Electronic commecial law - Essay Example

Emphasis has been given on the illegal content of websites – mostly due to the expansion of the phenomenon. In fact, it has been proved, that many organizations, which virtual world services,1 have been unable to prevent the publication of such information through the Internet – referring to the involvement of these organizations in the hosting or the transmission of such information.2 In practice, the above organizations cannot be held responsible for the illegal content that they host or they transmit; the key term for the use of the above benefit is that these organizations are characterized as Internet Service Providers (ISPs).

3 In case that these organizations do not meet the above requirement, they cannot ask for the exception from liability for the content they host or they transfer.4 The above issue is explored in this paper; emphasis is given on the European law establishing the protection of ISPs from liability for the information they host or they transmit; reference is also made to the UK and the USA case law that has been developed in the specific field. The Directive 2000/31/EC is set under examination and evaluation; it is concluded that the existing European law regulating the protection of ISPs from the liability for the content they host or they transmit need to be further improved; the potentials for broad interpretation of its rules has been found to be partially negative for the resolution of disputes arising in regard to the study’s main issue. 2. European Law on the protection of Internet Service Providers from liability for content they transport or host – European, UK and US case law The issue of responsibility of ISPs for the information they host/ transmit has been resulted because of the expansion of Internet – both in terms of commerce, i.e. of the use of Internet for the development of commercial transaction and in terms of the characteristics of the users, i.e. of the use of Internet by people of all ages, even by children.

Under these terms, the introduction of legislation referring to the creation and management of this content was quite necessary. At this point, the criteria on which the characterization of content as illegal would be based needed to be set; in accordance with Kleinschmidt (2010) the content published in the Internet is usually considered as illegal when it has one of the following forms: ‘pornography without age verification, child pornography, hate speech, or extreme violence’5. At this point, it should be made clear that the participation of an ISP in the publication of illegal content can set the ISP under the risk of two different forms of liability: a) liability for the damages caused to one or more of its users – because of the illegal content, b) liability for the damaged caused to a third party – being offended from the illegal content in the publication of which in the Internet the specific ISP has taken part – either by hosting or transmitting the content involved.

6 Under normal conditions, ISPs would be held liable for the following reasons: a) for hosting or transmitting illegal content, b) for breaching the copyright laws in regard to the products of art (speech, song, painting and so on); the activity of the second category would be related with that of the first category since the material acquired by violating the copyright laws can be considered as ill