[Air-L] ISOC Paper - A Policy Framework for Internet Intermediaries and Content

[Joly MacFie]

(Essentially "look before you leap")

https://www.internetsociety.org/resources/doc/2024/a-policy-framework-for-internet-intermediaries-and-content/

Intermediary functions are crucial to the Internet’s existence. This paper
provides a framework for understanding Internet intermediary functions and
developing policy concerning responsibility for online content without
harming individuals’ ability to use the Internet to create content and
communicate with each other.

We focus on the functions performed by Internet intermediaries to
facilitate online communication, such as transmitting, routing, storing,
caching, hosting, securing, curating, and moderating content. This focus
recognizes that many intermediaries perform multiple functions that raise
differing policy issues and that many types of intermediaries offer
fundamentally equivalent functions even though their services may appear
quite different.

Our aim in this paper is to help policymakers understand those functions
and develop policy relating to them. Well-designed policies can enhance the
availability, diversity, security and privacy of individual participation
online. However, poorly crafted policies can weaken Internet security, harm
competition, restrict online communication, widen the digital divide, and
fragment the Internet.

The goal is not to exempt intermediaries from responsibility but to
emphasize the critical role of liability protections in enabling individual
participation on the Internet. Poorly designed intermediary-focused
policies can have detrimental effects on the Internet and communication.
Better alternatives, such as existing privacy, consumer protection, and
discrimination laws, are often available.

https://www.internetsociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/2025-Policy-Framework-Report-EN.pdf



-- 
--------------------------------------
Joly MacFie  +12185659365
--------------------------------------
-