(see credit here)

Chapter 7, in the book, Blown to Bits: Your Life, Liberty, and Happiness after the Digital Explosion, by Abelson, Ledeen, and Lewis talks about the difficulty in establishing laws that would monitor the information that is being put on the world wide web. For example, Jane Doe’s parents sued MySpace because they felt the social media was responsible for what happened to their daughter. A man had used MySpace to contact Jane and had allegedly assaulted her (Abelson 232). The real question that should be asked is: Should the parents be found responsible or the social media?

Congress has tried to come up with numerous laws to monitor the Internet but people always find loopholes. As an illustration, look at all the negative outcomes of what happened with the Good Samaritan clause (Abelson 243). Zeran is a man that begged and pleaded with AOL to remove the information but they refused. He could not change his number because that was his business—his income and life. Yet, at the end of all court cases, it was ruled that AOL had “no liability” for what they did.

In these two scenarios, the responsibility is for two different entities. This is the exact problem that congressmen face when creating laws. On one hand, people should be held responsible for whatever they post online. They should accept the consequences of what might happen before they even post. However, in situations like Zeran, websites should be held responsible. It is true that they are like truck drivers and simply is transporting the material but like the author points out, “A trucker who knows he is carrying child pornography, and is getting a cut of the profits, has some legal liability for his complicity in illegal commerce” (Abelson 247). In the case of Zeran, AOL could have taken multiple actions to help Zeran. It is sad that what they did is not considered “defamatory” and were allowed to go free.