Comment by LeifCarrotson | Hacker News Reader

Comment by LeifCarrotson | Hacker News Reader

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> What’s important is what the law says and the way it should be read, and that’s going to be inconvenient for someone but typically any perceived defects in the law lay squarely at Congress’s feet.

Congress writes laws with the assumption that ambiguities and complications will be intelligently and justly resolved by a human being - namely, these 9 people. The issue is not that one side or the other may fail to educate the Court, it's that the problems of "what the law says" and "what justice is" and "how the internet should work" may not be entirely coherent, especially when societal norms are changing as fast as they are today.

When the Constitution was written, the word "publisher" had a completely different meaning, completely unaware of the possibility of YouTube. Even in 1996, algorithmic Internet moderation had a different meaning to what providers are doing today. How will - how should - people in 5 or 10 years moderate websites and consume content? I'm not the greatest expert on the Internet, I started using it at approximately the same time that section 230 was passed, but I'm very familiar with it and that would be a really hard question for me to answer. A senior citizen who formed and solidified most of their ideas about the way society works or should work three to five decades ago would have a really hard time wrapping their mind around the concept even with excellent guidance from the best attorneys.

We need judgements that put our society in the best position for the next decade, and these 9 people may not be sufficiently able to be coached to think ahead far enough to do that.

> We need judgements that put our society in the best position for the next decade, and these 9 people may not be sufficiently able to be coached to think ahead far enough to do that.

That is a kind of judgement, but that kind of judgment is a policy judgment, not a legal one.

If you want a policy judgment, you go to Congress; they make a determination, decide if they’re going to pass a law, and if they do so then you have a law that reflects what their policy is in the text of the statute. If you want a legal one, you go to the Courts. If there’s ambiguity in the law, then you’re going to have different interpretations, and the attorneys at trial, and often the Solicitor-General of the United States are going to present their best arguments as to how the law should be interpreted.

In other words, a trial and its eventual outcome is a collaboration between adversaries, the Justices, their staff, and the US government when they choose to chime in (they usually can if they want even if they’re not one of try party’s at trial). You’re giving the Justices too little credit and more responsibility than they lawfully possess; it is already sufficient that they have the responsibility of interpreting the laws, facts and arguments before them.

The Constitution doesn't even contain the word "publisher".

Issues that come before the Supreme Court are by nature largely toss-ups with no clear right or wrong answer. Instead of taking a risk with those 9 people, lobby your members of Congress to write laws that are so clear and specific that no judicial interpretation is needed.

+1 -- SCOTUS even seems to agree that they wish Congress would just modernize 230 so they wouldn't be trying to interpret what the word "publisher" (conceived before the internet existed) means in a digital era. All SCOTUS can do is look at the law as currently written and try to apply it to current situations in a reasonable way. By contrast, Congress can wholly rewrite the law and introduce new terms/concepts into it.

Section 230 was written for the digital era, in the digital era. The only people that think this law is ambiguous are pretty ignorant of its history. It is exceedingly clear, they just don't personally like that and are throwing around bullshit that makes no sense as FUD.

I would admit that the law may need changing given the rise of internet mega-corps.

Section 230 was written in 1996, and in using phrases like "interactive computer service" and "access software provider" is absolutely ambiguous in its application to a 2023 internet. If it were clear, this case wouldn't have made its way up to SCOTUS.

It also defines its terms right there within the statute, in 230(f): https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/230

Actually to save everyone a click, let’s bring it here:

=====================

(f) Definitions

As used in this section:

(1) Internet The term “Internet” means the international computer network of both Federal and non-Federal interoperable packet switched data networks.

(2) Interactive computer service The term “interactive computer service” means any information service, system, or access software provider that provides or enables computer access by multiple users to a computer server, including specifically a service or system that provides access to the Internet and such systems operated or services offered by libraries or educational institutions.

(3) Information content provider The term “information content provider” means any person or entity that is responsible, in whole or in part, for the creation or development of information provided through the Internet or any other interactive computer service.

(4) Access software provider The term “access software provider” means a provider of software (including client or server software), or enabling tools that do any one or more of the following:

-> (A) filter, screen, allow, or disallow content;

-> (B) pick, choose, analyze, or digest content; or

-> (C) transmit, receive, display, forward, cache, search, subset, organize, reorganize, or translate content.

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