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

ISPs should not police online speech no matter how awful it is

eff.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 1001 posts

Re: ISPs should not police online speech no matter how awful it is

#71

Post by yanderekko »

another_story wrote: post #24
zer8k wrote: post #14

The ACLU will absolutely oppose this. If not for the reason they stand to make a lot of money suing ISPs for "not doing enough" to stop the big-ole-meanies online. I see ISPs blocking "mean speech" to "protect people" as another symptom of the enshittification of the internet. I legitimately cannot understand problems in this arena because you can just...walk away from your computer. Or turn off the website. Or hey,…

In the past the ACLU has defended hate groups right to freedom of speech. Do you have evidence that they'd do something to the contrary?

I mean, to be fair this doesn't really pertain to the sort of Constitutional legal questions that the ACLU famously takes a hardline stance on. I don't think the ACLU endorsing private censorship is clearly at odds with their overall mission. (As opposed to say their going soft on hate speech laws, which clearly has 1A implications.)

Re: ISPs should not police online speech no matter how awful it is

#72

Post by drewcoo »

cmh89 wrote: post #51
gorwell wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Censors made the same argument with the Printing Press and since time immemorial. Censorship has always been on the wrong side of history and it still is. Speaking of abusing systems, censors end up being the worst bad guys who imagine themselves as the good guys protecting you from the bad guys. EFF understands the long history of this issue.

[flagged]

I actually hope that AI can allow people to have "child" pornography without children being exploited. If anything, that should be encouraged and made legal.

As the kiddie porn crusaders like to say, "think of the children."

Re: ISPs should not police online speech no matter how awful it is

#73

Post by Gartent »

jfengel wrote: post #3
freedomben wrote: post #2

> But just because there’s a serious problem doesn’t mean that every response is a good one. This is a fantastic line, one that I'm tucking away for future use.

The EFF's response is not a good one, either. The previous sentence is: "We fully support criminal and civil liability for those who abuse and harass others." That's not sufficient. These are extremely slow mechanisms, when they work at all. The harassed individual can suffer for years, and the EFF isn't rushing out to aid them. As their post says, "law enforcement and legislators have failed". The Internet is differ…

"The system is broken, we need vigilantes"

Re: ISPs should not police online speech no matter how awful it is

#74

Post by toast0 »

explanatorygap wrote: post #17

EFF is on the wrong side of this, just as they were on the wrong side of the debates about what to do about spam email back in the day. They're committed to the view that the only acceptable place to block any flow of information (which they define very broadly) is at the receiving user's end and that the end user must personally opt-in. This is completely at odds with the last 30 years of experience on the internet…

There's two issues here:

a) should online speech be policed

b) if so, who should do it?

We don't let phone companies police the content of phone calls, and we don't let delivery services police the content of letters/packages, so why would we let ISPs police the content of network packets?

Exceptions exist: you can't send most live animals by mail, packages are subject to inspection at customs borders, etc. But any sort of monitoring of content would need either clear evidence of danger, signs of abusing the network, or court involvement.

If this content is so terrible that it deserves to be removed from the internet by any means necessary, shouldn't the process be that a court of competent jurisdiction should be able to issue an order requiring the site to be taken down. If the proprietors of the site bring it up through another ISP, not a party to the original order, a new order could be issued as well as holding the proprietors in contempt, presumably.

Jurisdiction issues on content are hairy, but jurisdiction issues on ISP connections are easy, the connections happen in specific locations, and you can order the connection severed at either end of the connection (as well as in between the ends).

Re: ISPs should not police online speech no matter how awful it is

#75

Post by amiga386 »

mortenjorck wrote: post #8

It's heartening to see the EFF come out sticking to principles on this in a time when other organizations of their stature have not. I hate to say it, but I could easily imagine something like the ACLU opposing the EFF on this.

Indeed, the ACLU have lost their way.

https://web.archive.org/web/20210608004853/https://www.nytim...

> the organization finds itself riven with internal tensions over whether it has stepped away from a founding principle — unwavering devotion to the First Amendment.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Civil_Liberties_Union...

> Beginning in 2017, some individuals claimed the ACLU was reducing its support of unpopular free speech (specifically by declining to defend speech made by conservatives) in favor of identity politics, political correctness, and progressivism.

Re: ISPs should not police online speech no matter how awful it is

#76

Post by wmf »

vuavu wrote: post #65
explanatorygap wrote: post #17

EFF is on the wrong side of this, just as they were on the wrong side of the debates about what to do about spam email back in the day. They're committed to the view that the only acceptable place to block any flow of information (which they define very broadly) is at the receiving user's end and that the end user must personally opt-in. This is completely at odds with the last 30 years of experience on the internet…

Doesn't seem similar to this. You receive spam unwillingly, but you have to enter that forum and participate on purpose.

Not if they're organizing attacks on you.

Re: ISPs should not police online speech no matter how awful it is

#77

Post by yanderekko »

shortformblog wrote: post #56

I'd argue that there are legitimate safety concerns that trump speech in this particular case. But I think EFF would have a stronger case if we had common carriers following net neutrality laws. Content decisions are in the hands of upstream ISPs because we don't have the right regulations in place. EFF has clearly tried here. The case is strong. But it's the edge cases where we need the net neutrality regulations mo…

>I'd argue that there are legitimate safety concerns that trump speech in this particular case.

What makes HE well-positioned to be able to determine what constitutes a "legitimate safety concern"? What happens when a pro-life organization or a corrupt politician starts leaning on ISPs to enforce their own views of what constitutes a "legitimate safety concern"?

Cloudflare denied service to KF on an imminent threat to people's lives, which could have been justified on a short term basis. Their refusal to reinstate service months later strains the credulity of this rationale, and shows that it was never really the goal.

I'm going to guess that if we ever get a post-mortem on what really is happening inside HE, what we'll find is not "a well-reasoned, dispassionate debate occurred and a consensus was reached in favor of censorship". Instead it will be like "someone powerful in the company made a unilateral decision and dissent was absent because everyone understood that it would have negative career consequences."

Re: ISPs should not police online speech no matter how awful it is

#78

Post by ibizaman »

cmh89 wrote: post #45
ibizaman wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted from the article: > When a person uses a room in a house to engage in illegal or just terrible activity, we don’t call on the electric company to cut off the light and heat to the entire house, or the post office to stop delivering mail. We know that this will backfire in the long run. Instead, we go after the bad guys themselves and hold them accountable. Although I see your point, the quote above made me swi…

If you lived next door to a house that had become a drug spot, would you find it acceptable to call the landlord, tell them what's happening, and then ask them to investigate and evict? I sure would.

The landlord, yes. The electric company directly, bypassing the landlord, probably not.

Re: ISPs should not police online speech no matter how awful it is

#79

Post by cmh89 »

drewcoo wrote: post #72
cmh89 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I actually hope that AI can allow people to have "child" pornography without children being exploited. If anything, that should be encouraged and made legal. As the kiddie porn crusaders like to say, "think of the children."

That's not really the question I asked, and I'm not sure how your response is relevant.

Re: ISPs should not police online speech no matter how awful it is

#80

Post by yanderekko »

gravitate wrote: post #12

I hit CTRL+F to find the word 'neutral' in this article, but no such word appeared. But it did appear in another EFF article titled 'We Need to Talk About Infrastructure'[0], which is the crux of the issue here. My only question is; what is regarded 'internet infrastructure' these days? Is Cloudflare really just an ISP? Is VPN infra considered an ISP? Are mixer nets like Tor/Hyphanet an ISP? 'Essential internet infra…

Net neutrality stopped being a concern when activists decided that it was to their overall advantage to ally with powerful, censorious corporations in order to combat right-wing speech .
Post reply on HN