Besides copyright liability, ISPs also has to face liability over trademark infringement. According to BitLaw, if an ISP advertises their services under a trademark that is confusingly similar to a mark of another party (such as Netcomp, IBMLink, or CompuService), they would be exposed to charges of trademark infringement. In short, if the trademark used by the ISPs looks like the others’ trademark which tend to make users confuse, it is said that the ISPs have involved in trademark infringement.
According to eccouncilapac.org, Trademark liability typically involves a trademark owner suing a domain name registrant for a "bad faith" or wrongful domain name registration. The registration of an available domain name does not absolve it from potential trademark liability, if the owner of the same or a confusingly similar trade name can prove a "bad faith" registration.
The same as with the copyright infringement, an ISP is not directly liable towards any trademark infringement made by its users but however it could be liable for contributory trademark infringement. The element of knowledge is also vitally essential in putting the ISPs into this liability as if there is no knowledge in the part of the ISPs provider, the liability cannot be imposed towards them. Much like the contributory copyright infringement, contributory trademark infringement also can be established whereby the ISPs are considered to play the role of encouraging or facilitating the illegal activities.
However, there are still no reported cases on this trademark liability towards ISPs but referring to BitLaw, the Netcom decision should be referred and discussed in connection with the cases of copyright infringement.
Uses satellite dish receiver similiar to Astro, but bigger. Expensive. Competes with Streamyx in Sabah/Sarawak and low population density areas in Malaysia.
Uses satellite dish receiver similiar to Astro, but bigger. Expensive. Competes with Streamyx in Sabah/Sarawak and low population density areas in Malaysia.
Official website is quite useless, hard to use and doesn’t have information about the service. Price was gotten from an e-mail from a customer service rep.
More information at this forum discussion.
Service quality debatable - comments are either saying its very good or very bad.
Besides facing civil liability such as copyright infringement and defamation, an ISP is also liable for criminal liability. There are two kinds of liability listed under the criminal law which are;
-Possession of Obscene Materials
-Contempt of the Court
POSSESSION OF OBSCENE MATERIALS
In each state, the law which governs the provision concerning possession of obscene materials are different. For the purpose of discussing this issue, we will look through the law used in certain states.
Malaysia
the Printing and Publication Act 1984 (Act 301)
Undesirable publications
Section 7 (1) If the Minister is satisfied that any publication contains any article, caricature, photograph, report, notes, writing, sound, music, statement or any other thing which is in any manner prejudicial to or likely to be prejudicial to public order, morality, security, or which is likely to alarm public opinion, or which is or is likely to be contrary to any law or is otherwise prejudicial to or is likely to be prejudicial to public interest or national interest, he may in his absolute discretion by order published in the Gazette prohibit, either absolutely or subject to such conditions as may be prescribed, the printing, importation, production, reproduction, publishing, sale, issue, circulation, distribution or possession of that publication and future publications of the publisher concerned.
the Multimedia and Communication Act 1998
Prohibition on provision of offensive content
Section 211
(1) No content applications service provider, or other person using a content applications service, shall provide content which is indecent, obscene, false, menacing, or offensive in character with intent to annoy, abuse, threaten or harass any person.
(2) A person who contravenes subsection (1) commits an offence and shall, on conviction, be liable to a fine not exceeding fifty thousand ringgit or to imprisonment for a term not exceeding one year or to both and shall also be liable to a further fine of one thousand ringgit for every day or part of a day during which the offence is continued after conviction.
The transmission by ISPs:
There are 3 ways to impose this liability on ISPs;
-Impose liability on the ISP which has the knowledge on the dissemination of the obscene materials. This will allow the defense of no knowledge.
-Impose on the ISPs which disseminate the obscene materials for profitable purpose.
-Impose on the ISPs which disseminate obscene materials with knowledge but with exemption to the ISPs which operates by giving access to other servers without actively involved in the distributing of the obscene materials.
United Kingdom
the Obscene Publication Act 1951
An Act to amend the law relating to the publication of obscene matter; to provide for the protection of literature; and to strengthen the law concerning pornography.
1.Test of obscenity
(1) For the purposes of this Act an article shall be deemed to be obscene if its effect or (where the article comprises two or more distinct items) the effect of any one of its items is, if taken as a whole, such as to tend to deprave and corrupt persons who are likely, having regard to all relevant circumstances, to read, see or hear the matter contained or embodied in it.
Another criminal liability that can be imposed on ISPs is concerning the materials which related to the contempt of the court. It may amount to Contempt of Court ifthe publication of materials is:-
Prejudicial to a fair criminal trial
Prejudicial to a fair civil proceeding
Interfering with thecourse of justice as a continuing process
