ISP liability
Michael Geist has a new column up today about ISP “accountability” and it's very worth reading. Geist proposes some baseline requirements for ISPs. His proposals don't wander into content control issues but do provide for nondiscrimination (against VoIP and other applications), adequate treatment of spam, and adequate responsbility for the privacy and security of consumer data.
What Geist is proposing is sensible. My concern is that the content community is also proposing global ISP accountability. Their kind of accountability is very different from the Geistian contribution. The content industry would like to see international treaties make ISPs liable in lots of ways for activities occurring across their wires.
There really are black helicopters in the global sky. The content guys are looking for global broadcast flag mandates [ppt] and they'll be working on the analog hole next.
So I worry that the good-faith, reasonable, sensible Geistian step will morph into something much less reasonable all too easily.