Technology Increases Internet Facilitators’ Potential Liability
Jonathan Bick New Jersey Law JournalFebruary 29, 2012
The challenge of pursuing individuals for wrongful actions has driven injured parties to seek legal solutions from the companies that provide the platform where the wrongdoing took place. Previously, internet facilitators were able to escape from contributory and vicarious liability by arguing that they were unaware of and had no control over the unlawful actions committed by users. Now, widely available, low-cost e-commerce technology diminishes the soundness of those defences.
Previously, passive internet service facilitators successfully argued that they do not “collaborate” with internet users to undertake bad acts because they were either unaware of the bad acts or could not prevent acts in a timely fashion. Advances in internet technology, however, have increased the internet facilitator’s capacity for hindering bad acts automatically. Failure to employ such technology may result in an increase in the facilitator’s liability for not preventing bad acts on the internet.
Internet facilitators include service providers, hosting services, and social network sites, to name a few. These internet service providers allow email, instant messaging, peer-to-peer communications, blogs, broad internet access, chat rooms, interactive websites, and other electronic communications. They also allow various goods and services transactions.
These transactions may result in a myriad of bad internet acts, ranging from defamation, copyright infringement, failure to protect trade secrets, and harassment (including hostile work-environment issues), to criminal accountability and loss of attorney-client privilege.
Internet crimes are made worse by the fact that websites can be accessed globally, and there are no international rules for Internet behaviour. User-generated content can make up a significant part of a website’s content. However, there is currently no standardization of intellectual property rights in the international legal community. Instead, multilateral treaties govern these rights.
