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Congress passes Take It Down act despite major flaws
- tommica 1y ago[flagged]
- cheema33 1y agoDepressing. We are in for a rough ride for the next few years, at least.
- Evidlo 1y agoApparently it was nearly unanimous, with the only Nay votes being Republicans: https://clerk.house.gov/Votes/2025104 https://clerk.house.gov/Votes/2025104
- altcognito 1y agoThe intolerant will always take advantage of the tolerant and force their intolerance at the first chance given.
- timewizard 1y agoHere's the text. https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/senate-bill/146/text https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/senate-bill/146... I can't identify where EFFs concerns are coming from. There's a specific limitation of liability for online platforms and the entire process appears to be complaint driven and requires quite a bit of evidence from the complaintant. What actually concerns me in this bill? > (B) INVOLVING MINORS.—Except as provided in subparagraph (C), it shall be unlawful for any person, in interstate or foreign commerce, to use an interactive computer service to knowingly publish a digital forgery of an identifiable individual who is a minor with intent to— > “(i) abuse, humiliate, harass, or degrade the minor; or > “(ii) arouse or gratify the sexual desire of any person. > “(C) EXCEPTIONS.—Subparagraphs (A) and (B) shall not apply to— > “(i) a lawfully authorized investigative, protective, or intelligence activity of— > “(I) a law enforcement agency of the United States, a State, or a political subdivision of a State; or > “(II) an intelligence agency of the United States; Wut? Why do you need this? Are we the baddies?
- tines 1y agoSting operation maybe?
- tbrownaw 1y agoSounds like something meant to allow the vice squad to post "selfies" when they're pretending to be kids?
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- wmf 1y agoThe limitation of liability is itself concerning because it means platforms won't care about fake takedowns. This law doesn't even have the counter notice process that DMCA has. You say take down X, they take it down, they're not liable. There's no appeal process that I see.
- timewizard 1y agoIt applies to a narrow category of providers. > IN GENERAL.—The term “covered platform” means a website, online service, online application, or mobile application— > (i) that serves the public; and > (ii) (I) that primarily provides a forum for user-generated content, including messages, videos, images, games, and audio files; or > (II) for which it is in the regular course of trade or business of the website, online service, online application, or mobile application to publish, curate, host, or make available content of nonconsensual intimate visual depictions. If you publish the content on your own website or on certain public websites you don't even have to respond to these requests. You do; however, open yourself to criminal and civil liability for publicly hosting any nonconseual visual images. Your provider is also excluded from service and cannot legally be compelled to participate in their removal.
- amanaplanacanal 1y agoThis sounds like any online forum of any kind, commercial or hobbyist, which allows uploading images. I guess you could call that a narrow category, but I wouldn't.
- tbrownaw 1y agoHm. If in practice it ends up being as over-broad as the eff seems to expect, might it get tossed on the grounds that it abridges freedom of speech?
- some_furry 1y agoI wouldn't bet the farm on that mattering, especially if it's a law that the powerful find "useful".
- yapyap 1y ago> might it get tossed on the grounds that it abridges freedom of speech? yeah, when people got unlawfully sent to a prison in another country even though they were a US citizen law makers sprung into action (/s)
- shmerl 1y agoDMCA 1201 violates freedom of speech, but it's backed by corrupt beneficiaries, so it was never tossed. This one is comparable.
- otterley 1y agoAttorney here! (Not your attorney, not legal advice.) Why do you believe it runs afoul of the First Amendment?
- conception 1y agohttps://www.wired.com/2000/08/court-to-address-decss-t-shirt/ https://www.wired.com/2000/08/court-to-address-decss-t-shirt...
- otterley 1y agoThe DeCSS case actually went to court (Bunner case), though it wasn’t about the T-shirt. It was a civil case based on trade secret law, not DMCA. The trial court assumed that sharing a trade secret without the permission of the secret’s owner is unlawful. That assumption wasn’t challenged. That law is consistent with trade secret law in general. The First Amendment does not require trade secrets to lose all protection. If it did, you could freely disclose your own employer’s secrets without penalty.
- yapyap 1y ago[flagged]
- somenameforme 1y agoI'd never heard of this act [1], and the article frames it in a way that is not especially informative, though they have an excellent page on it here. [2] The law is being passed with complete unanimity in all houses (409-2 in the House, unanimous in the Senate), which is a rarity in modern times. Quoting the EFF as well as why they are opposed to it: - "The takedown provision applies to a much broader category of content—potentially any images involving intimate or sexual content—than the narrower NCII definitions found elsewhere in the bill. The takedown provision also lacks critical safeguards against frivolous or bad-faith takedown requests. Lawful content—including satire, journalism, and political speech—could be wrongly censored." So sexual or intimate themed memes which use realistic looking imagery may end up being able to be taken down. I also find myself disagreeing with the EFF here in spite of generally being a tremendous supporter of their work. In particular their main argument is that there are existing laws which work for this issue, without introducing new potentially abusable legislation: - "If a deepfake is used for criminal purposes, then criminal laws will apply. If a deepfake is used to pressure someone to pay money to have it suppressed or destroyed, extortion laws would apply. For any situations in which deepfakes were used to harass, harassment laws apply. There is no need to make new, specific laws about deepfakes in either of these situations." But I think on this issue one should not need to suffer some form of measurable loss or suffering to want intimate/sexual images removed from a site, let alone then having to go through the legal system and file a lawsuit to achieve such. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TAKE_IT_DOWN_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TAKE_IT_DOWN_Act [2] - https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/04/congress-passes-take-it-down-act-despite-major-flaws https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/04/congress-passes-take-i...
- wmf 1y agoYeah, aren't US harassment laws really weak? It seems like if you could successfully sue over online harassment people would have already done it.
- stevenwoo 1y agoRecent Supreme Court case makes it a free for all to harass with thousands of messages, you only have to say you were not serious and claim it was free speech. https://www.cpr.org/2023/06/27/us-supreme-court-opinion-colorado-stalking-conviction-violation-first-amendment-rights/ https://www.cpr.org/2023/06/27/us-supreme-court-opinion-colo...
- asdsadasdasd123 1y ago[flagged]
- dang 1y agoRelated: Take It Down Act: A Flawed Attempt to Protect Victims That'll Lead to Censorship - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43296886 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43296886 - March 2025 (38 comments) The Take It Down Act isn't a law, it's a weapon - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43293573 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43293573 - March 2025 (30 comments) The "Take It Down" Act - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43274656 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43274656 - March 2025 (99 comments)
- neonate 1y agoOther articles: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/28/us/politics/house-revenge-porn-bill.html https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/28/us/politics/house-revenge... (https://archive.ph/GTSM2 https://archive.ph/GTSM2) https://www.cbsnews.com/news/house-take-it-down-act-vote-deepfake-pornography-victims/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/house-take-it-down-act-vote-dee... https://www.techdirt.com/2025/04/28/congress-moving-forward-on-unconstitutional-take-it-down-act/ https://www.techdirt.com/2025/04/28/congress-moving-forward-...
- moneycantbuy 1y agoseems overly broad and can jail publishers of any content deemed inappropriate. eg melania nudes = el savadorian prison etc. that video of donald sucking elon's toes probably counts.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- commandlinefan 1y ago20 years ago, I believed the expression "the internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it". It's pretty clear we're far beyond technical solutions to political problems, now: whatever the internet might have been when it started out, it isn't any more - censorship is just too popular.
- immibis 1y agoTor still exists. Once ordinary porn can only be found on Tor, Tor will become a lot more popular and everyone will be able to access all kinds of censored things (from deepfake nudes, to pirated movies, to drug marketplaces, to AI that can tell you how to make a bomb). Of course, they'll just make Tor illegal then.
- cookiemonsieur 1y agothey should've called it "shut it down". To go along with the meme.
- perihelions 1y agoI believe what EFF and Mike Masnick have to say about it: it's the most forseeably abusable internet censorship law (so far), and it's a crying shame HN isn't confident enough to look past the good intention of it to recognize that. How have DMCA takedowns gone? How many upstanding developers have been nuked, without recourse, by some invalid or malevolent false report? How many times over and over[0] has HN loudly lamented the DMCA takedowns, decried how awful it is to have state censorship—and one without any meaningful adversarial process? Well, here we are again: "The takedown provision also lacks critical safeguards against frivolous or bad-faith takedown requests". If courts don't strike this down, this might end up becoming DMCA for the whole of society. It'll certainly be used by politicians to silence critics. It'll be overrun by trolls. You'll see the results, and you'll hate them. > "And I’m going to use that bill for myself too, if you don’t mind, because nobody gets treated worse than I do online, nobody.”" [0] https://hn.algolia.com/?query=dmca&type=all https://hn.algolia.com/?query=dmca&type=all
- thaumasiotes 1y ago> How many times over and over[0] has HN loudly lamented the DMCA takedowns, decried how awful it is to have state censorship—and one without any meaningful adversarial process? DMCA does have an adversarial process. You're more likely thinking of e.g. YouTube's automatic DMCA-like process.
- jmholla 1y ago> DMCA does have an adversarial process. You're more likely thinking of e.g. YouTube's automatic DMCA-like process. But that adversarial process has timelines that require removal for a minimum of ten days. Which is plenty of time to cause damage.
- whamlastxmas 1y agoThat process means fuck all because the providers who honor DMCA takedowns often do so instantly, but basically say “you can never host this content here again, ever” and don’t give any fucks about whatever stupid appeal process you do. I had Heroku take down my business with zero notice due to a malicious dmca and did exactly this. They offered zero paths other than “get a different provider”. They also disabled my entire account and all of my sites, not just the allegedly offending site. They refused to even respond to any further inquiries on the matter
- yew 1y ago[flagged]
- stodor89 1y agoA minute of silence for people who thought cancel culture lost the elections.
- yew 1y agoFictional things can't lose elections, silly.
- sneak 1y agoAre we ignoring the fact that deepfakes, while despicable, are protected expression the same way that hand-drawn caricature cartoons that depict their subjects in an unflattering light are? There is no line.
- areyourllySorry 1y agoa cartoon is clearly fiction. videos depicting real, notable people in real contexts can't be immediately dismissed as such.
- hiatus 1y agoSo what? Is satire that can't immediately be identified as such no longer allowed? Since when does an expression have to be "clearly fiction" to be protected speech?
- barnas2 1y ago"Your honor, all those counterfeit $20's I made are clearly protected under free speech."
- sneak 1y agoCounterfeit money is intended to deceive and defraud. Producing artistic works of fiction is very clearly an act of expression, not an attempt at fraud.
- tekno45 1y agothey're called deepfakes for a reason.
- hiatus 1y agoIf you are trying to commit fraud, there's already laws about that. It's not illegal to produce replica money btw, so long as you don't try to use it in commerce (there must be intent to deceive).
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- molticrystal 1y agoAaron Swartz showed us why we must fight back against these laws. He has spun so much in his grave this week, you'd think he's trying to invent a new power source. I understand the horrors and so-called purpose this new act is trying to address, but the genie is out of the stable diffusion and successors' bottle. Just this weekend, Trump signed an executive order declaring and celebrating World Intellectual Property Day [0], the kind of day IIPA and DMCA would have their lovechild conceived, while creepy uncles ACTA, TPP, TRIPS, and SOPA/PIPA lurked and maybe even watched in the attic. The TAKE IT DOWN Act fits right in with this family reunion, handing those in power another tool to censor the internet under the guise of protecting "intimate images." Its vague net is so wide, it'll have even more platforms spooked into nuking fair use or satire just to dodge legal heat. It's no coincidence that censorship goes hand in hand with IP laws, control the content, monitor what people are submitting. This is exactly why people are building distributed tech like IPFS or ActivityPub and federated networks to keep information flowing, not locked behind government filters or takedown ultimatums. Before you know it, it will be obscene to disagree with those in charge. [0] https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/04/world-intellectual-property-day-2025/ https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/04/worl...
- josefritzishere 1y ago"...he would use the law to censor his critics." The most legitmate and most legally protected speech is political speech. This cannot possibly be legal.
- ujkhsjkdhf234 1y agoPeople keep saying it can't be legal as if he cares about legality.
- blurbleblurble 1y agoAmy Klobuchar has been gunning for e2ee for years. In the context of her other bills, this is just the one that finally went through.
- wmf 1y agoThis bill has problems but it's not really about E2EE. It's targeting public distribution which isn't encrypted.
- blurbleblurble 1y agoEnforcement would require access to content, encrypted or not. This is a test of the legality of offering e2ee services, explicitly or not.
- hellojesus 1y agoE2e opens a bit of a problem for reporting the issue though, no? Only those that can decrypt messages can report them, and if the message isn't hosted on a server but merely routed through one in ciphertext, there's not much the company needs to do because they don't host the content anyway.
- blurbleblurble 1y agoExactly, the concern is that a judge could say e2ee thwarts proper compliance with the law and that it is therefore not legal for services with images and video.