<story><title>Section 230: A Key Legal Shield for Facebook, Google Is About to Change</title><url>https://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2018/03/21/591622450/section-230-a-key-legal-shield-for-facebook-google-is-about-to-change</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>showerst</author><text>I disagree here. Child porn and trafficking are always the arguments used to go after free speech on the internet in the court of public opinion.&lt;p&gt;If we narrowly edit the law to specifically go after those cases, then it creates less opportunities for scandal later that end in much broader restriction.&lt;p&gt;Also -- although it should go without saying, those things are actually bad! So if an unintended interpretation is making them easier, clarifying (with as little collateral damage as possible) that is congress&amp;#x27; job.</text></item><item><author>mankash666</author><text>This law is not good for the internet. This isn&amp;#x27;t about Google and Facebook, it&amp;#x27;s about the open internet as we know it.&lt;p&gt;And, it&amp;#x27;s high time we recognize these services to be &amp;quot;infrastructure&amp;quot;. You don&amp;#x27;t persecute the street owner for vehicles that drive on it - if you could, the state would be liable for all crimes involving a vehicle</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>rayiner</author><text>Except that&amp;#x27;s not what the bill does. The bill takes an existing law, 18 USC 1591, which provides a narrow scope of liability for &amp;quot;participation in a venture&amp;quot; to perform sex trafficking. &lt;i&gt;I.e.&lt;/i&gt; running a sex trafficking business. It redefines &amp;quot;participation in a venture&amp;quot; to include &amp;quot;knowingly ... facilitating&amp;quot; sex trafficking, and then carves out 18 USC 1591 liability from the section 230 safe harbor.&lt;p&gt;This goes far beyond the backpage situation, which could&amp;#x27;ve been reached with a higher intent standard like &amp;quot;&lt;i&gt;intent&lt;/i&gt; to facilitate&amp;quot; sex trafficking.&lt;p&gt;If Google knows that sex traffickers are using gmail to coordinate their sex-trafficking activities, under the plain text of the statute, they&amp;#x27;d be liable for &amp;quot;knowingly facilitating&amp;quot; sex trafficking. This &lt;i&gt;will&lt;/i&gt; be abused by prosecutors and plaintiffs&amp;#x27; attorneys.</text></comment>
<story><title>Section 230: A Key Legal Shield for Facebook, Google Is About to Change</title><url>https://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2018/03/21/591622450/section-230-a-key-legal-shield-for-facebook-google-is-about-to-change</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>showerst</author><text>I disagree here. Child porn and trafficking are always the arguments used to go after free speech on the internet in the court of public opinion.&lt;p&gt;If we narrowly edit the law to specifically go after those cases, then it creates less opportunities for scandal later that end in much broader restriction.&lt;p&gt;Also -- although it should go without saying, those things are actually bad! So if an unintended interpretation is making them easier, clarifying (with as little collateral damage as possible) that is congress&amp;#x27; job.</text></item><item><author>mankash666</author><text>This law is not good for the internet. This isn&amp;#x27;t about Google and Facebook, it&amp;#x27;s about the open internet as we know it.&lt;p&gt;And, it&amp;#x27;s high time we recognize these services to be &amp;quot;infrastructure&amp;quot;. You don&amp;#x27;t persecute the street owner for vehicles that drive on it - if you could, the state would be liable for all crimes involving a vehicle</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jessaustin</author><text>Reading the bill, it seems two-(or maybe 2.5-)pronged: it seeks to restrict prostitution, and it seeks to restrict &amp;quot;sex trafficking&amp;quot; a term which is undefined and appears three times in the text, one of those times with the modifier &amp;quot;child&amp;quot; preceding. This seems deliberately sloppy, to give prosecutors total discretion to do anything they want. We have far too many laws like that already. Most of the time, new laws targeted at prostitution end up hurting individual prostitutes more than prostitution itself. The innovation here is to hurt e.g. hotels that have websites more than prostitution itself.&lt;p&gt;IANAL. However, I&amp;#x27;ve seen &amp;quot;unintended&amp;quot; consequences often enough not to believe Hanlon. Also, it&amp;#x27;s far from clear that the best way of dealing with prostitution in this age is by prohibiting it.</text></comment>