4 ms·

Some people just don't understand software. They treat it as if it were something physical. For example, if I own a bar it is my responsibility to make sure my

by choward 11y ago

Some people just don't understand software. They treat it as if it were something physical. For example, if I own a bar it is my responsibility to make sure my customers don't get too crazy and to make sure underage people don't drink. This law is relatively enforceable. You can't apply this kind of thinking to the Internet. Software isn't a bar for many reasons. You can duplicate software trivially. You can't possibly monitor every copy of that software. For example, a site like reddit is open source (for the most part I think). So in theory anyone could just host their own reddit (or any other software). There are many open source web apps that you can easily deploy your own copy of today. Which brings me to my next point. Where do you draw the line? Web sites are responsible for content their users post. Are web hosting companies responsible for the sites their customers post and therefore responsible for the comments too? What about ISPs? They let the data through. Shouldn't they also be monitoring it? What about hardware manufactures? They are letting the web hosting company run "bad" web sites. If someone does something illegal on the Internet investigate it and blame the user. It's really as simple as that.

Rusky 11y ago
We have the exact same line-drawing question in the real world. All kind of infrastructure and different levels over ownership go into a place like a bar, but that doesn't mean the bar owner isn't responsible. There is a similarly clear difference between an ISP (how the customer gets to the bar), a web host (the landlord, maybe), and the website itself (the bar). On the other hand, investigating whether someone committed a crime is a little bit different online vs in the real world. Part of what websites could do is make it easier to run those investigations by making reporting easier- Twitter reporting, for example, is relatively hostile to people trying to report bad behavior.

by choward 11y ago

Rusky 11y ago

We have the exact same line-drawing question in the real world. All kind of infrastructure and different levels over ownership go into a place like a bar, but that doesn't mean the bar owner isn't responsible. There is a similarly clear difference between an ISP (how the customer gets to the bar), a web host (the landlord, maybe), and the website itself (the bar). On the other hand, investigating whether someone committed a crime is a little bit different online vs in the real world. Part of what websites could do is make it easier to run those investigations by making reporting easier- Twitter reporting, for example, is relatively hostile to people trying to report bad behavior.