Mapping Online Intermediary Liability

Author(s):  
Giancarlo Frosio

Mapping intermediary liability online is a high call impelled by the fragmentation of intermediary liability legislation, regulation, and case law that, nonetheless, apply to globalized online service providers operating across the world in an interdependent digital environment. The Oxford Handbook of Online Intermediary Liability endeavours to substantially contribute to this mapping exercise, both from a subject-specific and jurisdictional perspective, while highlighting emerging trends in a field of research that has been fast-evolving and is today in a constant, quite unpredictable, flux. This chapter contextualizes the mapping exercise undertaken by the contributors to the Handbook. It introduces the findings of subsequent chapters and sews them together in an organic discourse to provide a blueprint for the consistent development of those chapters as it sets out in advance the most relevant trends according to which the structure of the Handbook has been generated.

2020 ◽  
Vol 58 (3) ◽  
pp. 141-155
Author(s):  
Jelena Ćeranić-Perišić

Secondary liability, according to the general rules on liability, is based on the issue of conscientiousness, in other words whether the intermediary knew or should have known that the right was infringed through his service. In U.S. law, the secondary liability standard is a result of case law. This paper presents the evolution of case law regarding the interpretation of secondary liability standard in U.S. trademark law. This standard was announced by the U.S. Supreme Court in Inwood Laboratories Inc. v. Ives Laboratories Inc. regarding the liability of manufacturers and distributors. In the decades that followed, the U.S. Courts, with their creative interpretations, extended the scope of application of this standard, first to intermediary market operators, and later to online service providers (internet intermediaries). Also, the development of digital technology has influenced the case law to adapt the secondary liability standard for trademark infringement to the new circumstances in the digital environment. The most significant cases in this context are Hard Rock Café Licensing v. Concession Services, Inc., Tiffany Inc. v. eBay Inc. and Rosetta Stone Ltd. v. Google Inc. Finally, 1-800 Contacts, Inc. v. Lens.com, Inc. demonstrates a slight turn of the U.S. Courts' practices towards a more flexible interpretation of secondary liability standard to online service providers.


2011 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-8
Author(s):  
Patrick van Eecke ◽  
Maarten Truyens

AbstractOn 9 December 2010, Advocate General Niilo Jääskinen delivered his opinion in the L’Or´eal v. eBay case (C- 324/09), in which he analyses the position of online intermediaries - in particular electronic marketplaces such as eBay - under the EU trade mark legislation (directive 89/104 of 21 December 1988 to approximate the laws of the member states relating to trade marks, and Council Regulation 40/94 of 20 December 1993 on the Community trade mark), the eCommerce Directive (directive 2000/31/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 8 June 2000 on certain legal aspects of information society services, in particular electronic commerce, in the Internal Market) and the Enforcement Directive (directive 2004/48/EC of 29 April 2004 on the enforcement of intellectual property rights). In light of the diverging case law across the EU, it can be hoped that this opinion paves the way for a correct and balanced application of EU law in the context of online intermediary services.While theAdvocateGeneral takes into account the practical implications of the legal obligations imposed on online intermediaries, in view of the technical and commercial reality his opinion unfortunately opens the door for a general monitoring obligation for online service providers.


2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Giancarlo Frosio

To better understand the heterogeneity of the international online intermediary liability regime—with the collaboration of an amazing team of contributors across five continents—I have developed and launched the World Intermediary Liability Map (WILMap), a detailed English-language resource hosted at Stanford CIS and comprised of case law, statutes, and proposed laws related to intermediary liability worldwide. Since its launch in July 2014, the WILMap has been steadily and rapidly growing. Today, the WILMap covers almost one hundred jurisdictions in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, Europe, Latin America, North America and Oceania. After introducing the WILMap—and the surrounding landscape of recent projects related to intermediary liability—this article aims at discussing advancement in intermediary liability theory and describing emerging regulatory trends.


Author(s):  
Baramee Navanopparatskul ◽  
Sukree Sinthupinyo ◽  
Pirongrong Ramasoota

Following the enactment of computer crime law in Thailand, online service providers are compelled to control illegal content including content that is deemed harmful or problematic. This situation leads to self-censorship of intermediaries, often resulting in overblocking to avoid violating the law. Such filtering flaw both infringes users' freedom of expression and impedes the business of OSPs in Thailand. The Innovative Retrieval System (IRS) is thus developed to investigate intermediary censorship in online discussion forum, Pantip.com, as a case study of social media. The result shows that there is no consistency of censorship pattern on the website at all. The censorship criteria depend on type of content in each forum. Overblocking is also high, over 70% of removed content, due to intimidation of governmental agencies, lawsuits from business organizations, and fear of intermediary liability. Website administrator admitted that he would cut off some users to avoid business troubles.


Author(s):  
Yasin Ozcelik

Nonprofit organizations have been using the Internet for disseminating information about themselves, interacting with potential donors, and fundraising. In this chapter, we focus on online service providers for nonprofits (OSPNs) that bring donors and nonprofits together in an electronic environment to help them find a suitable match. We investigate the effects of OSPNs on the outcomes of fundraising markets by developing an economic model. We compare the total net revenues of nonprofits competing for donations in two different settings: while nonprofits in the first market use both the traditional fundraising techniques and the services provided by OSPNs, those in the second market implement the traditional method only. We derive analytical conditions under which the first setting provides better outcomes than the second one can generate.


Author(s):  
Yasin Ozcelik

The Internet is transforming the way nonprofits have been disseminating information about themselves, interacting with potential donors, and fundraising. In this article, the authors focus on a special type of online service providers for nonprofits (OSPNs) that bring donors and nonprofits together in an electronic environment to help them find a suitable match. The authors investigate the effects of OSPNs on the outcomes of fundraising markets by developing an economic model. They compare the total net revenues of nonprofits competing for donations in two different settings: while nonprofits in the first market use both the traditional fundraising techniques and the services provided by OSPNs, those in the second market implement the traditional method only. They derive analytical conditions under which the first setting provides better outcomes than the second one can generate.


2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 205630511989732
Author(s):  
Eric P. Robinson ◽  
Yicheng Zhu

Whether they know it or not, the legal rights and responsibilities of users of websites and services, including social media, are defined and controlled by the terms of service of these online service providers. But despite the importance of these provisions, studies have shown that users rarely review terms of service, or think about their meaning. This study took advantage of a major website’s “simplification” of its terms of service to determine whether the changed language increased users’ understanding of the intended meaning of the terms of service. Using the Elaboration Likelihood Model, we evaluate the effectiveness of simplification of terms of service as a method to encourage users’ understanding on these terms.


2020 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 116-132
Author(s):  
Ioannis Paspatis ◽  
Aggeliki Tsohou ◽  
Spyros Kokolakis

Purpose Privacy policies emerge as the main mechanism to inform users on the way their information is managed by online service providers, and still remain the dominant approach for this purpose. The literature notes that users find difficulties in understanding privacy policies because they are usually written in technical or legal language even, although most users are unfamiliar with them. These difficulties have led most users to skip reading privacy policies and blindly accept them. This study aims to address this challenge this paper presents AppAware, a multiplatform tool that intends to improve the visualization of privacy policies for mobile applications. Design/methodology/approach AppAware formulates a visualized report with the permission set of an application, which is easily understandable by a common user. AppAware aims to bridge the difficulty to read privacy policies and android’s obscure permission set with a new privacy policy visualization model. Thus, we propose AppAware parser, a mobile add-on that acts complementary with AppAware and helps mobile device users to monitor the applications they installed to their smart device. Findings To validate AppAware, the authors conducted a survey through questionnaire aiming to evaluate AppAware in terms of installability, usability and viability-purpose. The results demonstrate that AppAware is assessed above average by the users in all categories. Originality/value In the best of the authors’ knowledge, there is no such approach as AppAware as an application nor AppAware parser as add-on.


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