers of copyright and related rights (music producers and film …). Targets: You Tube and Daily Motion. 4. Some family associations that require content filtering pornographic, violent or even gambling. Targets: Second Life, etc.. The subject is difficult to treat properly because of the technicality of legal and IT aspects and the emotional charge of some of these aspects (child welfare). It is therefore not surprising that media coverage has been quite sensational. I think it is appropriate to recall the facts. The Law on confidence in the digital economy (LCEN) different types of speakers: 1. Those who provide means of access to communication services, access providers (Orange, Free, etc.).. 2. Those who harbor documents made available to the public, ie providing facilities for storing text, images, videos, sounds and so on. available to the public (Geocities, Free, etc.).. 3. Those who write and publish content, ie they select for publication (Liberation, Le Monde, etc.).. A similar distinction is made in the USA by federal Communications Decency Act (CDA) and Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). The first two categories are technical service providers. They do not editorially on the data they host in the same way that no printers or courier not read what they print or distribute. The third category has an editorial role: it produces or selects a priori which will be published. The distinction between a share of technical service providers and stakeholders with editorial role is very important. Indeed, both Directive 2000/31/EC that the LCEN, which transposes the directive, consider that the technical service providers have no general obligation to monitor the content they host. The directive is very clear: Member States should not impose on service providers for the provision of services under sections 12, 13 and 14, a general obligation to monitor the information they transmit or store, or a general obligation to actively seek out facts or circumstances revealing illicit activities. In other words, protests against the hosts Web “irresponsible” because they did not supervise the pages they host are not based on current law. In addition, they ignore one important fact: hosting a “responsible”, and engaging in a kind of sorting a priori information, could be described as a publisher of Justice (see for example the case of “Radiator”). In other words, a host’s interest not to the police in half: either he is totally (and becomes a publisher), or it does not make, but if it remains in midstream it big risk. Those who protest can legitimately claim against a change in the law. As we have seen, it would mean possibly also a change of European law. Now let’s take a step back. The 2000 directive was adopted when it was in what was later called the “Web 1.0″: a web formed essentially a part of sites of companies (duly identified), d ‘ other hand, personal pages, each page is controlled by an individual or a group, which often the provider of accommodation required identity.
The LCEN is also in the same spirit. It excludes any civil or criminal liability for technical service providers for content they host if they meet two criteria:
* They collect some identification data on persons who have placed those contained herein. This directive, the law, followed on individual cases where hosts had been prosecuted for not having systematically inspected the documents they harbored. These include the case in France Altern, hosting non-commercial which had been closed following a complaint from a mannequin for failure to comply with its privacy ( “image rights”). It seems to me also that there had been cases of responsible of Internet service taken into custody for having passed on their servers discussion groups on topics paedophiles; management of these groups is automatic, no was not a conscious act on their part. It is understandable that governments have sought to provide legal certainty to a booming sector. With the case discussion groups to put the finger on a problem: accommodation automated content produced by Internet without being has a direct relationship with them. The problem has worsened with the arrival of “Web 2.0″, with sites allowing immediate online writings of Internet users, possibly surrounded by a framework provided by the site operators, cadre often including advertisements .
For example, some sites offer works protected by copyright or related right, without the authorization of the beneficiary, or any material harmful to the privacy of some people, and surrounding advertisements which they affect revenues. This, however, are not the ones who placed these works or where those documents, and therefore they retreat behind the immunity of hosts. In the case of Wikipedia, users can freely publish articles on various topics in order to contribute to a common work, work that has a common identity yet no editor or director of the publication. All this poses a problem of legal qualification. On the one hand, some would see designate “responsible” to have someone to condemn. On the other hand, it is quite unrealistic to suggest that providers of Internet hosting must patrol the writings of their customers. First, there is no analogous to such a requirement in the company outside the Internet. As I said, no printers or courier not read the articles they print or broadcast. Then decide whether content is reprehensible can not be done automatically. If we need the intervention of a judicial rather complicated machinery for conviction for defamation, it is precisely because it is difficult to share what is permitted or not. But then, what some call for hosts is that they establish a private censorship. (And given the current trends in the economy, this would probably be decentralized censorship in a country cheap. The idea of freedom of expression in France since telegenic Tunisia, for example, is quite funny.) My readers may have already been dealing with hot lines providers of access (which are often also hosts). My experience with several of them is that a minority of competent people drowned between several thicknesses of incompetent (and I am not talking about writing some). I did not want to see these people responsible to police the web.
Jul 03