Orientation of proposal

The civil and penal liability of access, transmission, storage and hosting providers should be limited to the case where they have effectively participated in the creation of the content hosted and, by consequence, become publishers/authors or co-publishers/co-authors.

Context

The primary characteristic of the Internet is that it permits everyone to express themselves publicly to everyone else, without an intermediary. Whereas the press and traditional audiovisual companies (radio, television) remain subject to the legislation concerning them, whether or not they transmit over the Internet or not, this is not so for individuals, and non-profit organisations and bodies, which will never have the same financial resources or the same impact on the public.

Any other standpoint would cause the intermediary to act as censor, thereby implying that freedom of expression be subject to the arbitrary judgement of a person or structure of either a non-commercial or commercial nature. This would amount to a violation of individual rights. Also, it is technically impossible to permanently monitor the many thousands of Web pages for which they act as intermediary.