The CDA Is Dead, But States Are Trying To Revive It 205
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.
Criminalise? (Score:5, Insightful)
Defamation should be a civil matter.
All Regulation does is grant undue Legitimacy (Score:5, Insightful)
If people know that "bad" comments are taken off the Internet, and the Government is there to protect us, then the Government is giving weight to everything that's out there. Unfortunately, the Government can't take down every bad thing out there. Net result is that the effort to protect people just makes things worse. As long as the Government keeps its hands off, and people understand that there is no Thought Police on the Internet, then they will be dismissive of most unsubstantiated anonymous claims, and they can cause no harm. Legislators, please take the day off on this one. Everybody will be better off.
Nobody should be able to issue a "takedown notice" (Score:5, Insightful)
While the current situation is not quite "prior restraint", it DOES have a chilling effect on free speech, in that speech can be censored by merely alleging that it is infringing something. That is wrong, plain and simple.
Horrible idea (Score:2, Insightful)
Doing this only legitimizes anonymous comments. People should be made aware that when someone says something online that does NOT mean it is true. So called "defamatory" speech should never be criminalized anyhow. At worse, it is a civil wrong.
Pretty much all online speech is anonymous. That which is not and involves a person saying something about another, they will already take down the offending content if they are made aware they are going to be sued and do not believe they can substantiate (i.e., defend) their comment because civil law does apply. So no new law is needed. These kinds of laws only help incompetent rich people anyways. They protect the aristocracy (mis)using the government's resources to keep their "reputations" clean. See countries outside the United States for example.
Re:Something is needed (Score:2, Insightful)
The problem is the accusation of illegal content instead of proving to a court first that it is illegal.
Like pjt33 said, it should be a civil matter.
Re:Criminalise? (Score:3, Insightful)
The problem is that the average person isn't going to have the proper resources to actually get anything done about it. Pick someone who doesn't know how internet tech works, plaster a load of life-ruining "facts" about them online, and get them ranked to the top of google. For many people, doing this to them could literally ruin the rest of their life, removing any ability to land a proper career.
While censorship is horrible, there needs to be proper channels to go through that are guaranteed to land lightning fast results for the people that truly need them. We're now in an age where what can be googled about you is more important in an employer's decision than anything you or your resume conveys.
Either way, corporations will NEVER, EVER, EVEEEER stop using the internet as a way to screen. "Company image" is a top priority for every business, second only to money/profit. Especially when it comes to publicly traded companies, image is everything, and there is absolutely ZERO room for negotiation when it comes to an employee's personal life potentially tainting the company's image.
Just another reason why capitalism fails. The public-facing side of any single company is considered far more important than the life of any individual. Way to go mankind.
Re:All Regulation does is grant undue Legitimacy (Score:3, Insightful)
Unfortunately, the Government can't take down every bad thing out there.
Some of us consider that a good thing.
Selfish Slashdot (Score:5, Insightful)
I didn't realise Heide Iravani might have had an STD until she fought so hard to stop people talking about it.
Yes, but prior to this Slashdot story, you didn't even know Heide's name. On the other hand, current and possible future employers might do a Google search and find this, and well as potential love interests. Posts like the ones that Heide is upset about may not bother typical Slashdotters, but we have very thick skin here. Heide should be able to this type of harassment, as it significantly impacts her life.
Re:Criminalise? (Score:3, Insightful)
Defamation should be a civil matter.
Not only that, but I can hardly see what relevance her sex life has in that forum, especially if the information is hearsay.
Any forum moderator or website operator should have the common decency to recognize a troll and delete the offending material if you can show, with good intentions, that it's more detrimental to you for that false information to be there than it is positive for them to keep it....
In the end, you should never have to legislate good taste, but for fuck's sake, it'd be nice for more people to have it as well... TFS and TFA certainly paint it as being that black and white, but perhaps that's not the case, and that's why you need a lawsuit.
Google != Background check. Sigh.
Consider the source ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Criminalise? (Score:5, Insightful)
What we really need is a barrage of these cases, so that people understand how information on the internet works. The problem isn't that information can be published anonymously. The problem is that people put too much weight on completely unsubstantiated rumors and trivial misbehaviors.
Re:Selfish Slashdot (Score:5, Insightful)
When performing a Google search on my name (first and last in quotes) I can make out at least three different people on the first page. Which one is me? Which one is the chemist? And which one is the guy who died on a passenger ship in the first half of the 1900s? I know the answer, but how would anyone else?
So, maybe there is a Heide Iravani who has an STD and slept her way to the top. But it may be about a different Heide Iravani than the one who is filing a lawsuit.
You can't trust Google to provide you the information on an exact person.
Re:Criminalise? (Score:5, Insightful)
"Just another reason why capitalism fails. The public-facing side of any single company is considered far more important than the life of any individual. Way to go mankind."
Whoa hold on there. I was in agreement with everything you said up until this last paragraph.
Capitalism isn't "business rules". It's private ownership of property (and capital in general, hence "capitalism"). How does you being able to own your own land and property have anything to do with what you were bitching about ?
In capitalism every single individual is both a producer and consumer. 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. Capitalism also applies just as well to bartering your labour to a friend in exchange for a couple of beers and hospitality for the day. This is all as opposed to socialism in which the government controls all of the means of exchange and production. Where two individuals are not allowed to enter into a voluntary exchange without the government's approval.
What you pointed out is that, in this case we have a problem with the JUDICIAL system. Whereby it takes far too long, and is too costly, for an individual to seek justice against someone who anonymously did them harm. How does that relate to capitalism at all ? You're complaining about a GOVERNMENT institution. So what's your solution, get the government involved in EVERYTHING ? Yeah that will fix the problem! /sarc (please note that I'm most certainly not saying that we should privatize the judicial system, only that the problem here has nothing to do with private ownership of capital and the means of production).
If the justice is more easily attainable for the rich, then we need to fix the judicial system. The judicial system has never been private. It's always been government-run. So why should the rich be able to afford justice more than a poor person ? It has nothing to do with business, and it shouldn't. None of these problems have anything to do with capitalism.
Re:Criminalise? (Score:3, Insightful)
Whoa hold on there. I was in agreement with everything you said up until "This is all as opposed to socialism in which the government controls all of the means of exchange and production."
I believe the word you were looking for is "communism" not "socialism". Socialism is, on many formulations (it is quite a vague term) compatible with a market economy.
Re:Criminalise? (Score:3, Insightful)
What's your point? Defamation is a general term to cover slander and libel, both of which are and should remain torts rather than offences.
CDA isn't dead (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Criminalise? (Score:3, Insightful)
"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."
How can you own labour if you can't own people ? 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.).
The only way that your sentence can apply is in a system of serfdom. Which is not capitalism, because the common man does not have the right to own land. In capitalism everyone owns some property. Even if you're holding cash, you "own" that cash (which is just another economic good) until you trade it for something else. In capitalism, everyone is a capitalist. So while we do have economic classes (which is unavoidable in any system), there is no "class" of capitalists. Even the poorest of the poor, who we may say own zero capital because they're homeless and naked, can still barter their labour or rely on the temporary charity of others to acquire a limited amount of capital and go from there.
"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."
You'll have to elaborate because "democratic control of capital" reads as being another way to say "state control of capital". Just because a government is democratic by nature, does not make it a "non-state".
"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."
You can not have wage slavery without debt. And I will be the first person to agree that the current hodge-podge hybrid system of fiat currency, government regulation and special interest lobbying makes that a much closer reality than I am comfortable with. However, the only thing that has to do with capitalism is based on the fact that the foundation of our system is capitalist in nature. It's certainly anything but laissez-faire. We haven't had "true", or laissez-faire, capitalism in a very long time. At least not since prior to 1913.
I think you just made my point for me, actually. You said "state-backed minority class of 'owners'". Thus you know damned well that what you are describing is not laissez-faire capitalism. We have some socialism (government-run post office is a good example, and a lot of public property), various forms of intervention (trade barriers in the form of tariffs, real-estate regulation, licensure requirements and special treatment for labour unions) and a debt-based fiat currency that's controlled by a single, secretive independent organization with lots of special privileges that are unique to it (I'm talking about the federal reserve for anyone who isn't following).
In laissez-faire capitalism employment options open up much more than they are in our current messed up system. That's not to say that everyone would have access to their dream job. But involuntary unemployment becomes much rarer.
Yet even in our system, all employment contracts are voluntary. 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. Capitalism, more specifically laissez-faire capitalism, is simply private ownership of property and voluntary exchange. It's the distribution of labour without any controlling force influencing the way that people chose to distribute said labour. It's people who work together, via agreements, when both parties perceive a benefit to the agreement. The only way that you can have slavery, even wage slavery, is when there is a presence of force. In modern times that force is almost always the government.
Re:Selfish Slashdot (Score:2, Insightful)
What a dick.
If he was making the other people up, no problem. Impersonating (for any reason) a real person is bullshit.
Rent seeking (Score:3, Insightful)
How can you have a "class" of capitalists when everyone is able to own property ?
It's possible if only members of the upper class have a reasonable chance of bootstrapping themselves into owning enough property to get anything done.
The only way that you can have slavery, even wage slavery, is when there is a presence of force. In modern times that force is almost always the government.
Unless the upper class applies force through said government. This is called rent seeking [wikipedia.org] and regulatory capture [wikipedia.org].
Re:Criminalise? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Criminalise? (Score:3, Insightful)
Although I fully agree with what you're saying, it doesn't work well in the reality of the world.
Say you're hiring somebody and you google two candidates (as they do, these days)...
Candidate A comes up as your average joe.
Candidate B comes up as your average joe EXCEPT FOR that completely unsubstantiated claim on facebook from somebody who said they were over at Candidate B's place the other night to have a spliff (do kids still call it that these days?)
Yes, they're unsubstantiated claims. Yes, you shouldn't put much weight on it. But all things else being equal, unless your hiring for a 'coffeeshop', who would be the more likely candidate? Why take the risk?
The 'trivial misbehaviors' one is an even easier target. B misbehaves, A does not.. A it is - unless you put positive value on trivial misbehaviors (e.g. "Candidate A looks okay, but Candidate B looks like he'd be a lot more fun on casual fridays").
Having a -barrage- of these kinds of things posted about people just means that all the others still look better by comparison. The only way it'd work is if these kinds of things were posted about practically every person that would be a potential candidate for a job/invite/whatever it is.
That said, again, I agree with you and kudos to those who do indeed not put much weight on these matters, or find that Candidates A and B are really equal and they'll just both have to be invited for an interview and determine who to hire based on that, rather than google results; best yet, don't even use Google - but that's becoming a pipe dream :)
Re:The obvious solution... (Score:2, Insightful)
If you didn't get a job because your boss believes some bulls*** on the internet, then you don't want to work there.