The Take It Down Act isn't a law, it's a weapon | Hacker News Reader

The Take It Down Act isn't a law, it's a weapon

theverge.com

72 pointsarchagon30 comments

It's worth reading the bill, S.146.[1] It's Ted Cruz's bill, and it passed the Senate last year, but too late in the session to go to the House. Seems to be the same bill this session.

It's structured much like DMCA takedown, but with no safeguards. There's no way to challenge a removal and force a put-back, as there is with the DMCA. There's no penalty for making a false claim. There's both a civil forfeiture provision, and criminal provisions. If it had roughly the same terms as the DMCA [2] it wouldn't be so bad.

It only applies to images, at least. If you run a site that allows uploading content, for compliance purposes it might be useful to have a classifier recognize any pictures which include administration officials and blank them out.

[1] https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/senate-bill/146

[2] https://www.copyright.gov/512/

I don't understand why you'd staple an analysis of (real!) flaws in the Take It Down Act to a conclusion that it "doesn't matter" whether the Take It Down Act is a good bill because "any bill that regulates internet content" is a bad idea. Doesn't each half of the article undercut the other?

The first rule of politics: always invert.

This is why.

I don't understand the logic behind criminalizing images rather than focusing strictly on the harm caused. Equating them as 1:1 seems absurd. This standard already exists in civil cases? Maybe ban causation vs coorelation fallacies in legislation instead.

Does this act apply to things that are not nudity? It seems like the definition of “intimate physical depiction” would pretty much restrict it to that.

The EFF explains the issue better than the linked article: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/02/take-it-down-act-flawe...

In particular, it's an encryption ban:

>The online services that do the best job of protecting user privacy could also be under threat from Take It Down. While the bill exempts email services, it does not provide clear exemptions for private messaging apps, cloud storage, and other end-to-end encrypted (E2EE) services. Services that use end-to-end encryption, by design, are not able to access or view unencrypted user content. How could such services comply with the takedown requests mandated in this bill? Platforms may respond by abandoning encryption entirely in order to be able to monitor content—turning private conversations into surveilled spaces.

Remember this moment the next time a Democrat suggest a law suppressing speech.

What laws are you referring to?

The article mentions that "it’s internet safety law season again", where there is a long history of bad bipartisan internet censorship bills [1], such as SOPA/PIPA, FOSTA/SESTA.

The difference is that those were 'just' bad laws in a somewhat functioning legislature, while these laws indeed look like fascistic implements.

I don't think taking a stand against making giant technology companies (that people generally don't like much) work to combat revenge porn (which literally everybody finds revolting) is going to be the political winner this Verge editorial thinks it will be.

Especially annoying: the "no matter how carefully crafted the bill is" framing, which not only makes the argument non-falsifiable, but also cuts off discussion rooted in what the bill actually says and ensures that we're going to stay fixed in the orbit of a pointless ideological debate.

The issue is that you can justify overturning any part of our liberal democracy by finding one example of abuse. For example,

"We should institute a federal board of candidacy to keep all these corrupt politicians off the ballot."

"We should allow the state governor to have an un-pardon, to send criminals like OJ Simpson to jail even after they get off on a technicality."

"We should allow police to search your person without a warrant if they won't be able to find you later on."

If someone claims you posted porn of them, do you think the giant company is going to take the time, money, and resources to give you the benefit of the doubt and investigate? Or are they simply going to ban your account with no recourse?

The DMCA and copyright strikes don't work correctly and are rife with abuse. I definitely don't expect this to work as intended, either.

Trump was pretty open about his desire to use it for other stuff.

> "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."

So one law invalidates artistic parody and triumphs over free speech?

All that Beeple Trump art just became illegal.

The problem is that you have POTUS announcing his intent on using this in a deliberate way not as you describe so he can go after people saying things about him he does not like. Whatever you wanted to say about the law, its true intent was made clear when he said the quiet part out loud on national television

Do you like DMCA abuse? [0] This is the same problem.

[0] https://www.eff.org/takedowns

They hate our freedom.

Who is "they"?

Who is "our"?

What "freedom" do you think you have?

"They" means a long line of leaders who see our basic rights as obstacles, "our" means Americans although it's probably the same in some other places, and "freedom" means our ability to communicate with each other, without censorship or a secret officer reading our private letters.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com