Last week I reported that eBay had been fined by French courts for certain illegal sales made on its auction website. Well, apparently the US courts aren’t quite as ignorant as the net’s freedom was defended against stupidity as the trademark accusations brought up in a similar lawsuit were completely rejected by US courts.
While it’s definitely a relief that at least some court out there isn’t going to hold a service provider responsible for the actions of its users, it also shows just how differently responsibility and blame is treated. With something as global as the internet, how are new services and technologies going to survive and grow if each region decides to handle the Web so differently? It’s not like this is the first case where a Web company has had to deal with such varying internet policies in different regions – Google censoring searches in China is a big one that jumps to mind.