The CDA Is Dead, But States Are Trying To Revive It

oliphaunt writes "This week at The Legality, Tracy Frazier has an article discussing the damage that can be done by anonymous online comments. While regulars here are familiar with infamous bits of Net censorship like the Fishman Affidavit fiasco, and everyone has been an anonymous coward at least once or twice, some of you may not know about the conflict between Heide Iravani and AutoAdmit.com. Heide eventually filed a lawsuit because the first result for a Google search on her name brought up anonymous comments on AutoAdmit that accused her of carrying an STD and sleeping her way to the top of her class. The Communications Decency Act was supposed to prevent this kind of thing, but an injunction prevented it from ever being enforced and eventually the Supreme Court killed it. Should the law be changed?" The article links to a proposal from last summer in the New Jersey legislature that would institute a DMCA-like takedown regime for allegedly defamatory content posted on a Web site, and would allow aggrieved parties to demand the identity of anonymous posters without a subpoena. No indication of how that proposal fared. Also linked is a recent North Carolina proposal that would criminalize the act of defaming someone using an electronic medium. This proposal shields Web sites from liability and explicitly does not apply to anonymous speech.

Writing elected officials

[MrLint]

In the 'Fisherman' link in this article it goes to an old story by CT, which links to the ACLU on tops for writing elected officials. That link is out of date, the updated link is http://www.aclu.org/files/gen/13516res20021209.html [aclu.org]

Re:Criminalise?

[Mr. Slippery]

In capitalism every single individual is both a producer and consumer.

No, in capitalism, the capitalist class skims off the labor of producers by charging them for access to the resources that capitalists "own" and producers need to get stuff done.

This is all as opposed to socialism in which the government controls all of the means of exchange and production.

No, socialism is a system based on the exchange of labor and the democratic control of capital. State socialism, as practiced by Marxists, is not the only variety. Anarchists are socialists.

Even if you just hold a "9 - 5" you sell your labour in exchange for a mutually-agreed-upon paycheck. It's a voluntary exchange.

No arrangement made in the face of an overwhelming imbalance of power is "voluntary". So long as a state-backed minority class of "owners" controls the vast majority of economic resources, referring to the wage slavery that all but the most skilled workers have to sell themselves into as "voluntary" is a sick joke.

none

[Anonymous Coward]

I post anonymously because making website accounts is a pain in the ass. I think the "Coward" title is really unnecessary. "Lazy bastard" would be better.

Re:Criminalise?

[spartacus_prime]

4chan is not your personal army.

Re:Criminalise?

[Mr. Slippery]

How can you have a "class" of capitalists when everyone is able to own property ? (and note: I'm not talking about land and capital goods, specifically. Even my daughters owns capital - clothes, toys, cash etc.).

I'm sorry that you don't know what capital [wikipedia.org] is. Clothes and toys are finished goods, not capital; cash is capital only when invested.

The capitalist class is the class that controls capital: controls the money, and owns the land, the factories, even (thanks to copyrights and patents) the very ideas, that workers need access to to produce goods and services. Should the workers attempt to access this capital directly, the capitalist class's government backers start shooting people; so workers are forced to tithe to the capitalist class in order to be productive.

(Obviously, I am tremendously oversimplifying, ignoring the small business owner, the petit-bourgeois [wikipedia.org], whose capital needs are small.)

(You'll have to elaborate because "democratic control of capital" reads as being another way to say "state control of capital".

No, it doesn't. Capitalism is, in the end, state control of capital - who issues land deeds? Who charters corporations? Libertarian socialism [blackened.net] can get along without the state, capitalism can't.

You said "state-backed minority class of 'owners'". Thus you know damned well that what you are describing is not laissez-faire capitalism.

Because there's not such thing as "laissez-faire capitalism". Capitalism requires a strong government to create and defend the property rights that make it possible.

Take away all those government issued land and resource deeds, corporate charters, copyrights, patents, and the like, and tell me what sort of "laissez-faire capitalism" you have left.

That doesn't mean that people don't have to work to survive, but that will be the case in any system. Every single human being prefers leisure to labour. So in a make-believe system where no one has to work production and technological progress will grind to a halt.

The amount of work that actually needs to be done to support humans is pretty small: hunter-gatherer societies had a lot more leisure time, as did the societies of ancient Greece and Rome -- even medieval Europe. [google.com]

We say "money doesn't grow on trees" -- but did you know that food does? Food actually does literally grow on trees! As does fuel, and a great material for making shelter.

It's only when you have to pay some king or landlord for the privilege of occupying part of the Earth's surface, or when we overbreed the sustainable carrying capacity of the land and force each other into marginal areas, that leisure becomes a rarity.

Re:CDA isn't dead

[thelegality]

Thanks for taking the time to read the article and offer feedback. We have revised the language in that paragraph to clarify the fact that the holding of Reno v. ACLU struck only two provisions of the CDA, rather than the entire statute. We have also corrected the year identified as the CDA's inception, which was 1996 rather than 2007.