Intermediary Service Providers Research Articles

Enabling freedom of expression in light of filtering measures imposed on Internet intermediaries: Squaring the circle?

This study considers the scope of the injunction a court may issue against an intermediary service provider with a view to preventing or terminating an infringement, particularly of an intellectual property right. The matter is studied in the light of the aim shared by the European Union and the Council of Europe to promote freedom of expression via communication networks. Despite technological progress and the emergence of software that are increasingly precise and ever better controlled in terms of their effects, implementation of a filtering measure appears difficult to reconcile with the right to freedom of expression. Consequently, the problematic comes down to this question: how do we do enough without doing too much?

Making intermediary Internet service providers participate in the regulatory process through tort law: A comparative analysis

A decade after the adoption of the Communications Decency Act and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act on one side of the Atlantic and the European Directive 2000/31/EC on electronic commerce on the other side, one could have expected the role of intermediary Internet service providers (IISPs) to become clearer as regards their contribution to Internet regulation and, in particular, speech regulation. Truly, at the end of the 1990s ‘self-regulation against tort law immunities’ seemed to be the appropriate path to follow in order to subsidize the Information Technology and Technology industry, especially in systems where free speech is often a superseding value. Yet, such a trade-off has progressively appeared inappropriate from the perspective of victims, namely because of the growth of IISPs' regulatory capacities. This has become even more apparent with the emergence of web 2.0 applications. However, judges have not always drawn their inspiration from the originality of the regulatory models underlying the interventions of their respective legislators. This is true both within the USA and in France. This paper thus seeks to highlight the ways that the formalism of tort law has been ‘instrumentalized’ by the judiciary to further a particular paradigm of speech regulation in cyberspace, despite the legislative recognition of alternative paradigms.

Trust-enabling decision support system for e-tourism intermediation

We present a trust-enabling intermediation system architecture for intelligent decision support in e-tourism applications, namely the Trust Intermediary Service Provider (TISP) system. The purpose of the present work is twofold: to propose a trust-building conceptual framework to account for customer trust in e-commerce applications; and to present a system architecture for knowledge-based decision-making support in the e-tourism context, as a technological demonstration fitting most of the trust-enabling mechanisms in the conceptual framework. The presented system aims to demonstrate the technological feasibility of a semantic-web-based architecture capable of meeting personalised needs and interests in interacting with an e-tourism intermediary, while allowing mechanisms to support trust building and maintenance. The core TISP components are designed for high reusability and are based on advanced knowledge-management-enabling technologies as well as design patterns derived from the Semantic Web (SW) and artificial intelligence fields of study.

Promoting the Information Society: The EU Directive on Electronic Commerce

On 8 June 2000, the EU adopted the landmark ‘electronic commerce’ directive, a legal framework for the development of information society services. This article examines the rationale and evolution of EU policy for e‐commerce and the key features of the directive. These include establishing the responsibilities of service and intermediary service providers, procedures for concluding on‐line contracts and redress and enforcement mechanisms. It also explores the extent to which the directive clarifies the national law applicable to cross‐frontier transactions and the relationship between the directive and private international law. The directive makes an important contribution to encouraging trust in the new technologies by establishing an EU‐wide model for e‐commerce, but it is by no means clear that it goes far enough. The continuing divergence of consumer protection policies and uncertainties about jurisdiction, securing redress, the liabilities of service providers and the status of contracts based upon web‐site advertisements may continue to discourage the development of e‐commerce in the Community.

New Media Competition and Access

It is often argued that constraints on access to new information and communication environments will disappear as services decline in price and as customers and producers engage in new market relationships. Following this line of argument, the relative scarcity of communication and information access opportunities of the past should be dispelled. The aim of this article is to illustrate the faults in this vision as applied to Internet and new media services development. It is argued that the new electronic environment will not be immune to forces of monopolization nor will it give rise to an era of market competition that fully protects the interests of all consumers and citizens. In fact, empirical evidence suggests that electronic intermediary service providers are populating the new markets and deploying strategies that are no less informed by monopolization strategies than in the past, though they do take different forms. The evidence is consistent with the inescapable dynamics of tension between abundance and scarcity in the market place.