There is nothing new in the concept of caching. However, many of the new Internet caching products bring a depth and intelligence to caching which may raise new issues for content providers. As a quick revision, most web browsers can be configured to store on a local hard drive information which is accessed frequently. This eliminates delay for users as the need to access remotely stored content is reduced. The new wave of caching products store web pages in a local network cache.
Web traffic is reduced as user requests are filled locally.
Updating of locally held content is implemented in a variety of ways, often without user intervention. There is no doubt that Internet caching brings substantial gains to commercial Internet users. However, there may be a downside to content providers and Web advertisers. For content providers, including providers of advertising content, the issue is one of copyright. Arguably the duplication of data by commercial users, and often in numerous locations across a number of proxy cache servers, is an infringement of copyright.