Rich Fiscus
30 Jan 2008 22:17
During a recent Internet policy conference, Verizon Executive Vice President Tom Tauke spoke about his company's position on filtering customers' traffic for copyright violations. "From a business perspective, we really don't want to assume the role of being police on the Internet," said Tauke, adding "We are leery of using these technologies on our networks."
Recently AT&T generated a great deal of contreversy by announcing that they're working to develop technology to find copyrighted works, hoping to curry favor with content owners. Due to the Safe Harbor clause in the DMCA, as long as ISPs take action when informed of infringing content on their networks they're already safe from sharing liability for it, although many in the recording industry have characterized the ISPs as part of the problem, and said they should be required to police their networks for copyright infringement.
Although he did mention concerns about customer privacy, it appears Verizon is equally worried about what other responsibilities they might be asked to take on. After all there are a number of illegal activities that certainly involve at least a small number of Verizon customers. From child pornography to illegal online gambling to fraud, the possible activities other industries, not to mention government agencies, would like to have Verizon and other ISPs keep track of seem nearly endless.
It shouldn't be any surprise that Verizon isn't ready to upset their customers to appease content owners. In early 2003 they unsuccessfully fought to keep subscriber identities related to RIAA subpoenas private unless the recording industry organization had a court decision in their favor, at which time they would be willing to disclose the personal information behind the IP address.