ISP Liability Survival Guide: Strategies for Managing Copyright, Spam, Cache, and Privacy Regulations

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Summary: Important, essential, crucial reference for ISP managers.
Review: Computers and Internet service providers (ISP) are an integral part of nearly every aspect of modern life and business. In ISP Liability Survival Guide, Senior Vice President and Chief Technology Counsel for MCI WorldCom Timothy Casey brings to bear his expertise and experience to provide detailed explanations on the varying laws governing networking and the Internet, and how their technical features impact running a liability-free ISP. He offers critical considerations for adopting effective policies and procedures for effectively structuring an ISP operation. He also gives valuable insight into contracting with users, vendors, as well as sales channels to accommodate the laws and maximize ISP profitability. ISP Liability Survival Guide is critically important, crucial, essential reading for anyone charged with operational responsibilities for providing ISP services in today's technologically driven communications marketplace.

Rating:
Summary: Important, essential, crucial reference for ISP managers.
Review: Computers and Internet service providers (ISP) are an integral part of nearly every aspect of modern life and business. In ISP Liability Survival Guide, Senior Vice President and Chief Technology Counsel for MCI WorldCom Timothy Casey brings to bear his expertise and experience to provide detailed explanations on the varying laws governing networking and the Internet, and how their technical features impact running a liability-free ISP. He offers critical considerations for adopting effective policies and procedures for effectively structuring an ISP operation. He also gives valuable insight into contracting with users, vendors, as well as sales channels to accommodate the laws and maximize ISP profitability. ISP Liability Survival Guide is critically important, crucial, essential reading for anyone charged with operational responsibilities for providing ISP services in today's technologically driven communications marketplace.

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Summary: Will Keep ISP's Operating on the Strait and Narrow!
Review: ISP Liability Survival Guide written by Timothy Casey is an excellent guide for ISP's to follow in order to run an effective service and remain within established industry standards of practice and the law. This book will help ISP's to sort through all the existing laws, regulations, policies, and issues and help them to determine which ones apply to them and how applicable ones should be enforced through their services.

This book provides an excellent treatment of handling intellectual property issues. Trademark, copyright, patent, and domain name issues are big today. ISP's will receive a mini-course in dealing with them. What is a trademark? What is a copyright? What is fair use? What constitutes infringement? What are the implications of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA)? What is the ISP's liability? How does an ISP respond to a complaint? It's all covered here. ISP's will appreciate the advice on handling reported incidents of alleged infringement.

ISP's face a number of other serious threats to their services. Some of these are caused by the conduct of their own clients and sometimes through the efforts of outside parties looking for ways of expanding their reach. ISP's must keep up on gambling, pornography, spamming, spoofing, cookies, fraud, defamation, libel, and child privacy issues. This book will educate ISP's about these troublesome issues and provide them with strict guidelines that will keep them operating on the strait and narrow.

ISP's receive advice and instruction on other matters such as planning, establishing, and enforcing policies and terms of service. They will also benefit from the number of actual case studies that reveal how various laws, regulations, policies, and court decisions have clear implications on how they should conduct their own services. This is must reading for any ISP and company who wants to do things right!

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Summary: Rich, Useful Information in a Humorous, Readable Format
Review: Timothy Casey, a senior VP for MCI WorldCom, transmits executive-quality knowledge in "ISP Liability Survival Guide" for a panhandler-level price. Despite the fact that he is what we techies would probably call a "suit," his writing is relaxed, anecdotal, and even humorous. But don't let his conversational writing style fool you; he is a MAJOR player in this industry. As a corporate executive and quasi-ambassador, Casey is a kind of Internet lobbyist. He has been immersed in virtually every state, federal, and international regulatory craze, preventing the regulators from turning the Internet as we know it into one great big cluster... (I hope I'm not the only one who still uses that phrase from Clint Eastwood's 'Heartbreak Ridge.') After reading the book, it kind of amazed me that he would disclose as much useful information as he does for the relatively small cost of this book. Other prominent Internet-lawyers-turned-writers charge literally five times as much, and you get less useful stuff and more legal jargon. And even if you enjoy being ripped off, no one has written a book of this type yet! Casey covers every aspect of Internet law that affects ISPs and similarly-situated e-businesses and customers. If anyone has read about the richness vs. reach debate (Evans and Worster, "Blown to Bits"), you will know what I mean when I swear that the info in this book is extremely rich. I love this book, and it still amazes me that in an industry where information is our chief commodity, Casey is giving away so much rich knowledge, practically for peanuts.

Rating:
Summary: Rich, Useful Information in a Humorous, Readable Format
Review: Timothy Casey, a senior VP for MCI WorldCom, transmits executive-quality knowledge in "ISP Liability Survival Guide" for a panhandler-level price. Despite the fact that he is what we techies would probably call a "suit," his writing is relaxed, anecdotal, and even humorous. But don't let his conversational writing style fool you; he is a MAJOR player in this industry. As a corporate executive and quasi-ambassador, Casey is a kind of Internet lobbyist. He has been immersed in virtually every state, federal, and international regulatory craze, preventing the regulators from turning the Internet as we know it into one great big cluster... (I hope I'm not the only one who still uses that phrase from Clint Eastwood's 'Heartbreak Ridge.') After reading the book, it kind of amazed me that he would disclose as much useful information as he does for the relatively small cost of this book. Other prominent Internet-lawyers-turned-writers charge literally five times as much, and you get less useful stuff and more legal jargon. And even if you enjoy being ripped off, no one has written a book of this type yet! Casey covers every aspect of Internet law that affects ISPs and similarly-situated e-businesses and customers. If anyone has read about the richness vs. reach debate (Evans and Worster, "Blown to Bits"), you will know what I mean when I swear that the info in this book is extremely rich. I love this book, and it still amazes me that in an industry where information is our chief commodity, Casey is giving away so much rich knowledge, practically for peanuts.

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Summary: This book is for anyone with a website.
Review: When I first agreed to write this book, I thought the subject matter would be really useful to anyone involved in the operation of an Internet service provider. As the book began to take shape, however, I realized that anyone with a website met the definition of "service provider," under most laws around the world designed to regulate content and activities on the Internet. Hence, given the number of websites in the world, this book is really useful for almost everyone.

Unfortunately, the title doesn't do a very good job of conveying that message. Wiley is a great publisher, and I appreciate being published by them, but let's face it - they picked the title. I, of course, had picked something else, which was probably just as bad, if not worse, but that doesn't mean I can't blame them. Anyway, please don't be dissuaded by the title - this book really does apply to you, provided you want to stay out of trouble, even if all you do is operate a simple personal website.

Moreover, this book is really very interesting, if I may say so myself, and explains some complicated subjects in a way that anyone can understand. For example, Chapter 2 explains intellectual property laws (such as patent, trademark and copyright laws) in a very simple and straightforward manner. Many technical and legal subjects scare the hell out of people, but you shouldn't have that fear when it comes to reading this book.

I think it is wonderful, of course, because I wrote it, but many other people (including some who know nothing about computers or the Internet) have read the book and expressed surprise at finding it easy to understand, interesting and humorous. Yes -Humorous! Now, if they would only quit being lazy and write some more reviews... Anyway, while I acknowledge the existence of some pretty dry subject matter that was, at times, hard to avoid, I did try to lighten things up a bit whenever I could. I even recount some (I think) interesting (there - I did it again), and somewhat controversial, views about how people should behave when using the Internet and how governments should go about dealing with the Internet and all of its associated issues. When it comes to the Internet, I've been more concerned about doing the right thing than worrying about politics.

Finally, while I was indeed the Chief Technology Counsel at WorldCom at the time I wrote the book and when it was first published, I have since joined the law firm of Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson, as a partner in the Washington, DC and New York City offices, to establish Technology Law and Intellectual Property practices. I hope you enjoy my book and thank you for buying it!