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Comment by beAbU | Hacker News Reader

So this is basically the inverse of the Good Samaritan law? If you do /something/ you might become liable because you did not do enough?

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It's arguably the difference between being a utility (the phone company passes all calls through; if someone makes a death threat through it that's not their problem) and a publisher (if the NYT publishes an editorial calling for the murder of some random person, that's very much the NYT's problem). Definite fuzziness around the edges, tho.

EDIT: Though now I think of it, even with this analogy, blocking phone numbers when directed to by the government wouldn't normally threaten a phone company's status...

Yep, it's basically the reasoning behind why Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act was created in the states:

In Cubby, Inc. v. CompuServe Inc. they didn't moderate and were not liable as a publisher because they did not have any direct knowledge of the defamatory content as they just transmitted it.

In Stratton Oakmont, Inc. v. Prodigy Services Co. they did moderate some things and were liable due to the editorial control they had over it.

Section 230 fixed that by letting services filter offensive content without incurring liability for everything else. Without it you'd have to either do no moderation at all or perfect moderation, letting nothing offensive/defamatory/etc through.

IANAL, but as I understand it, the basic idea is like how saying sorry can be an admission of guilt/responsibility in some legal systems. Once you start moderating, you admit it's within your ability and it's your responsibility to do so (and usually at the scale most service providers it's not realistically feasible to moderate all content). So either you're responsible for moderating all the content, or you moderate non of it.

Edit: clarity

Good Samaritan isn’t a blanket protection. If you have ANY knowledge or training you can be sued anyway. Unfortunately due to that law and others things, there’s absolutely no way I’m touching or helping anyone. Blame the litigious American society

Do you have any examples? The few states I just read through (Washington, New York, Colorado) have explicit carveouts for the situation you're describing as long as they had no professional obligation to the patient.

Here's Colorado's:

> Any person licensed as a physician and surgeon under the laws of the state of Colorado, or any other person, who in good faith renders emergency care or emergency assistance to a person not presently his patient without compensation at the place of an emergency or accident, including a health care institution as defined in section 13-64-202 (3), shall not be liable for any civil damages for acts or omissions made in good faith as a result of the rendering of such emergency care or emergency assistance during the emergency, unless the acts or omissions were grossly negligent or willful and wanton. This section shall not apply to any person who renders such emergency care or emergency assistance to a patient he is otherwise obligated to cover.

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