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So basically you're suggesting that a forum about knitting couldn't restrict their content to just knitting topics without losing their copyright infringement p

So basically you're suggesting that a forum about knitting couldn't restrict their content to just knitting topics without losing their copyright infringement protection? I see the point you're trying to make but it's completely wrong. Platform like this one would be impossible without Section 203; I don't see why it's necessary to tie that together with other requirements. It's certainly not a logical follow on.

AmericanChopper 7y ago
> I see the point you're trying to make but it's completely wrong. If it is, then it’s not for the reason you provided. If I made Knitter News, and somebody posted a thread about gardening, then nobody would comment on it or up vote it. If I went into a knitting thread, and started posted gardening comments, then they would be downvoted. It’s also not just copyright infringement protection, it protects against a broad range of liability. The reason common carrier protections exist, is because the service providers do not control the content they disseminate, or the goods they transport, etc... Providing common carrier protections to platforms that exert editorial control over the content they publish is granting common carrier protections to service providers that are not common carriers. Logically, this is precisely equivalent to providing common carrier protections to an ISP, but completely removing all regulations that mandate any form of net neutrality. The law was specifically created to protect free expression online, and in the mid 90s, that’s exactly what it did. However since then, most online expression as become concentrated into a small handful of platforms, who all leverage their position (often in concert) to restrict expression to only that which they deem acceptable. Regardless of what you think about their judgements of what is acceptable, the law is not consistent with other common carrier regulations, and it is absolutely not doing what it was originally designed to do.
- wvenable 7y ago
  > If I made Knitter News, and somebody posted a thread about gardening, then nobody would comment on it or up vote it. What if you posted about gardening every 5 minutes, every day, from morning till night and every thread about knitting is drowned out completely. I've run a forum, this happens all the time. > If I went into a knitting thread, and started posted gardening comments, then they would be downvoted. OH! So now it's not enough to provide a forum, it also needs to have upvoting and downvoting?! How much other software must I develop? And censorship is ok as long as democratic? How much effort must I put into the software to ensure this? > Providing common carrier protections to platforms that exert editorial control over the content they publish is granting common carrier protections to service providers that are not common carriers. That's exactly the point. If they were common carriers, they wouldn't need that protection under the DMCA. I don't see how having moderation control means that they should be liable for content of their users. They are not editing the content, they are just allowing or disallowing. If you run a platform, you should under the same concepts of free speech be able to control that platform. In fact, that's really what a platform is -- it's not just a blob of disk space somewhere. Youtube is fundamentally different from Pornhub. How is that distinction possible in your mind? > The law was specifically created to protect free expression online, and in the mid 90s, that’s exactly what it did. Free expression online in any form would be impossible without it, even now. > However since then, most online expression as become concentrated into a small handful of platforms, who all leverage their position (often in concert) to restrict expression to only that which they deem acceptable. And yet there is literally nothing stopping you from posting a video to your own website that you pay for and distributing it to as many people as you want. To say that the moment I put a blog online with comments that suddenly I have to host, with my own money, any comment that gets posted there is ludicrous. On the face it's completely illogical and completely against the very idea of free expression. The most interesting thing here is really that there is no commercial transaction going on here. Common carriers charge for their services. YouTube doesn't charge you to host your video under the condition that they can remove anything they want. That's the terms. So now you're suggesting that they have to host everything for free? What if that isn't even economically possible?
  - AmericanChopper 7y ago
    According to your analogy, YouTube is no different from a news paper. All they do is collect content and publish it. The content can be user generated, it can written by people who don’t work for the news paper, it can be written by journalists from other papers. All they’re doing is decided what is and is not published, right? When I read it for free on their website, there is also no transaction taking place. So if I start a news paper, and begin to publish completely false and libellous information about people, I should be entitled to a common carrier immunity? All I did was decide what was published. > Free expression online in any form would be impossible without it, even now. Free expression would be protected by removing the Good Samaritan clause, it’s not a necessary element of the law. > To say that the moment I put a blog online with comments that suddenly I have to host, with my own money, any comment that gets posted there is ludicrous. That’s not what I’m saying at all. If you wanted to moderate them you could create a moderation queue. But otherwise what you are trying to do is act as a publisher, but you simply don’t want the liability associated with it. > And yet there is literally nothing stopping you from posting a video to your own website There’s nothing stopping me from making my own ISP and running it however I like. Yet we still cherish regulated net neutrality principles as being an essential element of a free internet. You haven’t really made an effort to refute my underlying claims here, which are: Section 203 protections are not consistent with any other form of common carrier protections. The law is currently having the opposite of its intended effect at the time of legislation. It has simply allowed a very small number of companies to exert editorial control over most of the worlds internet traffic, without having to accept any of the liability that should have come attached to that.
    - wvenable 7y ago
      > According to your analogy, YouTube is no different from a news paper. All they do is collect content and publish it. The alternative is that all websites do, in fact, become exactly like newspapers. Every bit of content would have to be submitted behind the scenes to editors who, in turn, would decide exactly what to publish, ensure nothing is libelous or copyrighted elsewhere, and edit the content appropriately. Obviously, the Internet already existed as a place where content was posted immediately, openly, and moderated. So in order to continue to enjoy doing exactly what we were already doing here, then such an exception has to be made. That's it. It's not rocket science. It's not about free speech or freedom of expression. It's just about making the Internet possible. > The law is currently having the opposite of its intended effect at the time of legislation. It has simply allowed a very small number of companies to exert editorial control over most of the worlds internet traffic, without having to accept any of the liability that should have come attached to that. The point of the law is to not require editorial control. Some editorial control is always necessary. It would be impossible to run any website on the Internet without some editorial control just as it would be almost as impossible to run anything other than a newspaper on the Internet if editorial control was mandatory. The fact that we are here having this conversion is proof that the law is having the exact intended effect it was supposed to have. You are the one trying to give it far more meaning and scope. And the more you expand the scope the more it goes into ridiculous territory that you have no good answer for.

AmericanChopper 7y ago

> I see the point you're trying to make but it's completely wrong. If it is, then it’s not for the reason you provided. If I made Knitter News, and somebody posted a thread about gardening, then nobody would comment on it or up vote it. If I went into a knitting thread, and started posted gardening comments, then they would be downvoted. It’s also not just copyright infringement protection, it protects against a broad range of liability. The reason common carrier protections exist, is because the service providers do not control the content they disseminate, or the goods they transport, etc... Providing common carrier protections to platforms that exert editorial control over the content they publish is granting common carrier protections to service providers that are not common carriers. Logically, this is precisely equivalent to providing common carrier protections to an ISP, but completely removing all regulations that mandate any form of net neutrality. The law was specifically created to protect free expression online, and in the mid 90s, that’s exactly what it did. However since then, most online expression as become concentrated into a small handful of platforms, who all leverage their position (often in concert) to restrict expression to only that which they deem acceptable. Regardless of what you think about their judgements of what is acceptable, the law is not consistent with other common carrier regulations, and it is absolutely not doing what it was originally designed to do.

wvenable 7y ago
> If I made Knitter News, and somebody posted a thread about gardening, then nobody would comment on it or up vote it. What if you posted about gardening every 5 minutes, every day, from morning till night and every thread about knitting is drowned out completely. I've run a forum, this happens all the time. > If I went into a knitting thread, and started posted gardening comments, then they would be downvoted. OH! So now it's not enough to provide a forum, it also needs to have upvoting and downvoting?! How much other software must I develop? And censorship is ok as long as democratic? How much effort must I put into the software to ensure this? > Providing common carrier protections to platforms that exert editorial control over the content they publish is granting common carrier protections to service providers that are not common carriers. That's exactly the point. If they were common carriers, they wouldn't need that protection under the DMCA. I don't see how having moderation control means that they should be liable for content of their users. They are not editing the content, they are just allowing or disallowing. If you run a platform, you should under the same concepts of free speech be able to control that platform. In fact, that's really what a platform is -- it's not just a blob of disk space somewhere. Youtube is fundamentally different from Pornhub. How is that distinction possible in your mind? > The law was specifically created to protect free expression online, and in the mid 90s, that’s exactly what it did. Free expression online in any form would be impossible without it, even now. > However since then, most online expression as become concentrated into a small handful of platforms, who all leverage their position (often in concert) to restrict expression to only that which they deem acceptable. And yet there is literally nothing stopping you from posting a video to your own website that you pay for and distributing it to as many people as you want. To say that the moment I put a blog online with comments that suddenly I have to host, with my own money, any comment that gets posted there is ludicrous. On the face it's completely illogical and completely against the very idea of free expression. The most interesting thing here is really that there is no commercial transaction going on here. Common carriers charge for their services. YouTube doesn't charge you to host your video under the condition that they can remove anything they want. That's the terms. So now you're suggesting that they have to host everything for free? What if that isn't even economically possible?
- AmericanChopper 7y ago
  According to your analogy, YouTube is no different from a news paper. All they do is collect content and publish it. The content can be user generated, it can written by people who don’t work for the news paper, it can be written by journalists from other papers. All they’re doing is decided what is and is not published, right? When I read it for free on their website, there is also no transaction taking place. So if I start a news paper, and begin to publish completely false and libellous information about people, I should be entitled to a common carrier immunity? All I did was decide what was published. > Free expression online in any form would be impossible without it, even now. Free expression would be protected by removing the Good Samaritan clause, it’s not a necessary element of the law. > To say that the moment I put a blog online with comments that suddenly I have to host, with my own money, any comment that gets posted there is ludicrous. That’s not what I’m saying at all. If you wanted to moderate them you could create a moderation queue. But otherwise what you are trying to do is act as a publisher, but you simply don’t want the liability associated with it. > And yet there is literally nothing stopping you from posting a video to your own website There’s nothing stopping me from making my own ISP and running it however I like. Yet we still cherish regulated net neutrality principles as being an essential element of a free internet. You haven’t really made an effort to refute my underlying claims here, which are: Section 203 protections are not consistent with any other form of common carrier protections. The law is currently having the opposite of its intended effect at the time of legislation. It has simply allowed a very small number of companies to exert editorial control over most of the worlds internet traffic, without having to accept any of the liability that should have come attached to that.
  - wvenable 7y ago
    > According to your analogy, YouTube is no different from a news paper. All they do is collect content and publish it. The alternative is that all websites do, in fact, become exactly like newspapers. Every bit of content would have to be submitted behind the scenes to editors who, in turn, would decide exactly what to publish, ensure nothing is libelous or copyrighted elsewhere, and edit the content appropriately. Obviously, the Internet already existed as a place where content was posted immediately, openly, and moderated. So in order to continue to enjoy doing exactly what we were already doing here, then such an exception has to be made. That's it. It's not rocket science. It's not about free speech or freedom of expression. It's just about making the Internet possible. > The law is currently having the opposite of its intended effect at the time of legislation. It has simply allowed a very small number of companies to exert editorial control over most of the worlds internet traffic, without having to accept any of the liability that should have come attached to that. The point of the law is to not require editorial control. Some editorial control is always necessary. It would be impossible to run any website on the Internet without some editorial control just as it would be almost as impossible to run anything other than a newspaper on the Internet if editorial control was mandatory. The fact that we are here having this conversion is proof that the law is having the exact intended effect it was supposed to have. You are the one trying to give it far more meaning and scope. And the more you expand the scope the more it goes into ridiculous territory that you have no good answer for.