averysmallbird

Telecom mergers are handled by the FCC and DOJ, not the FTC, and the FTC has been bringing plenty of other industries than tech.

It does not create an age verification requirement. A platform only has obligations to provide safeguards when it has knowledge that a user is 16 and under. It also provides statutory direction that it does not require further steps to infer or collect age.

(I'm staff that cowrote the bill.)

The ESP32-C5 is supposed to have 5Ghz. https://www.espressif.com/en/news/ESP32-C5

NLRB decisions in unfair labor practice cases can be appealed to a US Court of Appeals?

You may have that political position, but you're wrong on the merits.

The non-delegation doctrine exists, but independent agencies survive because its administrators are Presidentially appointed and Congressionally confirmed, and other factors. Other commenters have rightfully also pointed out that you probably have more chance to engage in the democratic process with an independent agency, which also tend to have greater representation from the political party not in control of the Presidency.

It would be correct to say that there are new attacks on the administrative courts systems and extent of deference to administrative rulemaking. But you're wrong about independent agencies.

Right. Word processing or image editing software aren't protected by Section 230, and they aren't forced to monitor their users for crime.

It's been settled mostly by common law decisions in courts. Which allows for consideration of whether say, the tire advertised itself as nail-proof or the automotive manufacture knew the car model was uniquely susceptible to going off the road but ignored the risk.

The problem with Section 230 is that it short circuits all of this consideration of proportionality and says "the driver was always responsible."

Removal of Section 230 immunity is not the same thing as creating or imposing actual liability.

Even if the scope of the exemption is broad, from someone's standpoint, the backend liability is likely to do a fair amount of work in whether a generative AI company could be liable for a particular cause of action.

This is demonstrably true: using that example, Section 230 does not protect text editor software doing spellchecking. However, you don't see a lot of (any?) claims against text editor developers, and there's not really any chill in the development of spellchecking over fear of lawsuits.

(disclosure: staff involved in the bill)

Platforms have had legal obligations to treat children online differently since 2000, and yet that didn't happen.

Your read is correct. The duty of care was written, and further rewritten, to be narrowly applied to specific clinically-diagnosable harms and remedies. Adding to the point about the rule of construction, the lack of an exemption to Section 230 is meaningful in this regard.

I am the staffer who cowrote this bill and I appreciate your comment and understanding of it.

Thanks!

This is beautiful. My apologies if I missed it, but is it possible to download the produced figure as an STL (or something equivalent)?

The California law is a copy of the UK Age Appropriate Design Code, which took effect two years ago and is different from the Safety Code. Take from that a benchmark of whether that will blow up the internet.

> Will California Eliminate Anonymous Web Browsing?

tldr; no.

Regardless of the threat of blocking, it's generally not popular to allow children to surf porn in the classroom, e.g. through the copious amounts that will appear in a Google Image Search.

They did this with the option to disable SSL a few years ago. Google provided an IP that would offer a non-SSL frontend for search that admins to redirect to using DNS, the idea being that schools and local networks could maintain whatever blocking or logging needed. Iran used its gateway filtering to redirect all DNS requests in the country. Google ended up stepping in some way to cut them off.

That's not fully Github's choice to make. They made a judgement call based on seemingly incomplete evidence, and have different incentives that everyone else.

Repository owners may well have a different level of acceptable risk or legal obligations over the integrity of their source code. For example, if I was maintaining security software or a popular package, it would be entirely appropriate to stop everything and look for abuse. Waiting three months makes that harder.

I'm not sure that's trust building.

The new controls are for "intrusion software" (e.g. malware) and "IP network communications surveillance systems or equipment."

There are specific definitions for those terms with technical specifications. Then there are licenses/exemptions that mean you don't have to seek a license if you are selling to nongovernment customers in certain (friendlier) countries. There's also larger exemptions in export controls related to commercial off the shelf equipment and fundamental research that would apply as well.

Generally the take away is that if you're selling malware, exploits, or network surveillance equipment, you might want to talk to an export control lawyer first.

There's already export controls on encryption. Have been for decades.

It’s not a coincidence: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/18/opinion/microsoft-antitru...

Yes

Do a fellowship in Congress, learn the ropes and if you don’t want to stay on the Hill, you’ll still have had a unbeatable crash course on how politics works. https://www.techcongress.io/

The FTC brings privacy cases under its 'unfair and deceptive acts or practices in commerce' prohibition, which does not provide it the legal basis to impose civil penalties. There are possibly other things it could have required (the recent Ever case requiring deletion is a good example), but it is currently constrained on what it can force for a first violation. The two Democratic FTC Commissioners issued a useful statement on what else they would have required: https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/documents/public_statements...

There are reportedly investigations against Google, Apple, Amazon, and Facebook; with DOJ taking the first two and the FTC taking the latter. Google was likely the easiest because there was a prior FTC investigation and EU enforcement actions taken against Google. Additionally, more state AGs rallied to the Google case.

Whether the civil administration is elected is irrelevant to the threat that this person faces, although to be sure, the Guardian Council dictates who is an acceptable candidate. Rouhani does not have control over the IRGC, which has engaged in a years long campaign of arrests and threats of software developers with links to the West, e.g. Arash Zad, Naranji, and, most recently, Behdad Esfahbod, among others. Once in the hands of the IRGC, neither the President nor the courts can save someone, and the facts of the case matter little -- Rouhani can't even save his own brother. One would have to be profoundly ignorant of Iranian politics and the IRGC and Iranian state media's campaign of intimidation against software developers, the startup community, and other tech figures to not understand that this is the direct result of the security apparatus's propaganda and coercion, and that this person's decision is rational based on well-founded fears -- despite being unfortunate and regrettable.

She resigned and then, rather than allow her to leave on her own terms in two weeks, USAGM fired her that evening.