By this logic they should sue the computer manufacturers, the power companies, the contractors who built the houses the pirates live in. Where does it end? Banks should sue towns for making roads that bank robbers drive on.
It's not the ISP's job to enforce another company's copyright.
Banning roads (or cars) because of bank robberies is my classic analogy when people attack net neutrality like this - I'm glad someone else found it too :)
There is a city where a road service provider (RSP) builds and maintains all roads. At strategic places, there are road checkpoints where the RSP can block traffic.
Recently, there has been a series of bank robberies. The city has strange laws: Bank robberies are illegal in he city, but hard to prosecute directly. The bank, knowing who participated in the robberies, asks the RSP to block the robbers' traffic.
The RSP is in the business of building roads, not apprehending criminals. Nothing about the business of road-building implies that their employees would be trained or equipped to deal with bank robbers.
The analogy falls apart here anyway because bank robbery is a criminal offense and the police are around specifically to deal with it. Piracy is a civil offense. I don't know of any comparable civil case where a private third party is required to enforce a contract they're not involved in.
> Banks should sue towns for making roads that bank robbers drive on.
Please don't associate the violent deprivation of property with voluntary exchange violating state frameworks to promote intellectual publication. It is disingenuous to the argument and hurts arguments on both sides of "piracy is bad". If a company is an enabler of violence and actively work to intentionally promote it, of course they should be liable for their behavior.
You're not thinking clearly here. If violent deprivation of property is worse than voluntary exchange violating state IP frameworks (this seems like an easy sell to me) then banks have a better case for liability against road-builders who enable bank robbers to transport themselves to and from the bank than music publishers do against ISPs who enable music listeners to share songs with each other.
Your sentence
> If a company is an enabler of violence and actively work to intentionally promote it, of course they should be liable for their behavior.
doesn't respond to anything in the parent comment you're allegedly replying to. No one is saying, or thinking, that road builders work to promote robbery by road users. What they are saying, correctly, is that road builders are enablers of violence that otherwise wouldn't occur (ever heard of "highwaymen"?). They're also enablers of more useful, fruitful, and desirable phenomena.
> doesn't respond to anything in the parent comment you're allegedly replying to
Except it does. You say yourself, banks would have a better case, but when you say it out loud it sounds absurd. The only time a business is an accomplice to bank robbery is when they are intentionally promoting it explicitly, but when their business enables it. To degrade that argument to civil conflicts and then claim ISPs are responsible for their users is more ridiculous.
It's not the ISP's job to enforce another company's copyright.