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EFF: Online Speech is Only as Strong as the Weakest Intermediary

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Re: EFF: Online Speech is Only as Strong as the Weakest Intermediary

#21

Post by rdl »

grellas wrote: post #8

This is not a happy situation for the intermediary service providers for a variety of reasons: 1. They are not in business to be martyrs for a cause or to take unnecessary risks unrelated to their core business goals. 2. This piece correctly points out that the media cannot be subjected to prior restraints in publishing protectable speech. However, the 1971 New York Times (Pentagon Papers) case left open the obvious…

The cost imposed in dealing with (and maybe falling to) a major concerted denial of service attack should also be included -- if Amazon went down for a single hour during holiday season (or even was slower in responding to customer queries), it would cost Amazon a lot more than they could earn in money and goodwill from wikileaks.

Re: EFF: Online Speech is Only as Strong as the Weakest Intermediary

#22

Post by jacquesm »

angrycoder wrote: post #17

I would say the US government is doing an awesome job of suppressing the information contained in the leaks. They have successfully steered the conversations regarding Wikileaks towards a battle of ideals. The content of the leaks is almost a footnote in the coverage I've seen and read, that applies doubly to Hacker News.

They may like the outcome of this particular discussion a lot less than the worst fall-out from the leaks though.

Re: EFF: Online Speech is Only as Strong as the Weakest Intermediary

#23

Post by Estragon »

alexqgb wrote: post #15

Somewhere in all this furor, I saw 'demagogued' used as a verb. As in "No, don't say it like that - it'll get demagogued. Frame it like this instead..." That was a first for me. Initially, it seemed like an ugly development. But then I realized that it was probably a good thing, since it means that a real problem is getting a proper name. That's a critical step towards a viable solution.

For what it's worth, I first heard that term approximately 15 years ago.

Re: EFF: Online Speech is Only as Strong as the Weakest Intermediary

#24

Post by rbanffy »

alexqgb wrote: post #15

Somewhere in all this furor, I saw 'demagogued' used as a verb. As in "No, don't say it like that - it'll get demagogued. Frame it like this instead..." That was a first for me. Initially, it seemed like an ugly development. But then I realized that it was probably a good thing, since it means that a real problem is getting a proper name. That's a critical step towards a viable solution.

In English, you can verb anything.

Re: EFF: Online Speech is Only as Strong as the Weakest Intermediary

#25

Post by tomjen3 »

grellas wrote: post #8

This is not a happy situation for the intermediary service providers for a variety of reasons: 1. They are not in business to be martyrs for a cause or to take unnecessary risks unrelated to their core business goals. 2. This piece correctly points out that the media cannot be subjected to prior restraints in publishing protectable speech. However, the 1971 New York Times (Pentagon Papers) case left open the obvious…

Why would the US even have jurisdiction in this case? The act happened outside the US, did it not?

Re: EFF: Online Speech is Only as Strong as the Weakest Intermediary

#26

Post by piguy314 »

Amazon should have waited for a court order or at the very LEAST a lawsuit before killing the site. My cursory analysis of the legal implications seems to indicate they would be protected by Section 230 of The Communications Decency Act (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230_of_the_Communicatio...) but I may have missed something. Maybe someone with more legal expertise could chime in.

Re: EFF: Online Speech is Only as Strong as the Weakest Intermediary

#27

Post by dnsworks »

It seems to me that Amazon has set a dangerous legal precedence for the hosting industry in general. Except for DMCA takedown notices, ISPs have been able to uphold that they do not own their customers' content (the earliest big case I can think about was when the Scientologists sued Netcom, and everybody else in the world).
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