Watch out AT&T! Verizon will not monitor traffic for copyright violations.

I think AT&T may have really bungled this one by getting out in front of the issue and saying they would monitor for copyright violations. It may be justification for messaging traffic on an AT&T network that is rapidly becoming too puny to be up the the task in the very near future. A very big problem with this statement is that if the RIAA or MPAA discovers copyright violations on a “monitored network” they could try make AT&T liable in a law suit.

For Verizon’s part, they are making a policy statement that they will be much more cautious and hands off:

It’s not that Verizon doesn’t believe that it’s vitally important to protect intellectual property, said Tauke, who heads the company’s public affairs, policy, and communications department. Rather, the company is concerned that inspecting individual packets, as rival AT&T is currently testing, poses potential dangers to consumer privacy and opens up a host of other potential watchdog duties that Verizon isn’t keen on undertaking.

“From a business perspective, we really don’t want to assume the role of being police on the Internet,” Tauke, a former Iowa Republican congressman, said in response to a question from Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.), who moderated discussion with the executive. “We are leery of using these technologies on our networks.”(from Cnet)

Your humble admin thinks Verizon is more leery of the legal exposure. While neither of the Telco giants is famous for making smart decisions, but in this case Verizon clearly proved to be smarter than AT&T once again.