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DOJ unveils proposed Section 230 legislation

justice.gov

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Re: DOJ unveils proposed Section 230 legislation

#361

Post by zbyte64 »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #335
sgift wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Courts are easily tricked, the hacks needed are just different from what most programmers assume them to be. The whole job of lawyers is hacking the court to get a more favorable outcome. If this wasn't true it wouldn't matter which lawyer you have since the court would always interpret law in exactly the same way.

> If this wasn't true it wouldn't matter which lawyer you have since the court would always interpret law in exactly the same way Have you ever litigated? Litigation isn’t about “hacking” the court. If that’s how a lawyer is selling themselves, you’re being taken for a ride. Cases are about resolving novel ambiguities in the law. The vast majority of disputes never make it to court. The two sides lawyer up and one of…

Courts are made up of humans. Good lawyers put time into jury and judge/jurisdiction selection. Good firms hire former court staffers that know the judges presiding over the case. It's not meant to be easy to game the courts because it's a privilege.

Re: DOJ unveils proposed Section 230 legislation

#362

Post by zbyte64 »

pico303 wrote: post #198
shadowgovt wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Laws aren’t like code. Laws are like specifications...everyone has their own interpretation.

Yet code is meant to conform to specifications. Removing the specifications doesn't make the code any more clear.

Re: DOJ unveils proposed Section 230 legislation

#363

Post by leetcrew »

ByteJockey wrote: post #291
leetcrew wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> libertarians who essentially argue that one core principle should guide their political philosophy. this isn't really true of libertarianism even. the word "aggression" from the NAP does a lot of heavy lifting and is subject to a lot of different interpretations.

I've always heard aggression defined as roughly: Initiating or threatening any forceful action against an individual or their property Is your complaint that the boundaries of "threatening" are too squishy?

yes, "threatening" and even "forceful" are subject to interpretation.

suppose you see me walking around town with a rifle. is that threatening? maybe not if you're comfortable with open carry, but what if I do it on the sidewalk in front of your house?

is it a violation of NAP to not wear a mask during a pandemic? what if I've already tested positive for covid and am refusing to quarantine? or what if I know that I have a detectable viral load for HIV and have sex without informing my partner?

another interesting example: if you accept the claim that racist speech is an implicit threat of violence, you can use NAP to justify deplatforming.

you can make NAP imply almost any position you want, depending on how you interpret it. only a very specific and narrow interpretation implies the typical positions held by (US) libertarians.

Re: DOJ unveils proposed Section 230 legislation

#364

Post by rat87 »

__blockcipher__ wrote: post #322
nkozyra wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well "legitimate" is open for interpretation. I'd say this administration has resonated with its base by treating bans as politically-motivated.

They are politically motivated. For example, I’ve been banned from Twitter for defending Kyle Rittenhouse, who engaged in lawful self defense against a number of violent assailants. Why? Because the left has decided it serves their interests to paint him as a mass murderer (indeed Facebook has an official policy that he is a mass murderer). Facebook also regularly censors viral pro-trump content and project veritas h…

I'm guessing that's because "viral pro Trump content" is very frequently xenophobic& racist content, includes calls to violence and is full of conspiracy theories. If a site doesn't moderate that sort of stuff, it frequently goes to shit, I know inadequate moderation on that front had made reddit much much worse.

Also this sort of stuff can lead to real world violence like when Facebook let violent vigilantes organize on their site it led to Kyle Rittenhouse killing two people.

Re: DOJ unveils proposed Section 230 legislation

#365

Post by nkozyra »

__blockcipher__ wrote: post #322
nkozyra wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well "legitimate" is open for interpretation. I'd say this administration has resonated with its base by treating bans as politically-motivated.

They are politically motivated. For example, I’ve been banned from Twitter for defending Kyle Rittenhouse, who engaged in lawful self defense against a number of violent assailants. Why? Because the left has decided it serves their interests to paint him as a mass murderer (indeed Facebook has an official policy that he is a mass murderer). Facebook also regularly censors viral pro-trump content and project veritas h…

I've seen a lot of retellings of why someone was banned that end up being a bit generous, particularly if experienced first hand.

It's tough to take these at face value because we trust and believe in the things that define our ideology and take any challenge to our presentation of that as an attack on the underlying ideology.

Re: DOJ unveils proposed Section 230 legislation

#366

Post by mullingitover »

anonHacker2 wrote: post #315
mullingitover wrote: post #71

What's stopping web sites from getting around all this with some basic changes to their terms of use?

Subparagraph (c)1(B) says that the only safe harbor for removing content is (c)(2). (c)(2)(A) restricts the criteria that can be used to remove content to the following: "obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, promoting terrorism or violent extremism, harassing, promoting self-harm, or unlawful". Furthermore, section (c)(1)(C) implies that removing ANY content by a user could make the forum liable fo…

I'm talking about abandoning the 230 safe harbor protections (since this bill would render them worthless), and instead requiring in their TOU that posters agree to assume full liability for content they post, and also agree that anything they post can be removed for any reason. Existing users would be prompted to agree to these terms, and if not their accounts would be wiped.

Re: DOJ unveils proposed Section 230 legislation

#367

Post by gwright »

sailfast wrote: post #352
gwright wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are there so many people here surprised that executive departments participate in proposing legislation? It seems like completely normal activity to me.

It’s not normal to write draft legislation. It is normal to have a legislative affairs office that works with Congress on all sorts of things but to propose draft legislation is weird. Agencies typically try to avoid doing this as it could adversely impact their funding moving forward. Why fund an agency that already has enough money to fund a lobbying arm? It’s a norm more than a rule but it’s a thing in my experien…

This report suggests that this sort of thing is not uncommon but that it rarely takes the form of a complete bill, which is closer to your term "draft legislation".

Redlining an existing statute with changes is what the DOJ published and is closer to what I was getting at when I said "participate in proposing legislation".

https://www.acus.gov/sites/default/files/documents/technical...

Re: DOJ unveils proposed Section 230 legislation

#368

Post by gwright »

sailfast wrote: post #354
gwright wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It happens all the time. It is a completely mundane part of the daily functioning of government.

In my experience this is not at all normal. Any more examples off-hand if agencies writing draft legislation? Not talking rulemaking, talking actual law. Would happily be proven wrong here but it’s something I have actively seen agencies avoid in the past, so I’m curious where you’ve seen this kind of overt draft legislation written.

See my response to your other comment above.

Re: DOJ unveils proposed Section 230 legislation

#369

Post by gwright »

ashtonkem wrote: post #350
gwright wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I mean that the DOJ's opinion on what the law should be is literally without merit Same for the CDC, FDA, EPA, IRS, HHS, etc.? I suppose the President should also be forbidden from proposing legislation and for asking any of his agencies for proposals also? This is an untenable position, IMHO.

I never said “forbidden”, that’s obviously untenable. Even people I don’t like have the right to say thinks I don’t want them to say; I’m speaking of norms and social pressure. I’m saying that we should tell those who will wield the power to pound sand when it comes to what powers they should get. Ideally the president should not be proposing legislation, that is not their role in this democratic republic. One could…

It seems completely infeasible to me to think that Congress and its staff is capable of drafting reasonable legislation without considerable input from the executive agencies.

I understand the general conflict of interest you are concerned about but that is why there are separate branches. The executive branch can only propose and/or respond to inquiries, they can't actually introduce legislation.

(I'm just going to ignore the rabbit hole of regulatory contruction here as that is another can of worms)

Re: DOJ unveils proposed Section 230 legislation

#370

Post by samatman »

saurik wrote: post #344
samatman wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> [iCloud Backup] should be end-to-end encrypted, but explicitly isn't Just keep in mind that, when you say it should be , what you're saying is that Apple should make iCloud Backup work in such a way that, if the user loses the keys, Apple is completely unable to help them recover their data. And, I don't agree. I can support it as an opt-in feature, but wouldn't use it; I expect sensitive applications, such as Sign…

Fun story bro, but in the real world Apple agreed with my position and only didn't go through with it because of the FBI. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple-fbi-icloud-exclusiv... The reality is that there are tons of obvious alternative solutions to user secure key escrow other than "lose access to your data".

Ok, point taken, TIL.

Serves me right for not checking the user name before replying...

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