A ton of these claims are unsubstantiated if you look in the latest versions. There is so much Fear slinging going on around the web it’s seriously just bizarre to me after actually reading the bill.
I agree that there seems to be more hyperbole (slippery slope, parade of horribles hand wringing) surrounding the EARN IT bill (https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/senate-bill/339...). It would make CDA Section 230 Safe Harbor protections contingent on complying with "best practices", but only for civil suits related to child sexual exploitation. In practice I assume this would mean the only exposure for, e.g., Facebook if they failed to comply with "best practices" would be suits from those victimized over the platform. Theoretically large social media platforms could probably absorb whatever minimal liability that creates for them, notwithstanding the uncertainty that would exist until the first few cases exposed the contours of when and how they'd be liable. OTOH, from a PR perspective it might be difficult to remain intransigent. But in any event Section 230 Safe Harbor is a rather novel immunity and most other industries have no such protections, so it's not like it would be the end of the world. Heck, plenty of people worried about EARN IT also argue in other contexts (e.g. fake news culpability) for the removal of Section 230 protections altogether.
Also, it's really not clear how EARN IT would effect end-to-end encryption. I can't see how it'd effect Signal, period. They have no real need for Section 230. Facebook might need to spin off WhatsApp (assuming it's not already separate), but creating complex corporate ownership structures to limit liability is well trodden ground.
That said, half of the language in EARN IT is geared toward creating a fast-track legislative mechanism in the House and Senate that would circumvent debate and, as a practical matter, accountability. Perhaps it's possible that mechanism could also be used to sneak through broader encryption-related legislation.
I have to disagree here. What other industry revolves around distributing user generated content in such unmanageable quantity, and for free? Without liability protection, who in their right mind would operate a site like Reddit without charging users a membership fee?
> plenty of people worried about EARN IT also argue in other contexts (e.g. fake news culpability) for the removal of Section 230 protections altogether
I seriously doubt that a well informed person concerned about the effect of EARN IT on Section 230 would turn around and speak favorably of stripping Section 230 protections for failing to moderate user content regarding current events. (Unless I've misunderstood you?)
(On the other hand, the recent drama surrounding Twitter was because by adding their own annotations to certain posts they were arguably behaving as a publisher instead of as a mere host for user content.)
> I can't see how it'd effect Signal, period. They have no real need for Section 230.
Honest question - I have no idea how liability works for encrypted content. Even thought their user content is encrypted, could they be held liable under EARN IT if their platform was used for sexual exploitation of children? I'm assuming that strong end-to-end encryption with no backdoor wouldn't qualify as a "best practice" under that bill.
More generally, I'm not clear to what extent intent is required in these cases. Consider pinning an IPFS object whose content is encrypted or operating a Tor exit node. Is plausible deniability alone enough to protect you from civil proceedings? What about criminal ones?
Without infinite time lots of people only know that the bill allows eating people and aren't entirely clear on the exact criteria of people allowed to be eaten.
A process that starts in extremely bad faith is unlikely to be negotiated into something reasonable. The best solution is to keep threatening lawmakers who pass stuff like this with replacement in hopes that nothing lands because there is no universe in which they are capable of producing good legislation on a topic they know less than nothing about.
And I would say that in response to `salawat`:
>> This would include exposure to well funded lobbyists as well.
(Also including organizations like CFR/Sunlight Foundation/etc) Largely determines:
>> the political realities at the National level
If people want to pretend that engaging in more of the same that got us to this point is actually a solution, that's fine by me since I moved out of the US almost a half decade ago; I read enough of history to see how things like this eventually end up and I don't want to be near it. My labor, knowledge and time is better spent elsewhere until things change, for better or for worse.
My fellow citizens stateside can vote and debate on people untill kingdom come
Yes, I agree you should always read first-hand rather than second-hand reports but is there literally anything the government would do that I would want them to do to the current state of encryption?
Both endpoints are DRM'd and controlled and recorded by big brother, you don't have root on either although uncountable exploits and viruses do, and often at least one of the endpoints is big brother himself so obtaining logs will be quite easy.
Also, if you need you can run Linux as end points.
I don't really think such approaches are used or even viable currently. But if it ever were a concern, "run Linux" doesn't even begin to address it. (Anyway you can't run Linux if your endpoint is a phone with a locked bootloader.)
Could you be more specific? And which claims remain valid?
It's actually really terrible.