(Essentially "look before you leap") https://www.internetsociety.org/resources/doc/2024/a-policy-framework-for-in... Intermediary functions are crucial to the Internet’s existence. This paper provides a framework for understanding Internet intermediary functions and developing policy concerning responsibility for online content without harming individuals’ ability to use the Internet to create content and communicate with each other. We focus on the functions performed by Internet intermediaries to facilitate online communication, such as transmitting, routing, storing, caching, hosting, securing, curating, and moderating content. This focus recognizes that many intermediaries perform multiple functions that raise differing policy issues and that many types of intermediaries offer fundamentally equivalent functions even though their services may appear quite different. Our aim in this paper is to help policymakers understand those functions and develop policy relating to them. Well-designed policies can enhance the availability, diversity, security and privacy of individual participation online. However, poorly crafted policies can weaken Internet security, harm competition, restrict online communication, widen the digital divide, and fragment the Internet. The goal is not to exempt intermediaries from responsibility but to emphasize the critical role of liability protections in enabling individual participation on the Internet. Poorly designed intermediary-focused policies can have detrimental effects on the Internet and communication. Better alternatives, such as existing privacy, consumer protection, and discrimination laws, are often available. https://www.internetsociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/2025-Policy-Frame... -- -------------------------------------- Joly MacFie +12185659365 -------------------------------------- -