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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 w

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
  You’re still just describing the status quo, without acknowledging any of the issues I’ve articulated. This whole argument seems to run up against some of the values that HN would appear to hold most dearly. HN discussions around net neutrality would suggest that this community thinks it’s one of the most important tools for protecting a free internet. However this argument is arbitrarily applied only to specific companies. I could go and create my own website, with my own ad network, and have my own YouTube. I could also go and create my own ISP that discriminates against content in a way that satisfies me. This argument is somehow absurd when it comes to packets, but completely rock solid when it comes to the content they transmit? This community also derides walled gardens when it comes to publishing software, but walled gardens are somehow perfectly acceptable when it comes to speech? It seems indisputable to me that section 203 grants common carrier protections to organisations that are not common carriers. The outcome is that freedom of expression is restricted. This should be seen as a problem, regardless of whether you personally agree with how those restrictions are applied.
  - wvenable 7y ago
    The problem I have with your argument is that your proposed solution is worse. And just because one holds a value most dearly doesn't mean that I'm willing to trample on the freedom of others to get it. Take your example: the community derides walled gardens. I personally dislike walled gardens and I move away from iPhones mainly because of that. There are plenty of ways that I feel that they're bad. But at the very same time, I believe that Apple is entirely within their rights to have a walled garden. The freedom to create software you want to create should be held dear by anyone on HN. Why should that be different for Apple. I support the right of free expression; that government cannot restrict free expression and you can't be imprisoned or harassed for your speech. But at the same time I support freedom from speech as well. Just because you have freedom of speech does mean that I'm required to hear it. My freedom of expression also means I don't have support your expression. That's my right. I also support net neutrality and common carrier requirements for phone companies and monopoly shipping companies, etc. But I also acknowledge that there is difference between being a communications carrier and a publisher. In fact, to be a publisher you need to have a carrier so they're already not the same thing. Requiring publishers to maintain the speech of others without restriction is an impossibility. Is YouTube really going to be required to host every piece of video published to it forever? Is Hacker News? How would any of this work. They are fundamentally different and what you are proposing just doesn't work. But even more so, if I'm the owner of the website you'd be restricting my right to free expression with this scheme. I think that is equally as important. Is there really a problem here? Maybe. Is forcing everyone to host everything the solution? God no. As long as we are free to choose what services we can connect to then we have the freedom to choose something other than buying an iPhone, going on Facebook, using YouTube, turning on Fox News, or reading the New York Times. We don't have to host our content, for free, on YouTube so they can monetize it. Having our freedom and eating our free cake too isn't going to work.

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
You’re still just describing the status quo, without acknowledging any of the issues I’ve articulated. This whole argument seems to run up against some of the values that HN would appear to hold most dearly. HN discussions around net neutrality would suggest that this community thinks it’s one of the most important tools for protecting a free internet. However this argument is arbitrarily applied only to specific companies. I could go and create my own website, with my own ad network, and have my own YouTube. I could also go and create my own ISP that discriminates against content in a way that satisfies me. This argument is somehow absurd when it comes to packets, but completely rock solid when it comes to the content they transmit? This community also derides walled gardens when it comes to publishing software, but walled gardens are somehow perfectly acceptable when it comes to speech? It seems indisputable to me that section 203 grants common carrier protections to organisations that are not common carriers. The outcome is that freedom of expression is restricted. This should be seen as a problem, regardless of whether you personally agree with how those restrictions are applied.
- wvenable 7y ago
  The problem I have with your argument is that your proposed solution is worse. And just because one holds a value most dearly doesn't mean that I'm willing to trample on the freedom of others to get it. Take your example: the community derides walled gardens. I personally dislike walled gardens and I move away from iPhones mainly because of that. There are plenty of ways that I feel that they're bad. But at the very same time, I believe that Apple is entirely within their rights to have a walled garden. The freedom to create software you want to create should be held dear by anyone on HN. Why should that be different for Apple. I support the right of free expression; that government cannot restrict free expression and you can't be imprisoned or harassed for your speech. But at the same time I support freedom from speech as well. Just because you have freedom of speech does mean that I'm required to hear it. My freedom of expression also means I don't have support your expression. That's my right. I also support net neutrality and common carrier requirements for phone companies and monopoly shipping companies, etc. But I also acknowledge that there is difference between being a communications carrier and a publisher. In fact, to be a publisher you need to have a carrier so they're already not the same thing. Requiring publishers to maintain the speech of others without restriction is an impossibility. Is YouTube really going to be required to host every piece of video published to it forever? Is Hacker News? How would any of this work. They are fundamentally different and what you are proposing just doesn't work. But even more so, if I'm the owner of the website you'd be restricting my right to free expression with this scheme. I think that is equally as important. Is there really a problem here? Maybe. Is forcing everyone to host everything the solution? God no. As long as we are free to choose what services we can connect to then we have the freedom to choose something other than buying an iPhone, going on Facebook, using YouTube, turning on Fox News, or reading the New York Times. We don't have to host our content, for free, on YouTube so they can monetize it. Having our freedom and eating our free cake too isn't going to work.