[e2e] disintermediation?

[Joe Touch]

Lynne wrote:

> You're talking about publishing. An ISP is not responsible for the content of 

> the data as long as they do not edit the data. If they edit the data, they become 

> a publisher, subject to a different set of laws and rules. Contracts with providers 

> of information and publishers are specifically designed to deal with issues such as 

> liability in these cases.

 >
 > A transport provider simply gets the bits from one place to another.
 > They do not edit
 > the contents of that data. If the contents of the data is "edited"
 > in-transit by the
 > ISP, that's called an "error". :-)

So case 1=transport, case 2=publish.

There seems to be a third case that Micah was hinting at that isn't 
covered by the "modification of data" case, notably, an intermediate 
that makes decisions on where to send the data based on information that 
is NOT explicitly provided by the source, i.e., looking inside the data 
and routing on content, esp. where not a provision of the service agreement.

Joe