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4. Liability of Intermediaries

To remove existing legal uncertainties and to avoid divergent approaches between Member States, the E-commerce Directive establishes an exemption from liability for intermediaries where they just transmit information between third parties. Service providers have only limited liability for other "intermediary" activities such as the storage of information (hosting) or enhancing onward transmission (caching). This implies that in most circumstances, as long as ISPs do not take an active involvement in the information they are transmitting and are not aware they are transmitting illegal content, they are not liable for transmitting it. If an ISP learns that, for example, a web site it hosts includes illegal material, the ISP is normally required to remove this material as soon as possible.

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