The Friendly Guide to Regulating the Internet: Difference between a Distributor and a Creator

Just put up part 4 of The Friendly Guide to Regulating the Internet.

If you've ever uploaded a home video to YouTube then you know the difference between a distributor of content and a creator of content. YouTube did not create the video you uploaded, you did. What YouTube did was distribute the content you created - it provided the tools and infrastructure that allow others to watch your video. And while YouTube didn't make your video, if your video ended up getting millions of hits, you know your Internet fame would not exist without YouTube's distribution.

Read the full post at FriendlyToS.

2015-12-29 Update

FriendlyToS is no longer on the Internet. The content of the originally referenced post has been reproduced below.

Understanding why Internet regulations are the way that they are is confusing. So, FriendlyToS is creating The Friendly Guide to Regulating the Internet, a set of brief introductions to the most important concepts in Internet regulations. Today we add the final section to this guide - a discussion of how tricky national sovereignty can be online.

Difference between a Distributor and a Creator

If you've ever uploaded a home video to YouTube then you know the difference between a distributor of content and a creator of content. YouTube did not create the video you uploaded, you did. What YouTube did was distribute the content you created - it provided the tools and infrastructure that allow others to watch your video. And while YouTube didn’t make your video, if your video ended up getting millions of hits, you know your Internet fame would not exist without YouTube's distribution.

Distributors are important to have, so speech and intellectual property regulation is usually careful to encourage their existence. For this reason, distributors are usually not legally responsible for the obscene, libelous, or infringing content they distribute as long as they follow reasonable regulatory requirements (see Section 230's Safe Harbor for an example.) If they were legally responsible, then distributors would have to check out every book for sale in their store or every video uploaded to their site. Such a task could be ridiculously expensive, so nobody would want to open a bookstore or create YouTube.

Imagine how sad your life would be if you never got to see Double Rainbow guy's video.