Jason Schultz, my cow-orker at EFF, has written a lucid legal analysis about the latest turn in Harlan Ellison's ongoing suit against AOL/Time-Warner, in which he asserts that AOL should actively police its newsfeeds and restrict access to feeds that carry infringing materials, and be on the hook if they are insufficently diligent in their restriction of access to information.

The e-mail standard doesn't trouble me as much, but the phone call one certainly does. Just because one person (who isn't even the copyright owner) calls your company on the phone to complain about something on your servers generally shouldn't, in my mind, trigger "knowledge" liabiliity generally. Perhaps the caller specifically mentioned Ellsion, but the opinion isn't clear about that.

Link