The same is 100% true about religion. 1A does not give you protection from religious discrimination among persons and corporations. It is the Civil Rights Act that does.
Don't be semantic, my point is why isn't speech codified at the same level? Clearly at some point someone said "freedom of religion should mean protection from persons and corporations", why can't we say the same about speech?
> why can't we say the same about speech?
We can. We just haven't yet, and it is not clear that it would result in a world that most Americans would prefer to the one we live in. And like religion it would be subject to lots of tension and litigation about the speech of the corporation's owner vs. the speech of the corporation's customer.
Wow, that seems to be written with Apple (at least) in mind, and is terrifying. I want operators to intentionally design and operate their services in way that impairs their ability to identify any activity, because any exceptions are exploits. Just saying "criminal activity" doesn't make it not spying on Americans.
If it truly can't identify activity then does it need Section 230 in the first place? The immunity granted by Section 230 is for people who want the ability to moderate content, and if you are merely a dumb pass-through of a bunch of encrypted information you aren't using it as you are more of a common carrier, right?
The law provides them immunity from civil suits. Apple as a provider can say they comply with section 230 and avoid any legal liability from people that may be harmed by their actions. In other words, you can't sue Apple because someone used iCloud to distribute child porn of you.
The essential bargain struck for 230 was that providers get immunity in exchange for policing their system and helping law enforcement. Apple et al removing their ability to police their systems breaks that bargain.
here is the DoJ's breakdown and red-line changes: 1. Incentivizing Online Platforms to Address Illicit Content The first category of potential reforms is aimed at incentivizing platforms to address the growing amount of illicit content online, while preserving the core of Section 230’s immunity for defamation. a. Bad Samaritan Carve-Out. First, the Department proposes denying Section 230 immunity to truly bad actors.…
Oof. That's a good source. Section 5c is particularly problematic. It disallows shadow-bans if I'm reading correctly. Section f9 is...suspicious. Section d4 seems painful for small providers. You lose good samaritan status if there isn't a good way to contact you. Section c2A is the important one. It basically means that a site cannot remove content unless it is objectively obscene or extreme. Section g5A suggests th…
"objectively obscene or extreme" - is there a clear definition for obscenity? I feel like there was a famous quote from a judge on the SCOTUS to effect of "I'll know it when I see it", but law is not an area that I have expertise in.
Wow, that seems to be written with Apple (at least) in mind, and is terrifying. I want operators to intentionally design and operate their services in way that impairs their ability to identify any activity, because any exceptions are exploits. Just saying "criminal activity" doesn't make it not spying on Americans.
I wonder if it would be applicable to end-to-end "messengers" like Telegra/Signal/WhatsApp etc. Though I don't see any language there to suggest it is just for online "platforms" but not "messengers". Then again, could be this entire proposal to begin with is intended just for so-called "platforms" not messengers.
> Such designs and operation put our society at risk by: (1) severely eroding a company’s ability to detect and respond to illegal content and activity; (2) preventing or seriously inhibiting the timely identification of offenders, as well as the identification and rescue of victims;
To me, that says if a company writes something that prevents or blocks illegal content from being accessed by law enforcement, any immunity or protection is removed.
It looks like this makes service providers liable for illegal content if they do not keep logs for 1 year? Am I reading that correctly?
It’s not just illegal content , it includes “facilitation” of any illegal activity. The logs are only required when law enforcement notifies you of the activity. But if they think you know about the activity and are consciously promoting it, they don’t even need to notify you. My guess is they will probably revise this part.
Reddit has a subreddit that’s main purpose is helping you to shoplift without getting caught. I always assumed it was free speech laws protecting it. Does this mean there will be another incoming subreddit purge?
The changes to the existing “Good Samaritan” section basically do what they said they were going to do: change it so that the section about providers not being publishers and the section about liability for blocking are independent, and clarify what “good faith” in blocking means. Basically the standard for civil immunity is slightly higher for blocking content than providing content. This is weird and still a big ch…
Any actual Samaritans out there? How do you feel about that language?
If it truly can't identify activity then does it need Section 230 in the first place? The immunity granted by Section 230 is for people who want the ability to moderate content, and if you are merely a dumb pass-through of a bunch of encrypted information you aren't using it as you are more of a common carrier, right?
The law provides them immunity from civil suits. Apple as a provider can say they comply with section 230 and avoid any legal liability from people that may be harmed by their actions. In other words, you can't sue Apple because someone used iCloud to distribute child porn of you. The essential bargain struck for 230 was that providers get immunity in exchange for policing their system and helping law enforcement. Ap…
Ok, so I was under the impression that if you are say, a telephone network, that people can't sue you for stuff people do during phone calls, under the premise that the phone company doesn't moderate phone calls; and my understanding of the "bargain struck" is then that online web forums felt that centralized moderation was absolutely critical to spam prevention and search/discovery services (I disagree on the practicalities here, but will admit that with 90s era tech and under the premise of the specific model of website this seems reasonable to have believed and legislate for), and so wanted the ability to "have their cake and eat it too": to be able to decide almost on a whim to take down content--and thereby to have people active to looking at content to decide what to take down--but not to be responsible for those editorial decisions, as they wanted to do their supposedly-required moderation tasks with limited staff and "after the fact": and so, if they "decide" (quite likely by negligence) to leave something up that they should not have published, Section 230 grants them immunity with some provisions. It doesn't seem like a truly end-to-end encrypted service--such as iMessage or iCloud Keychain (but absolutely not iCloud Backup, which has a key escrow backdoor: it should be end-to-end encrypted, but explicitly isn't) needs this immunity, right?
If this does destroy tech oligopolies, they'll have nobody to blame for it but themselves. They've had over a decade to prove that they're fair and impartial and, if anything, have worked overtime to prove the opposite.
Private organizations have zero obligation to be fair and impartial. If you want a company to be run differently, start your own. It's funny how conservatives were totally on board with deregulation and perfectly fine with corporations steamrolling every one else as long as they were aligned with conservative objectives. Then the moment a powerful corporate faction with liberal-ish sensibilities emerges, they freak o…
1. Please note that ‘obligation’ is not the only standard at play. Companies exist in a social and economic context. (I have previous comments on this topic that can be easily found.)
2. The ‘if you want a company to be run differently, start your own’ argument is tiresome and weak. There are (and should be) many mechanisms to influence corporate behavior.
3. Even the pre-Trump Republican Party has long taken flack from libertarians who essentially argue that one core principle should guide their political philosophy.
3B. Personally, I have not found a strong philosophical grounding to claim that political philosophies should be reducible to one core thought from which everything neatly derives. (That would be nice, wouldn’t it?) In my experience, figuring out public policy decisions is fundamentally more complex than that due to the interplay of conflicting values and moralities.
here is the DoJ's breakdown and red-line changes: 1. Incentivizing Online Platforms to Address Illicit Content The first category of potential reforms is aimed at incentivizing platforms to address the growing amount of illicit content online, while preserving the core of Section 230’s immunity for defamation. a. Bad Samaritan Carve-Out. First, the Department proposes denying Section 230 immunity to truly bad actors.…
> It's approachable, and doesn't fall into the interpretation biases of the reporter.
I agree with this, but don't forget that interpretation biases will still come into play as the law is enforced — the biases of police, lawyers and judges. So it still makes sense to read others' interpretations of what this might mean in practice.