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This law would make it illegal to host discussion forums such as Hacker News. Subparagraph (c)1(B) says that the only safe harbor for removing content is (c)(2
by anonHacker2 6y ago
This law would make it illegal to host discussion forums such as Hacker News.
Subparagraph (c)1(B) says that the only safe harbor for removing content is (c)(2). (c)(2)(A) restricts the criteria that can be used to remove content to the following: "obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, promoting terrorism or violent extremism, harassing, promoting self-harm, or unlawful".
The current Hacker News Guidelines contain stuff like "Be kind. Don't be snarky". These are broader than the text in (c)(2)(A). Therefore the safe harbor may not apply.
Worse, section (c)(1)(C) implies that removing ANY content by a user could make the forum liable for ALL OTHER content posted by that user, unless there is "good faith", but "good faith" is defined in section (g)(5)(A) to require all moderation criteria to be defined with "particularity". "Be kind. Don't be snarky" could be construed to lack "particularity".
The only alternative provided by this law would be to only remove content according to extremely legalistic moderation criteria. In my personal experience, all high-quality open forums require moderation with a degree of subjectivity with open-ended criteria similar to our Hacker News Guidelines. Given the legal risks of having to go to trial to argue about whether you are a "publisher" of other people's forum comments, it would be foolish for anyone to continue to employ open-ended moderation under this law.
- heavyset_go 6y agoWith such proposed laws on the books, I don't see how anyone would start a new company that does anything at all with user generated content, as the risk for significant criminal liability is just too high. Only billion dollar companies would be able to afford to curate and make sure not a single law was broken ever, at any time, by one of their users. Imagine having your home raided in the middle of the night because someone thought it would be funny to upload illegal content to your startup's servers. Now imagine being bankrupted and sent to prison afterwards.
- shard972 6y agoMaybe we can go back to the days of hosting our own content. It's not like we don't have the technology
- api 6y agoMaybe that means only peer to peer systems without central servers are safe. There is no "server" and the data is everywhere but nowhere.
- thekyle 6y agoSo now the police raid your house in the middle of the night because you accidentally seeded some bad content. /s I joke, of course what would actually happen is your ISP would turn off your connection.
- heavyset_go 6y agoPeople are raided all the time for sharing illegal content, whether the act of sharing violates IP laws or the content itself is illegal.
- nullc 6y ago> This law would make it illegal to host discussion forums such as Hacker News. Not illegal, but extraordinarily legally risky. Perhaps YC has pockets deep enough, connections strong enough, and derives enough benefit to take that risk. Something that is even more of a volunteer run labour of love? less likely.