Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The EARN IT act is back, and it’s more dangerous than ever

cyberlaw.stanford.edu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 520 posts

Re: The EARN IT act is back, and it’s more dangerous than ever

#121

Post by mrandish »

loteck wrote: post #34
uejfiweun wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you, something like this is exactly what I was looking for. Balances out nicely with the original posted link.

There's likely to be strong bipartisan opponents to this bill in the Senate as well. Their issues are likely aligned with another senator's response. https://www.wyden.senate.gov/news/press-releases/wyden-on-re...

Wyden (like Rand Paul) is the rare congressperson that, while I don't agree with all their views, tends to get certain fundamental freedom issues right, especially where other politicians don't on issues with a lot of money and special interest lobbying.

On any particular issue where Wyden goes against his Democratic party leadership AND Paul goes against his Republican party leadership to agree with each other, that's likely to be an issue where I agree with both of them. Too bad there's no way to vote for a 'virtual politician' that's the logic-gate intersection of those two.

Re: The EARN IT act is back, and it’s more dangerous than ever

#122

Post by mullingitover »

uejfiweun wrote: post #16

It seems like this Stanford page has clearly taken a side on the issue. Does anyone have a link to a solid unbiased discussion of the pros and cons of this? It's got bipartisan support, so clearly there are legitimate arguments in favor of these changes, would be interested to hear what they are.

> It's got bipartisan support, so clearly there are legitimate arguments in favor of these changes

Both parties have pretty wide dumb/authoritarian streaks, so it's not necessarily true that there are legitimate arguments in favor. The war on drugs, for example, had/has bipartisan support even though it is an ongoing demonstrable harm to society.

Re: The EARN IT act is back, and it’s more dangerous than ever

#123

Post by mullingitover »

charcircuit wrote: post #61

We should design cryptosystems that include functionality that support warrants as opposed to being antiencryption and removing encryption.

The minute your system depends on good behavior from any of the parties involved, you've failed as a designer.

It's like nobody learned anything from Snowden's revelations. The second those backdoors are available, they're going to be surrendered in secret to various three letter agencies in the name of national security. That's going to happen on day one. On day two they'll be breached by foreign intelligence services.

Re: The EARN IT act is back, and it’s more dangerous than ever

#125

Post by mrandish »

userbinator wrote: post #112
jimbob45 wrote: post #8

Graham (R-SC) Blumenthal (D-CT)* Durbin (D-IL) Grassley (R-IA)* Feinstein (D-CA) Cornyn (R-TX) Whitehouse (D-RI) Hawley (R-MO) Hirono (D-HI) Kennedy (D-LA)* Casey (D-PA) Blackburn (R-TN) Masto (D-NV)* Collins (R-ME) Hassan (D-NH)* Ernst (R-IA) Warner (D-VA) Hyde-Smith (R-MI) Murkowski (R-AK)* Portman (R-OH)* * are up for re-election this year. Bit of a pain to find this information really - couldn't find a single new…

Exactly 10 on each side --- that's about as non-partisan as it gets.

I think a lot of us are no longer convinced traditional two-party partisanship is a useful lens through which to understand politics. Regardless of party, the politicians pushing this bill are overwhelmingly pro-surveillance state and pro-big government as well as being invested in perpetuating the two-party machine. Personally, I now see things more through a lens of those who perpetuate the two-party machine and big federal government on one side and those who are skeptical of both the eternally growing central government for it's own sake and the reduction of local and individual autonomy.

Neither big party really represents many of my viewpoints as much in recent years. Even when I do agree with one of them on something, I now suspect many of the inter-party battles are as staged as pro-wrestling where the eventual prevailing side was already predetermined by special interests, lobbyists and the party machines. It's weird how many votes on something I care about fail to survive committee or amendment by just one vote. And the politicians who voted "against" the thing in the 'losing' party, all happen to be in very 'safe' districts or not facing reelection soon and those facing reelection in 'unsafe' districts happen to be the ones who voted "for" it.

This happens far too often to statistically be random chance. I hate that this possibly makes me sound like a conspiracy nutjob but the math here says something's definitely going on behind the scenes.

Re: The EARN IT act is back, and it’s more dangerous than ever

#126

Post by jamesgeck0 »

charcircuit wrote: post #61

We should design cryptosystems that include functionality that support warrants as opposed to being antiencryption and removing encryption.

Basically every professional cryptographer has been saying that it's impossible to build a secure system this way since the idea was floated by the US government in the 1990s.

Re: The EARN IT act is back, and it’s more dangerous than ever

#127

Post by [deleted] »

wbsss4412 wrote: post #28
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> While this bill is strongly opposed by the Internet Society, ACLU, CDT, and EFF, It's worth noting that the companies destroying democracy that this bill regulates (Google, Facebook, etc.) are major donors to all of these organizations.

Seems the world isn’t all black and white. It’s not like those companies have “destroy democracy” as their mission.

[deleted]

Re: The EARN IT act is back, and it’s more dangerous than ever

#128

Post by Diesel555 »

judge2020 wrote: post #48
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ending Section 230, incrementally or all in one go, has been increasingly on the minds of politicians (mostly but not exclusively conservative ones) for some time now. There's a lot more to EARN IT than just that, but some of them will vote for anything that increases the liability exposure of anyone hosting anything online.

All section 230 does is make it so that "platforms" can remove posts it doesn't like without needing to assume liability for every other posts. Unless they think Twitter is going to hire a few million employees to screen every post, Twitter and the rest would simply turn off the platform to anyone who isn't verified or doesn't otherwise sign a waiver releasing twitter of that liability (which was possible before CDA,…

Section 230 is from 1996. For reference myspace launched in 2003. It has been modified since, but not in a way relative to this discussion. Section 230 classifies providers such as Facebook and Twitter as "interactive computer services" and not "information content providers." This protects them from lawsuits based on the content they provide.

I'm not arguing that Facebook should be held to the same standard as the person who creates the content. However, when Facebook services misinformation on COVID with negligent moderation or even intentional promotion, or they allow eighty thousand posts by Russian Internet Research Agency (IRA)-controlled accounts in two years near an election, reaching 126 million users [1 (Mueller Report)], maybe there needs to be some amendment. Perhaps not completely recategorizing Facebook, but adding some more responsibilities on these major platforms to at least not promote bad information, polarizing content, and information campaigns from foreign governments. When I did some research into how to disincentivize social media companies from spreading misinformation, reforming 230 was the best option I saw.

Edit: I posted a more detailed version of this elsewhere on this thread to provide more background. Then I realized I couldn't delete this abridged version.

[1] Mueller, R. S. M. (2019, March). Report On The Investigation Into Russian Interference In The 2016 Presidential Election, Volume I of II. U.S. Department of Justice. https://www.justice.gov/archives/sco/file/1373816/download

Re: The EARN IT act is back, and it’s more dangerous than ever

#129

Post by notriddle »

treis wrote: post #50
kragen wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> These people seem incapable of understanding the existential threat to free society and democracy posed by limiting everyone's ability to communicate private thoughts. The existential threat this bill poses to free society and democracy is exactly why they're supporting it. It's not some accidental side effect. They're opposed to the existence of free society and democracy because it limits government power, which…

We had a free society and democracy before the internet.

If the government has the benefits of the internet, and no one else does, isn’t society less free than if no one has it?

Re: The EARN IT act is back, and it’s more dangerous than ever

#130

Post by throwhauser »

treis wrote: post #50
kragen wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> These people seem incapable of understanding the existential threat to free society and democracy posed by limiting everyone's ability to communicate private thoughts. The existential threat this bill poses to free society and democracy is exactly why they're supporting it. It's not some accidental side effect. They're opposed to the existence of free society and democracy because it limits government power, which…

We had a free society and democracy before the internet.

> We had a free society and democracy before the internet.

But if the internet had been developed earlier, we would have debated something like this in the past.

Post reply on HN