Safe Harbor

Safe harbor simply means that, if you follow a basic set of rules, you cannot be found guilty of doing a crime or otherwise shady dealings as you live under those safe harbor rules.

The most famous safe harbor situation in recent times, and certainly as it applies to Shmoop, came with the myriad lawsuits of copyright protection, as more or less all of the valuable content of the world was stolen and posted on YouTube, Napster, and other peer-to-peer networks.

Caught in the middle were the internet service providers: Comcast, AT&T, and dozens of others who allowed Joe Sixpack to connect to the internet and download, um…blurry art films. In order to sort out the legal situation, the government granted safe harbor to those internet providers, such that, if it had been deemed that YouTube did, in fact, steal the guts of the entertainment industry, and essentially help bankrupt the music industry, and then lost a $50B lawsuit...only Google would be liable.

The internet service providers, like Comcast and AT&T, would have safe harbor protections inside of those lawsuits, and they still percolate every now and again today.

Bottom line: there will always be storms, and there will always be a need for safe harbors. Although you can never be too safe when there are sharks and lawyers in the water.