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DOJ unveils proposed Section 230 legislation

justice.gov

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Re: DOJ unveils proposed Section 230 legislation

#241

Post by shadowgovt »

tomcam wrote: post #232
shadowgovt wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. I wouldn't say the law is for show; I would say the written law isn't the whole story. Reality is a three-edged sword: the law, the intent, and the implementation. "For show," to me, implies you can ignore it and charge forward, bull-in-a-china-shop-style. That doesn't work in law or computers; naive invalid input gets rejected by the first-stage parser, and a court complaint completely ignorant of the law ca…

Username strangely appropriate

I can highly recommend the discography of They Might Be Giants. ;)

Re: DOJ unveils proposed Section 230 legislation

#242

Post by aspaceman »

jimbob45 wrote: post #227
InTheArena wrote: post #19

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.…

>Bad Samaritan carve-out You mean...Samaritan? The Samaritans were the Nazis of their day and the legend is about a Samaritan that rose above his race and did what was good - thus, the one Good Samaritan. You wouldn’t say Bad Nazi. You just say Nazi and Good Nazi.

> that rose above his race and did what was good

Someone already corrected you on facts, but I just want to say that the premise of "rising above his race" is nonsense to me. Why would you think this way?

Re: DOJ unveils proposed Section 230 legislation

#243

Post by ryukafalz »

cirno wrote: post #237
InTheArena wrote: post #19

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.…

> b. Carve-Outs for Child Abuse, Terrorism, and Cyber-Stalking. Second, the Department proposes exempting from immunity specific categories of claims that address particularly egregious content, including (1) child exploitation and sexual abuse, (2) terrorism, and (3) cyber-stalking. These targeted carve-outs would halt the over-expansion of Section 230 immunity and enable victims to seek civil redress in causes of a…

Conversely, this is the one section that I don’t want added. The “Bad Samaritan carve-out” seems to cover cases where the platform is aware of the content pretty well, and I’d support adding that. This is about making them liable even when they aren’t aware of it, which is problematic for any site that handles anything user-generated, especially if you don’t have an army of moderators like Facebook does.

Re: DOJ unveils proposed Section 230 legislation

#244

Post by [deleted] »

ryukafalz wrote: post #243
cirno wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> b. Carve-Outs for Child Abuse, Terrorism, and Cyber-Stalking. Second, the Department proposes exempting from immunity specific categories of claims that address particularly egregious content, including (1) child exploitation and sexual abuse, (2) terrorism, and (3) cyber-stalking. These targeted carve-outs would halt the over-expansion of Section 230 immunity and enable victims to seek civil redress in causes of a…

Conversely, this is the one section that I don’t want added. The “Bad Samaritan carve-out” seems to cover cases where the platform is aware of the content pretty well, and I’d support adding that. This is about making them liable even when they aren’t aware of it, which is problematic for any site that handles anything user-generated, especially if you don’t have an army of moderators like Facebook does.

[deleted]

Re: DOJ unveils proposed Section 230 legislation

#245

Post by aspaceman »

hawkice wrote: post #219
gwright wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It blows my mind this isn't a separations of powers concern to even allow these people to draft language or make any statements on the record of what they think the law ought to be. That seem to be an untenable position. Legislation is drafted with input from lots of different groups including the agencies that might be enforcing the legislation. Proposing legislative changes isn't infringing on the powers of the L…

You want to pay a cop to write the law? Put it under their seal, the one they use to exercise police powers? Sure, other people vote on it. But it stinks.

Their point is that it's just about as old as the laws here, and that you can still have effective legislation even if it's primed for corruption.

You could make the same argument about most American systems of government, but pointing and saying corruption could exist is not the same as showing how it does.

Re: DOJ unveils proposed Section 230 legislation

#246

Post by aspaceman »

mlthoughts2018 wrote: post #211
mjh2539 wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The irony is that phrases like that are actually the least ripe for abuse because there is a ton of case law concerning them. I.e. they have a very specific meaning in regard to the law/statute/code. They're legalese, and legalese is your (lawyer's) friend.

The lack of imagination for how Republican court packing could flip that around is dire.

You couldn't pack courts to change the meaning of a phrase like this. It's not like I can come in as a new judge, say that I interpret these words a certain way, and plow my way forward. The wording has to be accepted within the technical jargon of the field.

You know how we have words like compile, build, "binary", or executable? It's the same thing. Expanding the interpretation of the law is expanding the interpretation of a highly technical definition and takes much more skill than saying "I interpret the words this way".

Re: DOJ unveils proposed Section 230 legislation

#247

Post by deathgrips »

some_furry wrote: post #209
deathgrips wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Turn it over to law enforcement. A single chat message is rarely a crime, but can be used to find further evidence of crime.

Turn what over to law enforcement? The ciphertext and timestamp?

A statement from the user who submitted it, including their unverifiable copy of the offensive message. The law is not computer code. They don't need to break ciphertext to get a warrant.

Re: DOJ unveils proposed Section 230 legislation

#248

Post by Spivak »

ryukafalz wrote: post #243
cirno wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> b. Carve-Outs for Child Abuse, Terrorism, and Cyber-Stalking. Second, the Department proposes exempting from immunity specific categories of claims that address particularly egregious content, including (1) child exploitation and sexual abuse, (2) terrorism, and (3) cyber-stalking. These targeted carve-outs would halt the over-expansion of Section 230 immunity and enable victims to seek civil redress in causes of a…

Conversely, this is the one section that I don’t want added. The “Bad Samaritan carve-out” seems to cover cases where the platform is aware of the content pretty well, and I’d support adding that. This is about making them liable even when they aren’t aware of it, which is problematic for any site that handles anything user-generated, especially if you don’t have an army of moderators like Facebook does.

> This is about making them liable even when they aren’t aware of it…

There are two sides to this though. If you make a carve-out for ignorance you incentivize ignorance.

I think the argument is that if you’re not able to moderate your user-generated content at the most basic levels like running image hashes against the CP database then you shouldn’t be hosting it.

Re: DOJ unveils proposed Section 230 legislation

#249

Post by some_furry »

deathgrips wrote: post #247
some_furry wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Turn what over to law enforcement? The ciphertext and timestamp?

A statement from the user who submitted it, including their unverifiable copy of the offensive message. The law is not computer code. They don't need to break ciphertext to get a warrant.

You can do this thing called "message franking" to make it more verifiable, if you want.

The downside is, context matters. If you report messages out-of-order or with important context deleted, you can trick investigators into thinking something was said or implied that actually wasn't. It needs to be carefully designed.

(I blog about cryptography, but you should ask a cryptographer if you want to design something like this.)

Re: DOJ unveils proposed Section 230 legislation

#250

Post by Spivak »

inetsee wrote: post #134
t-writescode wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s a very narrow theory of it. I read it as saying “if the system is designed to keep out external viewers of the content, then it is illegal”. That is, E2E encryption, because it is impossible for someone to eavesdrop usefully by design, is intended to be made illegal.

>> “if the system is designed to keep out external viewers of the content, then it is illegal” Does that mean that GEO-restricting content will be made illegal?

No. What? This is entirely about law enforcement. If you want to design your system to that the only external viewers are police then w/e — that’s up to you.

What the parent is saying is that you can’t use “the system is designed so that nobody can access it” as an excuse for why law enforcement can’t access it.

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