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Re: Section 230 is in trouble -- at last !

Posted: Fri Oct 08, 2021 10:30 pm
by ericbarbour
"If You Want To Know Why Section 230 Matters, Just Ask Wikimedia: Without It, There'd Be No Wikipedia"

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20211 ... edia.shtml

Prominently mentioned: the Nathaniel White lawsuit against the WMF, which was decided in the WMF's favor (as usual).

Not mentioned: the WMF now has so much goddamn money, they can easily afford to fight off occasional lawsuits.

Re: Section 230 is in trouble -- at last !

Posted: Sat Oct 09, 2021 2:03 am
by ericbarbour
a rather lame try by archive.org to scare people into supporting Section 230:
https://www.engadget.com/internet-archi ... 36050.html
A Wayforward subsite includes a timeline of things that might go awry in the coming years, starting with the repeal of section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which protects websites and internet platforms from being liable for things that users post. A repeal could have enormous consequences for the web, though some, such as Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, have proposed that the provision should be reformed.

The timeline includes some other wild-but-not-inconceivable suggestions, such as a law allowing corporations to copyright facts, forcing Wikipedia to move to the Dark Web, and more countries introducing their own versions of China's Great Firewall. The Internet Archive teamed up with several digital rights organizations for this project, including the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Fight for the Future and the Wikimedia Foundation. The subsite includes resources on how to help protect freely available information.
It's POSSIBLE some of this might happen. In fact, some already has. Many commercial websites already have either paywalls or incessant pop-ups, or both. Try looking at a Gizmodo Media site without an adblocker.

Still seems like crude and heavy-handed propagandizing. Mentions of 1984 usually end up looking like mentions of Hitler: someone's trying to troll someone else.

By the by, did I ever mention how much of the mountain of info on Kahle's site is supposedly "abandoned" content? Numerous books, magazines, newsletters, films, images etc. that were put out by long defunct outfits, or are just too old to bother with. Usually no one steps forward with solid copyright claims so it just sits. As far as we know anyway......Kahle is just as secretive as any other web-libertarian-digerati-whatever type. I have yet to find a page on archive.org listing past copyright claims or lawsuits against them.

Unlike Wikipedia, where they have hilarious noticeboards full of whining and bitching and general stupidity, archive.org is almost an inscrutable blank wall.

Re: Section 230 is in trouble -- at last !

Posted: Wed Oct 13, 2021 6:26 pm
by ericbarbour
Facebook policy dude/failed UK politician Nick Clegg has written an op-ed for USA Today confirming what has been obvious to everyone who understands Section 230, but (for reasons I don't quite understand) seems obscured from basically every politician out there: Facebook wants to destroy Section 230. And it's practically giddy that politicians are so eager to grant it its wish, while pretending that doing so will somehow hurt Facebook.

It remains absolutely bizarre to me that many people still believe that getting rid of Section 230 (or even reforming it) is a way to "stop" or "hurt" Facebook. Section 230 is a protection for the users of the internet more than it is for the companies. By making it clear that companies are not liable for user speech, it makes more websites willing to host user speech, especially smaller ones which could easily be sued out of existence. Indeed, over the last couple of years, it's become clear that Facebook desperately wants to kill Section 230 because it knows that it alone has enough money to handle the liability, and removing Section 230 will really only burden the startups that threaten to take users away from Facebook.
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20211 ... ants.shtml
Please don't tell me you're "surprised" or "shocked".

Re: Section 230 is in trouble -- at last !

Posted: Thu Dec 30, 2021 3:13 am
by ericbarbour
"Those Who Don't Understand Section 230 Are Doomed To Repeal It"

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20211 ... l-it.shtml
And, in fact, we know how this plays out in practice because we've seen it in the copyright context. Given Baker's earlier research and writings into copyright, you'd hope he'd understand this, but he seems to have not bothered. In the early days of user-generated video content online, there were a large number of companies that rushed into the space. YouTube took an early lead, but there were many others, including Veoh. Both YouTube and Veoh were sued for copyright infringement. In copyright, there's no Section 230. Rather there's the DMCA 512 safe harbors, but (unlike Section 230) you have to fight out in court as to whether or not you comply with the factors to get the 512 safe harbors.

In YouTube's case, with the help of Google money, it had to fight Viacom in court for seven whole years, and it would have gone on longer, but after Viacom kept losing every single legal argument it made, the company finally agreed to settle without any money changing hands. Veoh, on the other hand, a site founded by Hollywood insiders like former Disney boss Michael Eisner, fought for many years in its similar lawsuit which it eventually won, but only three years after the company had shut down, citing the expensive litigation as driving the company out of business.
The asshole with the most money wins, and only unilateral government action can say otherwise. I'm starting to get a vague impression that the beltway doesn't really have the balls to repeal 230. Kick the can down the road until after the next election, forever?

The Little Succ still wins eventually.....

Re: Section 230 is in trouble -- at last !

Posted: Mon Jan 03, 2022 9:14 am
by oranges33
Wikipedia just rejected letting in what seemed to be an aggressive Section 230 reform push article by Megan Twohey and another respected NYTimes journalist.

https://archive.ph/hNnwG#Incel

You can see there. They rejected it on being month old news, and yet stuff their incel article with news the week of

Re: Section 230 is in trouble -- at last !

Posted: Tue Jan 25, 2022 8:35 pm
by ericbarbour
Techdirt is always a good source for stories like this:

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20220 ... book.shtml
The underlying story here is tragic: two men, who were a part of the "boogaloo bois" (one of the many extremist groups who believe that a new civil war is coming, and that they need to help it along), killed a Federal Protective Services officer, Dave Patrick Underwood. They literally believed that this was part of the process to start this civil war. Its quite understandable while Underwood's family would be furious about this, and the two murderers are going to be in prison for a long, long time.

But trying to demand money from Facebook?

The entire complaint argues that because the two murderers talked on Facebook, Facebook is somehow responsible. It tries to get around Section 230 by arguing that the murderers found each other due to Facebook's algorithms, and somehow that gets around Section 230 (it doesn't).
He's probably right. This appears to be an attempt by the families to scrape some "go-away money" from Meta using public embarrassment. It's nothing for a guy who can easily afford to wipe his ass with $100 bills.

It is also still possible Zucc and his minions would support Sec 230 repeal--if it destroyed or discouraged their competitors. The "mighty empire of old people screaming about libruls and vaccines" would probably survive, by cracking down on its user speech even harder.

Zucc is like the bastard child of Rupert Murdoch. A corporate mercenary with a tabloid userbase, out to destroy or buy up everything else.

https://www.eurasiareview.com/04012022- ... -analysis/

Re: Section 230 is in trouble -- at last !

Posted: Tue Jan 25, 2022 8:56 pm
by ericbarbour
and speaking of Trump (sorry this is getting off the WMF topic but that always happens when Sec 230 is the subject)
Trump is famously angry about the way tech firms police content—screaming at the mods of general discussion that they’re discriminating against proud, god-fearing patriots is sort of his thing, to the point where it became one of the cornerstone planks of his administration. In addition to endlessly yelling about things like shadow bans, he was an advocate of tearing up Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, the law that gives websites extensive legal shields against liability for most kinds of user-generated content. He even went so far as to propose a plan to turn the Federal Communications Commission into a sort of online speech police that would fine social media sites he saw as censoring conservatives.
https://gizmodo.com/trump-truth-social- ... 1848414580

Re: Section 230 is in trouble -- at last !

Posted: Tue Feb 08, 2022 9:17 pm
by ericbarbour
another reminder that the UK has only a very vague idea of "free speech": this is a really badly written law, and it's getting worse.

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20220 ... lice.shtml

Ironically, this will make the entire web more similar to Facebook--because they already do very similar censorship. I suspect the MPs know this and think everyone online can be forced to comply.

Meanwhile? Facebook/Meta is preparing to bail out of the EU. Because they don't like the EU's data privacy rules. Whiners.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... isters-say

Re: Section 230 is in trouble -- at last !

Posted: Fri Apr 29, 2022 8:24 pm
by ericbarbour
Yeah, that's not how to do it.........

https://gizmodo.com/marjorie-taylor-gre ... 1848860779

As I noted elsewhere, Twitter can't seem to make up their minds whether to permaban Taylor-Greene or not. Obviously she would love to "punish" Twitter and thinks this is the way to accomplish it. So, she would allow porn and pedophilic content, just as long as no one muzzles her rants about Covid vaccines? O-kayyyyy.

Re: Section 230 is in trouble -- at last !

Posted: Wed May 04, 2022 9:37 am
by Kumioko
The thing with wikimedia lawsuits is they generally try to sue wikimedia who fights it off under 230 and since they have nearly endless money they can bury lawsuits in endless litigation. They dont even have to win, just outspend them until they exhaust their resources.

What people need to start doing is going after the editors doing the edits. Its doubtful the WMF would throw as much if any resources at helping editors. So the lawsuits would likely be more successful.