AT&T's Plan to Play Internet Cop

Ponca City, We Love You writes "Tim Wu has an interesting (and funny) article on Slate that says that AT&T's recent proposal to examine all the traffic it carries for potential violations of US intellectual property laws is not just bad but corporate seppuku bad. At present AT&T is shielded by a federal law they wrote themselves that provides they have no liability for 'Transitory Digital Network Communications' — content AT&T carries over the Internet. To maintain that immunity, AT&T must transmit data 'without selection of the material by the service provider' and 'without modification of its content' but if AT&T gets into the business of choosing what content travels over its network, it runs the serious risk of losing its all-important immunity. 'As the world's largest gatekeeper,' Wu writes, 'AT&T would immediately become the world's largest target for copyright infringement lawsuits.' ATT's new strategy 'exposes it to so much potential liability that adopting it would arguably violate AT&T's fiduciary duty to its shareholders,' concludes Wu."

Comments

Re:Another Reason Why AT&T is EVIL.....

[computational super]

Wow, I'm psychic... I *knew* somebody was going to post something along the lines of "this is the same American public who voted for GWB". Don't you think Bush-bashing is getting a little worn out? And honestly, do you really think either of the two alternatives would have been any better? Gore would have signed the patriot act and Kerry would have authorized warrantless wiretaps just like GWB did.

I'd vote for him in 2008 if he was running again... if he were running against Hillary (actually, I'd vote for Osama Bin Laden before I'd vote for Hillary - at least you know where he stands).