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WMF worries about "intermediary liability"

Posted: Tue Jul 03, 2018 7:49 pm
by Daniel Brandt
And guess what, this July 11, 2018 event will be held at Cloudflare HQ. That's TWO evil intermediaries conspiring already!

Description:
According to one recent poll, 84 percent of Americans believe that tech platforms should be held legally responsible for the content they carry. American companies, the government, and the public are rethinking the rules governing intermediary liability, and change has already begun with SESTA/FOSTA. Although small and mid-sized technology companies are perceived as members of Silicon Valley’s affluent corporate sphere, they may be unable to implement costly programs like Facebook’s hiring of 3,000 new content monitors to comply with new laws. Join the Wikimedia Foundation for a discussion on responding to future legislation and the impact of intermediary liability proposals on companies of varying sizes. Confirmed panelists include Daphne Keller, director of intermediary liability at the Stanford Center for Internet and Society; Paul Sieminski, general counsel at Automattic/WordPress; Peter Menell, Koret professor of law and director of the Berkeley Center for Law & Technology; and Leighanna Mixter, legal counsel at the Wikimedia Foundation.

Re: WMF worries about "intermediary liability"

Posted: Wed Jul 04, 2018 6:44 pm
by CrowsNest
The problem is that people don't seem to understand that sites like Wikipedia are already legally responsible for their content. The issue any polls needs to settle, is whether the people think the decision of not proactively monitoring it so as to avoid the cost of proactively monitoring it, is ethical.

Re: WMF worries about "intermediary liability"

Posted: Wed Jul 04, 2018 7:06 pm
by Graaf Statler
Of course they are, but because the internet is rather young it is very hard to sue them.
And THAT is the real reason they complete freaked out because of that new European regulation. Because it has nothing direct to do with copyright, all this regulations are because the big American internet firms has to pay for protected material in the future. That is new, and that is what they don't want.
And that will be there end. Because, I don't think Google and Facebook are is still willing to suport them when they can be fined by the EU if they are using WP rubbish. And I am petty sure the rest of the world including America follows soon the EU.

https://www.billboard.com/articles/busi ... e-uk-music

Re: WMF worries about "intermediary liability"

Posted: Thu Jul 05, 2018 5:14 am
by The End
Meanwhile in California, Section 230 is still an effective shield. I'm curious if the appeal (which I assume goes to the federal courts now) will eventually move up to the U.S. Supreme Court?

https://www.theverge.com/2018/7/3/17530 ... california

Re: WMF worries about "intermediary liability"

Posted: Thu Jul 05, 2018 8:11 am
by ericbarbour
The End wrote:Meanwhile in California, Section 230 is still an effective shield. I'm curious if the appeal (which I assume goes to the federal courts now) will eventually move up to the U.S. Supreme Court?

In which case nothing California does will matter. Once court decisions settle US law on an area like this, it's done and Wikimedia will have no choice but to move out of the US. They can't go to Europe so they will have to find a country with lax Internet law AND none of the censorship practiced by places like China (most of Asia in fact), the Middle East or some former Soviet countries. Wikipedians know this is a problem because they have a massive article and category on it. They know they are hanging by a thread.

You must understand: the loss of Section 230 would be death for Wikimedia and its looney followers. I will bet good serious money that WMF employees are losing sleep and grinding their teeth right now--and they will deny it violently if asked.

How many times did I predict that the Internet would eventually be subject to the same censorship, regulation and taxation every other communications medium has endured before? It's inevitable and even Google's well-paid legal team can't stop it. Nothing has escaped eventual government regulation. The Web is a weird outlier, given special hands-off treatment for the past 20 years. There are people in Congress going "we need to tax that" and there have been since the Net was opened to the public in 1994-1995.

Re: WMF worries about "intermediary liability"

Posted: Thu Jul 05, 2018 8:28 am
by Strelnikov
ericbarbour wrote:
The End wrote:Meanwhile in California, Section 230 is still an effective shield. I'm curious if the appeal (which I assume goes to the federal courts now) will eventually move up to the U.S. Supreme Court?

In which case nothing California does will matter. Once court decisions settle US law on an area like this, it's done and Wikimedia will have no choice but to move out of the US. They can't go to Europe so they will have to find a country with lax Internet law AND none of the censorship practiced by places like China (most of Asia in fact), the Middle East or some former Soviet countries. Wikipedians know this is a problem because they have a massive article on it.

You must understand: the loss of Section 230 would be death for Wikimedia and its looney followers. I will bet good serious money that WMF employees are losing sleep and grinding their teeth right now--and they will deny it violently if asked.

How many times did I predict that the Internet would eventually be subject to the same censorship, regulation and taxation every other communications medium has endured before? It's inevitable and even Google's well-paid legal team can't stop it. Nothing has escaped eventual government regulation. The Web is a weird outlier, given special hands-off treatment for the past 20 years. There are people in Congress going "we need to tax that" and there have been since the Net was opened to the public in 1994-1995.


What aboot Canada, eh?



Has the Great White North finally come into it's own by letting Jimbo and crew stay there? Can they stay there?


The true Canadian anthem.

Maybe they will have to deal with calls from Jon Steinberg:




Re: WMF worries about "intermediary liability"

Posted: Thu Jul 05, 2018 8:35 am
by ericbarbour
Strelnikov wrote:What aboot Canada, eh?

Since Australia now has an official list of "condemned URLs", Canada or some little-considered country with really lax laws might be their only chance. Since Canada doesn't have a real "First Amendment", there will be problems anyway.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorshi ... a#Internet

Re: WMF worries about "intermediary liability"

Posted: Thu Jul 05, 2018 8:36 am
by Graaf Statler
ericbarbour wrote:Once court decisions settle US law on an area like this, it's done and Wikimedia will have no choice but to move out of the US. They can't go to Europe so they will have to find a country with lax Internet law AND none of the censorship practiced by places like China (most of Asia in fact), the Middle East or some former Soviet countries.

But what will be left in that case is a unattractive Wikipedia for many. Because Google and Facebook will not suport them anymore, and that will be the end of the chapter structure and the money machine. If they leave America Wikipedia will change in no time in what it always was, a unimportant goofy project, somewhere forgotten on the internet.

ericbarbour wrote:How many times did I predict that the Internet would eventually be subject to the same censorship, regulation and taxation every other communications medium has endured before? It's inevitable and even Google's well-paid legal team can't stop it. Nothing has escaped eventual government regulation. The Web is a weird outlier, given special hands-off treatment for the past 20 years. There are people in Congress going "we need to tax that" and there have been since the Net was opened to the public in 1994-1995.

Of course. But once you wrote here about John Brinkley Eric, the goat-gland doctor, and that is in fact the same story. There was a new medium, radio and the people didn't know what it was and there was hardly any regulation. And that has given him the change to start his strange business with a dubious doctors diploma and hardly any regulation for radio stations, and that was the same effect. There is always first a new medium, and regulation follows later because of incidents. Because many people forget this, but at the end the internet is just a medium like radio and television, only a bit (sic) more advanced.

Re: WMF worries about "intermediary liability"

Posted: Thu Jul 05, 2018 9:08 am
by Strelnikov
ericbarbour wrote:
Strelnikov wrote:What aboot Canada, eh?

Since Australia now has an official list of "condemned URLs", Canada or some little-considered country with really lax laws might be their only chance. Since Canada doesn't have a real "First Amendment", there will be problems anyway.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorshi ... a#Internet


Being serious, the only countries I could think they might survive beyond Canada would have to be New Zealand (unless they also have a banned URL list), Mongolia (remote, minimal Internet censorship), Taiwan (minimal internet censorship), every former component state of Tito's Yugoslavia (Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia [including Macedonia but not Kosovo]), and a bevy of countries in South America (and I'm using Wikipedia's own list of the least censored countries.) The Japanese - by that list - do the least Internet censorship in Asia for a mature industrialized county. Switzerland is also on the list, and isn't a member of the European Union, so it could be a good - if expensive - hidey hole.

Re: WMF worries about "intermediary liability"

Posted: Thu Jul 05, 2018 9:12 am
by ericbarbour
Strelnikov wrote:Being serious, the only countries I could think they might survive beyond Canada would have to be New Zealand (unless they also have a banned URL list), Mongolia (remote, minimal Internet censorship), Taiwan (minimal internet censorship), every former component state of Tito's Yugoslavia (Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia [including Macedonia but not Kosovo]), and a bevy of countries in South America (and I'm using Wikipedia's own list of the least censored countries.) The Japanese - by that list - do the least Internet censorship in Asia for a mature industrialized county. Switzerland is also on the list, and isn't a member of the European Union, so it could be a good - if expensive - hidey hole.

Apparently Encyclopedia Dramatica is now hosted in Serbia and I've been told Serbian internet law is among the world's loosest. There is a standing joke that Serbia has less web regulation/censorship/whatever than even the United States. And the Serbian government allegedly isn't bothering to monitor traffic thru its secret police. Now THAT is funny.