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

cyberlaw.stanford.edu

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

#351

Post by bsaul »

ifdefdebug wrote: post #318
roenxi wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My government has just spent 2 years - a pretty significant percentage of a lifetime - working to keep me from travelling more than 5km from my home and made it illegal for me to see my friends. And I'm not even going to have a sympathetic audience if I try to claim this is against my wishes or wellbeing. Run me through, in simple terms, how much worse it could get? I suppose they aren't trying to kill me, which is a…

Sorry for you, but your country's democratic process is probably broken. In my country covid measures were always just the bare minimum to keep things running and lifted/alliveated as soon as possible.

You’re the exception. Out of curiosity, what country is that ?

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

#352

Post by bsaul »

radicalbyte wrote: post #308
roenxi wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My government has just spent 2 years - a pretty significant percentage of a lifetime - working to keep me from travelling more than 5km from my home and made it illegal for me to see my friends. And I'm not even going to have a sympathetic audience if I try to claim this is against my wishes or wellbeing. Run me through, in simple terms, how much worse it could get? I suppose they aren't trying to kill me, which is a…

My government has restricted travel in order to stop a pandemic virus spreading to the point where hospitals are overwhelmed and we start seeing 10% of the population dying instead of 0.5%. Thankfully they have also implemented a nationwide vaccination scheme and a vaccination pass which is accepted pretty much anywhere worldwide.

I’m surprised you’re happy about the pass. the only thing the pass does is insure the minority of people who didn’t want the vaccine are forced to be vaccinated. I suppose you didn’t have to be forced, so why do you care ?

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

#353

Post by wayoutthere »

__MatrixMan__ wrote: post #249
wayoutthere wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In 1990 school kids were pledging our fucking allegiance to an evil empire. Hell no we didn’t have a free society then.

I remember it well. Hands on hearts, droning on between the food pyramid (wherein the USDA redefined "healthy" to mean "buy what the grain lobby sells") and a D.A.R.E. poster. Meanwhile, the CIA was getting caught selling crack.

Only they weren’t getting caught because the media was censored and nobody knew about it. The people talking about it were dismissed as conspiracy theorists.

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

#354

Post by noduerme »

aspenmayer wrote: post #346
noduerme wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No - I think there's a strong case to be made that FB and Twitter aren't like email providers or other forums like Reddit which are neutral in just showing content. Nor am I saying anything should be censored by the government. All I'm saying is that to the extent Twitter increased the viewership of some piece of propaganda, they should be allowed to be sued for damages . It's their ability to amplify that's the issu…

> All I'm saying is that to the extent Twitter increased the viewership of some piece of propaganda, they should be allowed to be sued for damages. With potentially infinite violations and incalculable damages, it’s no wonder why no one who runs any kind of user-submitted content site wants what you suggest here.

They don't want it, but I used to run a BBS, and a casino, and a forum, and I was aware I could be held accountable if I furthered the dissemination of something nefarious. Doesn't have to be CSAM, but the worse it is, the worse the penalty would be. It would be a hard pull to sue a provider over simple defamation that way if they did nothing to encourage or re-post it. But should Ron Watkins be made to answer for what's on 8kun? Fuck yea. And if he should, then why not Zuck?

If you want to run a system that amplifies shitheads, you're a shithead, and if they can be sued, so should you be. We're past the point where we need stimulus to encourage people to start message boards by shielding them from liability for what their users post. Again, this isn't an argument for censorship whatsoever, just allowing private parties to apportion blame when aggrieved. So even then, the scale of allowing something on a baby message board is nothing compared to the network effect of Twitter or FB. Let them bear the social costs that they're so desperate to externalize. FB and Twitter made their explosive growth exactly by exploiting their exemption from the thing that closed down publishers, namely, bearing responsibility for the content they publish.

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

#355

Post by bsaul »

tentacleuno wrote: post #332
roenxi wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With benefit of hindsight, turns out there was never a risk of 10% of the population dying. The disease isn't that deadly, even if the hospital system did give out (and the numbers I've been looking at seem to suggest that the risk of the hospital system giving out was oversold - it didn't look fun but it also didn't seem to buckle enough to justify the authoritarian response in my eyes). If I were being uncharitable…

> Nobody has ever threatened my rights as profoundly as my strong government. Nobody has ever betrayed my trust quite like my own Government, either. I live in the UK, which (for now) has Boris Johnson as its Prime Minister. This means that while they were fining people for having Christmas parties, going outside, and forcing people to stay indoors, he had a string of parties (12) which did not follow the COVID rules…

The thing happened everywhere. French prime minister met with mayors and had political meetings unmasked, shaking hands and stuff, at the peek of the pandemic, got covid, then blamed his 11 yo daughter for it.

Macron had a huge party at the president office, with people chanting and dancing, not wearing masks, while people were still supposed to take extreme precautions.

The only original thing about boris johnson is that he put minimal numbers of restrictions on his population for as long as he could. For that you can thank him.

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

#356

Post by aspenmayer »

root_axis wrote: post #102
umbauk wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well one could argue Google and FB services are not free. Those 2 companies are 2 of the most profitable, valuable companies in the world. If they are providing their services for free, how can that be? Our attention and information is what they profit from, and that should not be undervalued. They are certainly not providing these services to us out of the goodness of their hearts.

> Well one could argue Google and FB services are not free. I don't possibly see how. The services cost no money, thus they are unequivocally free. Perhaps one could reasonably argue that just because something is free doesn't mean the user isn't entitled to any rights, but torturing the definition of free to suit your argument strikes me as obviously fallacious. > If they are providing their services for free, how c…

You pay with your data and your privacy.

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

#357

Post by mastazi »

bambax wrote: post #327
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…

> Free society means limited government Strong disagree. A good government protects freedom from big private companies that feast on it. Antitrust laws cannot be enforced by a weak government, and without those, there can't really be freedom.

> A good government

if only absolutely everyone could totally agree on one single definition of "good"...

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

#358

Post by aspenmayer »

noduerme wrote: post #354
aspenmayer wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> All I'm saying is that to the extent Twitter increased the viewership of some piece of propaganda, they should be allowed to be sued for damages. With potentially infinite violations and incalculable damages, it’s no wonder why no one who runs any kind of user-submitted content site wants what you suggest here.

They don't want it, but I used to run a BBS, and a casino, and a forum, and I was aware I could be held accountable if I furthered the dissemination of something nefarious. Doesn't have to be CSAM, but the worse it is, the worse the penalty would be. It would be a hard pull to sue a provider over simple defamation that way if they did nothing to encourage or re-post it. But should Ron Watkins be made to answer for wh…

I told you why I thought your idea was logistically unfeasible and politically incongruent with free speech and right to assembly.

You called me a shithead.

I don’t think your argumentation strategy is convincing me, but I’ll admit I’m not the smartest guy.

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

#359

Post by microtonal »

bsaul wrote: post #352
radicalbyte wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My government has restricted travel in order to stop a pandemic virus spreading to the point where hospitals are overwhelmed and we start seeing 10% of the population dying instead of 0.5%. Thankfully they have also implemented a nationwide vaccination scheme and a vaccination pass which is accepted pretty much anywhere worldwide.

I’m surprised you’re happy about the pass. the only thing the pass does is insure the minority of people who didn’t want the vaccine are forced to be vaccinated. I suppose you didn’t have to be forced, so why do you care ?

so why do you care ?

Because the people who didn't want to be vaccinated take up all the hospital and intensive care beds, leading to many postponed surgeries.

E.g. in The Netherlands in October, unvaccinated people took 70% of the intensive care beds allocated to COVID patients, while only being ~16% of the 18+ population. [1]

[1] https://www.rivm.nl/nieuws/ongevaccineerde-COVID-19-patiënte...

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

#360

Post by noduerme »

aspenmayer wrote: post #348
noduerme wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, not exactly. Unlike in the print age, we all have the ability to set up a home server or distributed servers; we have the ability to reach anyone in the world. But we don't have a natural right to do that or extend our readership through someone else's platform. I can sit here and host whatever I'd like. In the BBS era, you were responsible for people posting illegal stuff on your board, and you were held respons…

The established social media sites have lawyers on retainer and will appeal every single case up to the Supreme Court if necessary, and as slowly as they like, just to slow roll those submitting civil suits. Opening up user-submitted content sites to civil damages would ensure that the largest social networks are the only ones that can afford to fight these cases in court. Smaller sites would become self-censored, ev…

I think you just jumbled up a lot of counter-arguments here, some of which are interesting and others purely speculative. But let's start where you wound up: The speculation that it's "dangerous" to push fake news to smaller fringe sites hasn't been proven. I've seen a lot of damage arise as a result of the mainstreaming of conspiracy theories from fringe sites onto major sites. I don't see any evidence to support the idea that if the crazy grifters peddling those theories get shunted back to smaller sites, a significant portion of their audience will follow. The history of Facebook has been a pattern of people who have no idea how to find information being fed bad information. Most of those people probably won't find the fringe sites. They weren't there before. Their attention span is short. They're only dangerous as a herd.

The original argument against pushing extremists onto fringe sites was that the fringe sites were dark to law enforcement. I also don't buy that argument. It's a weak anti-encryption argument, and I also don't believe they're anywhere near as dark as LEOs claim. There might be some chatter that existed in the clear, but no one is currently plotting terrorist attacks out in the open on Facebook who will suddenly switch to Telegram if Facebook becomes party to civil suits.

Working back to your previous argument, the idea that the legal juggernauts of the big social networks will protect them while smaller sites self-censor is directly contradictory to what you say about fake news migrating to fringe sites. There's certainly less financial burden on a small site with less traffic to regulate what's posted, and as it stands, small sites do have to regulate what's posted, so it wouldn't be much more difficult. The only people who have broad exemptions over their liability for what's posted, currently, are the big social media sites. So let them spend that good money on their lawyers.

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