Local ISPs HAVE to import and transmit the material into the country in question. That is what they do, as ISPs.
But they don't cause it to be transmitted, that's the client and remote server doing that.
National carriers have no obligation to data packets, regardless of origin or destination. Go ask China. I'm not saying discrimination is the right thing to do, but sovereignty of national laws means that localities have a right to mangle imported or exported data however they wish.
If some data enters a country on leased lines of an international company, then that company is responsible for importing the data into the country in question. I'm not a lawyer, but that seems obvious enough to me.
It depends on local law, but any local law saying thus is obviously aloof of how the internet works. To the ISP, they're just packets.
"How the internet works" is purely a function of how national authorities wish it to work for those in their nation.
I think it's important that the routers are doing nothing but following directions between the client and server in this. They are the equipment it charge.
Routing behavior is not guaranteed to comply only to client or server directions anywhere, even in the U.S.. See, e.g., AT&T rerouting data to secret data-collecting servers belonging to the NSA inside the U.S.
Yes, it talks to the ISP's router, and that passes on the message, but it's a little like prosecuting AT&T itself for a customer calling in a bomb threat, since afterall, it's not the culprit's voice they're hearing, but a sonic reproduction transmitted by analog carrier via the phone company.
Since you're in the U.S., call in such a threat to someplace where the U.S. doesn't have specific telecommunications treaties in place, say, Mauritius, and let me know when you've been prosecuted on U.S. soil.
Interpretation is meaningless, since that is a purely subjective matter. If I am a research project spidering the internet for available ports, should I be responsible for copyrighted material that I never read, understand, or interpret in any manner other than to receive it?
I don't think it's meaningless or meaningfully subjective. The ISP simply has no idea what's being transmitted. Software is necessary to interepret the result into anything resembling a copyrighted work. On the network it's just packets, bits, and routing information.
My point here originally was that for something to be truly meaningful, more than software is required. Wetware is needed, a conscious mind capable of discerning meaning from the multitude of data. And, again, packets, bits, and routing information are manipulable as they pass across a network.
Also, the ISP is never 'oblivious' to the data that passes through its lines. The fact that content shaping even occurs should make this obvious.
You have a fundemental missunderstanding on what packet shaping versus filtering is. Content filtering requires making a judgement based on content. Packet shaping simply looks at port and protocol information and delays or throttles bandwidth based on that.
By your own definition, packet shaping looks at port and protocol information in a packet. Thus, the ISP is not 'oblivious' to the data in the packets that passes over its lines as I asserted, no?
The Internet is not an international phenomenon devoid of national law. It is a collection of interconnecting telecommunications points in different countries, each of which is subject to the national laws where the data between such points can be transferred.
Well, the problem is that you can only expect one nation to enforce another's laws by consent. In that way it's very difficult to bring the whole internet under international law as it's purely cooperative. The notion that web information is subject to law at every point at which it's transfered is completely ridiculous and unenforcable. Imagine the possiblity of someone in Detroit being arrested for making a critisism of the Chinese government after his email was routed through the Asian Mainland to get to Australia!
And this, my friend, is entirely the point. Why should IMSLP, operating in Canada, be beholden to copyright restrictions in place in Europe? Imagine the possibility of someone in Toronto being levied a $180,000 Euro fine for delivering another Canadian citizen a music score that is clearly in the public domain in Canada, because some ISP in between happens to route part of their traffic through Ireland because it's cheaper. Is that fine justified in any way?
Indeed. Which is why in the U.S. the RIAA stopped going after ISPs, and for the most part started going after music sharers - i.e. started litigating against end users who downloaded copyrighted content.
They stopped going after the ISPs because Congress correctly saw the role of the ISP as nothing but a nuetral carrier. Consider that nations that see differently are just plain wrong.
Great. Consider that many of us here on the IMSLP forums consider UE's claims equally wrong. I assume, then, that you're on IMSLP's side, and are perhaps suggesting that Universal Edition should be going after copyright infringers in the territories covered by their copyright instead of after IMSLP?
I have so far avoided speaking out to avoid steering the direction of discussion in a biased way, but since a few people have requested that I clarify myself, I will do so here.