Our society has now evolved as an Information Society. Now the paper based newspapers are being replaced by the dynamic websites, which are sometimes being managed by intelligent agents. Where at one hand where this evolution has brought us the knowledge explosion and now access to information is easier than ever before, on the other hand new issues have also emerged and legislator is confronted with new challenges. One of these issues is the question regarding liability of intermediaries (ISPs) for the infringements over the internet.

There are no boundaries and anything which is published on internet becomes worldly public the next moment. This ease of worldwide publication has invoked new threats to the society as well. It has disturbed the whole system of copyrights, civil liberties, protection against ethnic and religious exploitation, law of defamation, child pornography and cyber-terrorism. In such a situation it may not be easy to let ISPs go without any liability for the material hosted on them. However, at the same time it may also not be an easy task for the ISPs (even if they want to do so) to keep a check on all the materials hosted with them. The situation becomes even more trivial when it comes to territoriality of law. The situation is yet be addressed by the legislator in Pakistan. This article is an attempt to highlight the issues concerning the liability of ISPs consequent to the material hosted by them and remedies adopted by the Europe and America.

What is an ISP: In general Internet Service Providers (ISP) perform various functions and offer a variety of services like access to internet, hosting of information on internet, network services etc. EU Directive 2000/31/EC has defined service providers as any natural or legal person providing information society services. The term