Anton Vedder
Abstract
Questions regarding the moral responsibility of Internet access and service providers relating to information on the Internet call for a reassessment of the ways in which we think about attributing blame, guilt, and duties of reparation and compensation. They invite us to borrow something similar to the idea of strict liability from the legal sphere and to introduce it in morality and ethical theory. Taking such a category in the distribution of responsibilities outside the domain of law and introducing it into ethics, however, is a difficult thing. Doing so seems to conflict with some broadly shared and deeply felt intuitions regarding the individuality of responsibility and the relationship between responsibility and guilt. These convictions coincide with some basic ideas in Kantian moral theory and the ascriptive theory based on these ideas. Nevertheless, the problems to which the proposed liabilities / responsibilities relate are so serious that they do not seem to leave room for aloofness. At least, they encourage us to reconsider the idea of strict liability carefully and to assess its merits.
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Index Terms
- Accountability of Internet access and service providers – strictliability entering ethics?
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