Intellectual Property on the Internet

The internet has slowly crept up on us in the last 10 to 15 years, and there are now legal issues about intellectual property, and wether the internet should act as a common carrier or a publisher, let me explain.
A telephone company, for example, is a common carrier. If an obscene caller is bothering you, the phone company will co-operate with police, but nobody thinks it's the phone company's fault some creep keeps calling you. Magazines and newspapers act as a publisher. They are legally responsible for their content and can be sued. The internet, however, acts as both a common carrier…