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

DOJ unveils proposed Section 230 legislation

justice.gov

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 392 posts

Re: DOJ unveils proposed Section 230 legislation

#151

Post by donatj »

buhhh wrote: post #143
donatj wrote: post #135

The argument is always made that the First Amendment doesn't protect speech hosted on corporate servers. I don't agree, I believe if you're operating without individual content review, you're hosting speech in the same way a telephone company is, but sure, I'll let you have it.. Regardless, that's where Article 19 of the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights comes in. > "Everyone has the right to freedom of opin…

Well the first amendment isn't Article 19 of the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Not sure where you're going with that.

The point is that speech hosted on "new frontiers" is protected by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, regardless to whether or not it's protected by the First Amendment.

Re: DOJ unveils proposed Section 230 legislation

#152

Post by ti00 »

beervirus wrote: post #139
hawkice wrote: post #133

Unsurprisingly, this is pretty horrifying for anyone who cares about either the 1st or 4th amendments (and the 5th amendment considerations of 'you can't blind yourself to bad content stuff', that's amazingly bad). 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.

It blows my mind that anyone who purports to care about the first amendment would argue that we shouldn’t “allow these people to draft language or make any statements on the record of what they think the law ought to be.”

There is a difference between an individual acting in their individual capacity and an entire department of the federal government.

Re: DOJ unveils proposed Section 230 legislation

#153

Post by CobrastanJorji »

hughw wrote: post #97
analyte123 wrote: post #24

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?

I had no idea Samaritans were an extant group of people, but Wikipedia tells me that there are around 1,000 people who self-identify as Samaritan, mostly around Mount Gerizim and Tel Aviv. Fascinating.

Re: DOJ unveils proposed Section 230 legislation

#154

Post by qball »

saurik wrote: post #98
treis wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 practi…

That impression is correct; the precedent is here (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cubby,_Inc._v._CompuServe_Inc.).

A lot of people don't really seem to understand that about S. 230- services that exist basically to pass messages have never needed the protection and that won't change. The best example outside of messaging services is probably content delivery networks, and I'll pick on CloudFlare because they're a great example.

As long as CloudFlare is fine with just taking money and serving content, no matter whose it is, they have the legal immunity as intended. As soon as they decide (on a whim) to deny service based on content, as they did a while back, that legal immunity vanishes. It would be catastrophic to their business to make that decision (especially considering everything else CloudFlare hosts), and that's the point.

It's also very interesting considering that the changes also appear to affect Patreon (and similar) and, perhaps a bigger deal, PayPal, since it's an interactive computer service used to fund the creation of information (among other things). In fact, I think that's an even bigger deal, because it's not necessarily traditional platforms banning certain people that causes them to be denied a platform these days, it's the inability of them to get funding in a way that isn't "send cash to this PO Box".

Re: DOJ unveils proposed Section 230 legislation

#155

Post by shadowgovt »

yunohn wrote: post #121
jakelazaroff wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I think this is a systemic issue on hackernews. People forgetting reality exists, and always pointing at the rules and acting as if they're infallible. You'd think /hackers/ would understand that rules are for show. I've seen this regarding serious legislation like this or even something as mundane as Apple's app store "guidelines".

> You'd think hackers would understand that rules are for show.

I may be misinterpreting your wording here (my apologies if I am), but I'd assume the opposite. I'd think people who operate in a realm where text becomes action executed by a machine designed wholly around faithful, reliable execution of text fed to it would come to learn the reality-defining power of rules.

Re: DOJ unveils proposed Section 230 legislation

#156

Post by mbreese »

pwinnski wrote: post #79
ROARosen wrote: post #77

I don't care for most of it except this: >> Carve-Out for Actors Who Purposefully Blind Themselves and Law Enforcement to Illicit Material >>...it makes little sense to apply “Good Samaritan” immunity to a provider that intentionally designs or operates its services in a way that impairs its ability to identify criminal activity occurring on (or through) its services, or to produce relevant information to government…

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’m not sure that I see why Apple would need Section 230 protection... why do you think they do?

Re: DOJ unveils proposed Section 230 legislation

#157

Post by hughw »

t-writescode wrote: post #106
hughw wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any actual Samaritans out there? How do you feel about that language?

It’s a reference to the Biblical parable of the Good Samaritan. It’s not some racist jab.

I well understand that. My question is whether modern day residents of, or emigrants from, Samaria feel comfortable with the Bad Samaritan characterization. If it were a large demographic in the U.S., there might be a reaction. Then the question becomes, how large a population do you need before you have to speak carefully about a group.

Re: DOJ unveils proposed Section 230 legislation

#158

Post by shadowgovt »

pwinnski wrote: post #79
ROARosen wrote: post #77

I don't care for most of it except this: >> Carve-Out for Actors Who Purposefully Blind Themselves and Law Enforcement to Illicit Material >>...it makes little sense to apply “Good Samaritan” immunity to a provider that intentionally designs or operates its services in a way that impairs its ability to identify criminal activity occurring on (or through) its services, or to produce relevant information to government…

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 think it's written with 8chan in mind.

Re: DOJ unveils proposed Section 230 legislation

#159

Post by shadowgovt »

ROARosen wrote: post #77

I don't care for most of it except this: >> Carve-Out for Actors Who Purposefully Blind Themselves and Law Enforcement to Illicit Material >>...it makes little sense to apply “Good Samaritan” immunity to a provider that intentionally designs or operates its services in a way that impairs its ability to identify criminal activity occurring on (or through) its services, or to produce relevant information to government…

An anti-8chan interpretation. "If everyone is Anonymous, we're just going to treat it like the actions coming from your service are your actions."

Fascinating.

Re: DOJ unveils proposed Section 230 legislation

#160

Post by syspec »

comex wrote: post #104
slowmovintarget wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The legislation asks them to take their finger off the scales, not put it on the other side. > The current interpretations of Section 230 have enabled online platforms to hide behind the immunity to censor lawful speech in bad faith and is inconsistent with their own terms of service. To remedy this, the department’s legislative proposal revises and clarifies the existing language of Section 230 and replaces vague te…

> The legislation asks them to take their finger off the scales, not put it on the other side. Yes. But the notion that tech companies are putting a "finger on the scales" in favor of liberals is the conservatives' perspective. Another perspective is that they're banning categories of speech, such as misinformation and hate speech, which just happen to be more prevalent on the conservative side.

This!
Post reply on HN