If you start filtering traffic, does that make you liable for all traffic on your network? You're no longer a 'pipe' to a customer. Even if this happens, technology will adapt around their filtering methods(I'm thinking more widespread and better encryption).

Arrrgh!

Arrrgh! Matey

If you start filtering traffic, does that make you liable for all traffic on your network?

hm that's a good question. it actually seems like the answer would be yes.

They know exactly what type of traffic is running on their networks at all times. They get away with it now because they have common carrier status and can say, 'durr, we didn't know nocal was torrenting My Little Pony DVDs, we aren't responsible for his illegal My Little Pony piracy! All we do is ship his packets from point A to point B.'

This is why it doesn't make much sense as to why they'd try and start acknowledging this by filtering such traffic. They'd have to give that status up, and thusly get sued along with nocal for his My Little Pony piracy.

Except of course this wouldn't really happen. They'd show some minimal good-faith effort, decrying encryption and fancy anonymizing tricks, and then there'd be legislation subsidizing their efforts to more completely crack down on consumers while forgiving them the 1.5% of their traffic that was piracy they couldn't reasonably stop without huge grants from Congress.