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At the end of the day if the user has full control over their device (which they don't with Apple), there isn't anything that advertisers can attempt to do that the user can't thwart in some way.

Add in a VPN or some other service that obfuscates your IP / location and there's not a lot that they can do.

True in theory.

Devilishly difficult to implement in practice, because what you are proposing is the elimination of all side channel information leakage from the browser to the web host. And all those tiny bits of information that can add up (user-agents, DOM support) to a pretty good identifier. Check out the EFF's Panopticlick site, which details all the tiny information leakages and sums them up.

Add to that canvas fingerprinting and other skullduggery, and even with full control over a device, it's an uphill battle to thwart all the ways an advertiser can assign you a unique stable identifier.

We've handed 100% of our children's k-12 performance data over to google, and 100% of our children's web surfing habits to various surveillance companies.

The real rub being that in an effort to appease the think of the children crowd Google has promised not to advertise to the students 'on this device'. The between the lines on this being that the student's profile follows him to any other computer system he signs in on.

Everything about the arrangement of chromebooks (or i-books, or whatever the local flavor may be) in the classroom is a life-long privacy nightmare for an entire generation of Americans, and nobody even seems to care.

One of the biggest most powerful data brokers the world has ever known will now know exactly how well an entire generation scored on every academic test/project/assignment they ever took. This is the tradeoff our public school system has made in our names, in a bid for convenience on the teachers part.

Last year, I tried as hard as I could to gain an exemption for my student against use the school issued chromebooks, we are happy to use our own device, and the entire student facing suite of tools is a web-portal that can be accessed by any device. Nobody had even considered a parent would not want their student to use them, and eventually I was told I can revoke my permission to use the device, which will doom my child to not being able to use IT systems in class at all. It was clear to me in the 3 months I worked this that none of the school officials had even read the user agreement or privacy policy that comes along with these devices.

This year I already knew how unorganized and uninformed my local school was regarding this technology, so I just told my student to tell them he had an exemption on the first day. It stuck. He still carries and charges the chromebook for specific test and such, but he is now in charge of his own device, and is learning the value of his personal data, how to be responsible and safe online, and how to take steps to limit the baked-in surveillance of the modern web. He knows this is a privilege, and he knows any abuse of this arrangement will end it. We got lucky, but my point is that it's still possible to take back control.

At a minimum, these devices should come with mandatory privacy training, and it needs to be clear to the student what data is being archived by what companies.

https://www.eff.org/wp/school-...
https://www.eff.org/document/f...
https://arstechnica.com/inform...
https://appleinsider.com/artic...

The situation is all the way bananas, and nobody seems to care.

We've handed 100% of our children's k-12 performance data over to google, and 100% of our children's web surfing habits to various surveillance companies.

The real rub being that in an effort to appease the think of the children crowd Google has promised not to advertise to the students 'on this device'. The between the lines on this being that the student's profile follows him to any other computer system he signs in on.

Everything about the arrangement of chromebooks (or i-books, or whatever the local flavor may be) in the classroom is a life-long privacy nightmare for an entire generation of Americans, and nobody even seems to care.

One of the biggest most powerful data brokers the world has ever known will now know exactly how well an entire generation scored on every academic test/project/assignment they ever took. This is the tradeoff our public school system has made in our names, in a bid for convenience on the teachers part.

Last year, I tried as hard as I could to gain an exemption for my student against use the school issued chromebooks, we are happy to use our own device, and the entire student facing suite of tools is a web-portal that can be accessed by any device. Nobody had even considered a parent would not want their student to use them, and eventually I was told I can revoke my permission to use the device, which will doom my child to not being able to use IT systems in class at all. It was clear to me in the 3 months I worked this that none of the school officials had even read the user agreement or privacy policy that comes along with these devices.

This year I already knew how unorganized and uninformed my local school was regarding this technology, so I just told my student to tell them he had an exemption on the first day. It stuck. He still carries and charges the chromebook for specific test and such, but he is now in charge of his own device, and is learning the value of his personal data, how to be responsible and safe online, and how to take steps to limit the baked-in surveillance of the modern web. He knows this is a privilege, and he knows any abuse of this arrangement will end it. We got lucky, but my point is that it's still possible to take back control.

At a minimum, these devices should come with mandatory privacy training, and it needs to be clear to the student what data is being archived by what companies.

https://www.eff.org/wp/school-...
https://www.eff.org/document/f...
https://arstechnica.com/inform...
https://appleinsider.com/artic...

The situation is all the way bananas, and nobody seems to care.

No.

Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 (47 U.S.C. 230(c)) states:

(c) Protection for “Good Samaritan” blocking and screening of offensive material

(1) Treatment of publisher or speaker:

No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.

(2) Civil liability:

No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be held liable on account of —

(A) any action voluntarily taken in good faith to restrict access to or availability of material that the provider or user considers to be obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected; or

(B) any action taken to enable or make available to information content providers or others the technical means to restrict access to material described in paragraph (1).

There is no exception to subsection 2 a because you think they are a "public square" -they are defined by law as a platform.

The EFF has an analysis and explanation of the law as well.

NSA probably now has access to the direct streams telecoms use to consolidate their billing and geolocatioon data, from taps on the underlying circuits. If it's encrypted then nudge nudge wink wink here's the key. So telecoms no longer need suffer the indignity and PR risk of transmitting the data.

NSA Warrantless Wiretapping is not just an invasion of privacy. They have actually claimed to Congress that they do NOT consider information intercepted and stored indefinitely... to be unlawful at all! Until or unless someone reads it. This subverts Freedom of Association too, since any future tyrant would have access to this cradle-to-grave data of our families and friends and (now! with super-cells!) movements.

To get up to speed quickly this whitepaper by Andrew Clement seems to cover all the bases. Look past the straw man 'Metadata Collection' within it for 'NSA splitter'. Or you might start as I did years ago with James Bamford's fascinating 1982 book Puzzle Palace. While most of it dwells on what is now history and goes on at length about NSA's Charter which explicitly forbid domestic intercepts, there was a single passage in this book that revealed something else. I will quote it because I believe Bamford intended it as a dire warning: "Another indication of NSA's "broadband sweeping of multi-circuited domestic telecommunications trunk lines," David L. Watters told the Senate Intelligence Committee [in 1978!] lies in the Agency's request for an amendment to the wiretap law that would permit NSA to engage in warrantless wiretapping "for the sole purpose of determining the capability of equipment" when such "test period shall be limited... to... ninety days." Continuing, he warned: "Let there be no misunderstanding here. There is only one category of wiretapping equipment or system which requires up to ninety days for test and adjustment, and that system is broadband electronic eavesdropping equipment, the vacuum-cleaner approach to intelligence gathering, the general search of microwave trunk lines. I make this assertion on the strength of actual experience in the electronic intelligence trade and on the strength of over twenty-five years' experience in the telecommunications profession. An ordinary, single-line wire tap requires only five minutes to adjust and test."

Sure this pre-Internet quote discusses microwave, which was the long-line 'broadband' of choice in those days... but NSA's intentions to dig in at places where American citizens speak with each other is clear. Since then, Thomas Drake, Bill Binney and Mark Klein have all come forward alleging domestic surveillance far exceeding 'telephone records'. Klein is of special note, for it is he who revealed the existence of secret Room 641A in the lawsuit Heptig vs AT&T that the Electronic Frontier Foundation took almost to the Supreme Court... who actually declined to hear the case on grounds that the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 protected AT&T from liability for involvement with any illegal activities. Sound normal? This was a law passed after the lawsuit was filed. In response to it, even. Oh.

That should make you a bit angry. We're not talking about telephone records here. We're talking about fiber splitting with drop-in access to the whole slurp. Which also contains voice these days. Any real despot who comes to power will discover that the United States is prepared to deliver real-time private communications and databases of activity for its citizens, cradle to grave, that had been collected with no 'probable cause' whatsoever.

Why the fuck would anyone want to build this thing

https://www.eff.org/issues/anonymity

I'll bite:

"Worse, the final draft of Article 11 has no exceptions to protect small and noncommercial services, including Wikipedia".

I find it hard to believe you do not have some idea already, but here you go: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/...

The NSA stopped spying on US citizens
https://www.wired.com/2017/04/...
However, https://www.aclu.org/blog/nati...

And https://www.eff.org/nsa-spying

Now who really thinks any government that spent a lot of taxpayer money to build spying capabilities on its taxpayers is going to stop it?

And if you think that is bad, lets put it in perspective. AI weaponry.... What's ethics? to those who are addicted to think, "if we don't do it someone else will and put us at a disadvantage"

https://www.eff.org/privacybad...

Except there are literally hundreds of additional data points which allow websites to uniquely identify you.

The point isn't just to identify you as unique but for you to both be unique the first time AND recognizable the next time you come back. This seems like a much easier problem to solve. Just change as many of the settings as you can each time you visit a website. If you had a browser capable of randomly tweaking settings at each page load it should be able to add enough noise that browser fingerprinting would become worthless. As an added bonus, not only would it protect your browser, the noise would add a touch of herd immunity and help other people with stock browsers as well. The goal shouldn't be to lock down a browser so that nothing is leaked but rather to leak so much random crap that it becomes worthless.

Except there are literally hundreds of additional data points which allow websites to uniquely identify you. The best you could do without too much hassle is to run the English version of Google Chrome under the latest release of Windows 10 without any extensions or additional fonts installed. But even that is not enough since you still expose your time zone, WebGL extensions and then there are evercookies, mouse tracking, canvas fingerprinting, etc. etc. etc.

It surely looks like the WWW was built with tracking in mind. Not intentionally of course.

The great intellect of Europeans would say otherwise. Let see how their little protest protest goes. I think they're just pissing in the wind and the leaders won't have their insolence laying down. Serfs!

The great intellect of Europeans would say otherwise. Let see how their little protest protest goes. I think they're just pissing in the wind and the leaders won't have their insolence laying down. Serfs!

paid prioritization and 'zero rating' of select content, which is what you want, is anti-competitive and has been proven to RAISE prices

so you can go right ahead and fuck off..

From another thread: EFF's take on the rules that are proposed for reinstatement. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/...

TLDR. It's as fucked as I expected. Appears designed to be unclear and to generate billable hours for beltway law firms. You won't like what comes out the other end of that process.

People should read your cite. Especially this: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/... (cited by your cite).

A list of problems the EFF has found with the 'legalize' of the rules that are proposed for reinstatement (and that you appear to support).

For those that won't read: They punted, like the shyster that they are. 'Reasonable Network Management' with no definition is an invitation for legal shenanigans and many many billable hours. More or less, what I would expect. Good to get confirmation from the EFF.

We geeks can't even agree to a clear definition here

Fortunately, it doesn't matter whether or not we agree on a definition, because a clear and straightforward definition already exists, helpfully posted by the Electronic Frontier Foundation:

https://www.eff.org/issues/net...

Oh, right. Not until January 1, 2024 -- well, sort of -- 96 years after he was created..

Let's Encrypt has an agent that does it all for you.

I submitted USA's own mass surveillance program 'Hemisphere' and that story NEVER got published. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/

Does CIA/NSA has / . on its payroll?

I submitted USA's own mass surveillance program 'Hemisphere' and that story NEVER got published. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/... [eff.org]

Does CIA/NSA has / . on its payroll?

I submitted USA's own mass surveillance program 'Hemisphere' and that story NEVER got published. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/...

Does CIA/NSA has / . on its payroll?

I submitted USA's own mass surveillance program 'Hemisphere' and that story NEVER got published. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/...

Does CIA/NSA has / . on its payroll?

I submitted USA's own mass surveillance program 'Hemisphere' and that story NEVER got published. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/...

I submitted USA's own mass surveillance program 'Hemisphere' and that story NEVER got published. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/...

In many countries, the wiretapping and modification of private communication is illegal, and such activities could result in massive fines and/or prison time for those involved. Food for thought.

But not in the US where it is completely legal:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/...

I have caught AT&T doing the same thing with DSL and FTTN HTTP traffic and interfering with other IP protocols.

It is best to treat all IP traffic as lawfully seized which means it can be lawfully searched as well. If the US government is not doing it, then it has its agents at least in the form of the US telecommunication companies doing it for it.

EAE = Encrypt Absolutely Everything

NN has a cool name, but it's price control and censorship. Net neutrality wasn't passed by law. It was decreed by Obama.

Regulation of pricing, enforced contracts, and government enforced censorship is "free market". Right.

The original rules they tried to use were so bad, the EFF came out against them - they were neither "free" nor "market". The later revision was slightly better, but still allowed several types of priority content (while banning some of the worst), and ALSO allowed censorship of content - along with all the other shitty things that companies can do under the Title II provisions.

If you want Net Neutrality, you need to get Congress to actually pass a Net Neutrality law. Trying to force pre-internet laws written for phone and cable networks onto the internet is a bad idea. Do it right.

You can take your us-vs-them Obama is the anti-christ rhetoric and deposit it where the sun does not shine. Net neutrality, by definition provides a free market environment on the internet because big players, such as Amazon, would not be able to choke competitors at birth because they, unlike the competitor, get more and better bandwidth. Net neutrality is the natural consequence of an environment where there is true competition between all telecommunications providers. In such an environment of true competition there is always somebody who offers fairer treatment to undercut his rival who does not, so the end result is basically net neutrality. I know this because in my corner of the world we have several telecommunications companies who compete fiercely with eachother nation-wide and the result has been net neutrality by default. In the absence of true competition, and the US is after all patchwork of regional telecommunications monopolies, the only way to provide net neutrality is to impose it if you are not willing to break up the monopolies and create a free market. You can be against the imposition of net neutrality in a landscape of regional monopolies but all that will get you is being screwed over even more thoroughly by those monopolies than you are currently. Judging from your: 'net neutrality is government censorship' rhetoric you thoroughly enjoy being screwed over.

Regulation of pricing, enforced contracts, and government enforced censorship is "free market". Right.

The original rules they tried to use were so bad, the EFF came out against them - they were neither "free" nor "market". The later revision was slightly better, but still allowed several types of priority content (while banning some of the worst), and ALSO allowed censorship of content - along with all the other shitty things that companies can do under the Title II provisions.

If you want Net Neutrality, you need to get Congress to actually pass a Net Neutrality law. Trying to force pre-internet laws written for phone and cable networks onto the internet is a bad idea. Do it right.

They don't need the patents, and it often doesn't even bring in a lot of money for universities to do so.

Have you ever wondered where the patents go? Back into private hands to be monetized.

The EU is not a dictatorship, and the updates to the Copyright Directive, including Articles 11 and 13, are not in effect yet.

This article at EFF describes with this only parliament-approved draft directive, how the entire process works.

Why would people use VPN with a web browser which is leaking tons of information and makes your fingerprint totally unique even if you're browsing in incognito mode? Changing your IP address in this case is simply futile and inconsequential.

Maybe for Netflix/Hulu? But they've long implemented technical measures which makes using them via VPN impossible. I can only think of pr0n/shady websites you don't want your ISP to know about but that's less than 0.1% of people in the world. And those will most likely use Tor browser with VPN.

That's assuming 3D printers don't have an equivalent of the machine identification code that laser and inkjet printers have.

Is the EFF still considered a credible source on Slashdot? https://www.eff.org/press/rele...

https://www.eff.org/privacybad...

it's not as effective as a blocker with loads of blacklist, but it tries to block DNT violators while give some awards to those who are willing to respect DNT...

It's like consumer activism, I don't think it will success most of the time, but I still want to do it anyway...

Sometimes, the point of security is not to protect against hackers but your own rear from having the legal system decide that having them in plaintext where you can see them means you should totally be reading it.

There's not going to be many situations where "we couldn't read the message" is going to excuse a company from liability. Let's say it's sexual harassment or similar interpersonal harm. The victim prints the DMs, takes them to HR who does nothing and there's a lawsuit. Monitoring the DMs would not have avoided the liability, since the problem comes from failing to deal with the harassment once it has been reported, not over detecting the harassment.

Not quite--the problem comes from failing to deal with the harassment once you are aware of it, last I checked. It would generally not be wise to wait for somebody to report it after you have, for example, had it happen rather publicly in front of a crowd that includes the head of HR. How much monitoring you're expected to do (vs waiting for somebody to report) will depend on local laws and judges.

If you're imagining some future law where businesses are supposed to magically find terrorists or similar, I really don't see any companies deciding not being able to read their employee's messages is better than a dumb keyword search that lets them pretend they're complying with the law with little to no effort.

Also, I also think you're vastly underestimating the stupidity involved to think a dumb keyword search on its own would be enough to fake compliance should we get a batch of legislators who will pass that sort of law. You are rarely going to overestimate a politician's understanding of what computers can and cannot do by working off the theory that they overall believe that computers are magical & can do anything without mistakes, errors, and/or failures.

By the way, that future law is in the process of being made in the EU. Why do you think people are not happy with the EU's new Copyright Directive's Article 13? Seriously, start here and wander a bit as the EFF are not the only people who are pointing out just how bad this law is--I've seen it reported on here, too. Just because it's not the US passing a monumentally stupid law doesn't mean it shouldn't be a concern, especially when it's a law that will require you comply internationally--or decide it's just plain cheaper to give the EU market a hard pass.

The new bill also brings older recordings into the public domain sooner. Recordings made before 1923 will exit from all copyright protection after a 3-year grace period. Recordings made from 1923 to 1956 will enter the public domain over the next several decades. And recordings from 1957 onward will continue under copyright until 2067, as before. These terms are still ridiculously long—up to 110 years from first publication, which is longer than any other U.S. copyright..

EFF on Music Modernization Act

Public Domain is becoming a joke worldwide. Why do they need copyright life +90 years? Especially with a lot of the rights are owned by mega-corporations (Looking at you, UMG ) who keep fighting to get copyright extended and NEVER DIE like people. Corporation goes under, the assets, especially IP, get sold off to somebody else. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Also from that EFF page I quoted:

But our musical heritage will leave the exclusive control of the major record labels sooner than it would have otherwise.

Yeah, not much consolation there. They just keep on getting away with pushing the dates further and further back since they keep getting away with it. It is just how most, if not all politicians work. Money walks, bulls(*t walks.

Now I can't wait to see what they ram through Congress before the end of the year to keep Steamboat Willie and Mickey Mouse out of the Public Domain. (p.s.: sarcasm there) That one is gonna make the Sony Bono Act jealous.

And don't blame the just the President. BOTH Parties have their pockets lined by the music mega-corporations (still looking at you, UMG ). It would have happened no matter WHO won the election (please, no party faction followups on this), because Congress would have overridden any theoretical and practically impossible chance of a veto ANY President would have put up. So I'm blaming all sides of the political spectrum on this one, even those few politicians I like.

Guess I'm gonna have to delete my music videos of 40s to 60s music on YouTube soon since they are gonna fold even more to the "rights holders". Damn shame too, because I did all the work copying them from the original LPs and cleaning up the audio since nobody is printing CDs of them. But, hey, it will make UMG(told you I was still looking at you, UMG a crap-ton more money!

Thanks, Congress, for selling us all out yet again. So much for all of them serving the public trust.

https://www.eff.org/issues/cda... Other issue is you look at 2016 and how these companies use their massive power and reach to influence election's like they tried to do in 2016. Everyone will look at "the russian interference" which lets be real did next to nothing compared to likes of google messing with its search to benfit the leftist democrat's while putting labels on GOP's picture calling them a nazi. Then you got most recent news from likes a twitter saying conservatives are scared to voice their opinion's in a very hostile liberal work place. We can also look at how Facebook and Cambridge analytic's story where all you heard about was how it helped Trump but never how Facebook data was used by Clinton and Even obama in 2012 which facebook found out later about but let them keep the data which was illega campaign contribution and like would be charged as if they looked at it. All and All these companies as posted above are using their power and reach to influence people's vote in 1 person's favor and we all know that is in favor if the liberal democrat's.

Here's the EFF's take on it. Apparently it's a combination of the Music Modernization Act (a mostly positive bill updating how compensation works for artists and rights-holders on streaming services), with the CLASSICS Act (another copyright extension and expansion thing).

Yes yes, we know that argument. It's been passed around for a while now. It's no less bullshit now than it was then. The customers are paying for their pipe. The content producers are paying for their own pipe. Everyone is *already* paying for their access.

The reality that has been demonstrated is that ISPs only want to double-dip, making their customers pay AND make the content-providers pay for the exact same traffic. There is absolutely no evidence that says ISPs ever have or ever will lower prices for consumers by having content-creators pay the difference.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/...

Maybe it was that terrible "think of the children or else your a pedo" law aimed at Backpage (FOSTA?). Today, sites are liable for the content to some extent regardless. Ever since that law was passed (which was attacked by the likes of the EFF), it seems online censorship is in high gear. I suspect that the censorship of (particularly non leftist) non-government-approved viewpoints and the rolling out of FOSTA (remember it's just a repackaged version of SOPA and PIPA and SESTA and whatever else they called it when the left was pretending to be against it) happened in parallel behind the scenes.

The nice thing with email is that it is many layers and you can decide what you do yourself and what not.

So here is what I did. The companies names are the ones I use. There will be others that do the same or more.
1) Have a domain (12 EUR per year) 15 EUR per year Includes 2 email adresses
2) DNS service. I use one that is free. Points the MX records to my web provider.
3) Webhosting for 25 EUR per year. (Do not think they sell that type) with unlimted emails and email aliasses.
4) Fetchmail, to get the email. Free.
5) Imap web server Free.

So there are 5 things. You actually only need one. That is the first one. So you are done for 15EUR per year. If you need webhosting, have that instead. Just see that the domain is in your name when it is free, not theirs. Again 15 EUR per year total.

Most will have some sore of webmail and/or IMAP or SMTP service that you can use.
You can even do it step by step. Just start with the domain (with free email) and then go from there as you feel comfortable or have time. You can even see to it that you give it to Google to read, if that is OK for you.

The reason I use my own mailserver (not that hard to install, if you are able to follow basic steps you find online) is that almost all mail services are blocked where I work. They block on domain name (I know.) and mine is not in any filter. If they do, adding a subdomain would be trivial.

Oh, you do need SSL if you have your own server https://certbot.eff.org/ to the resque.

So for 15 EUR per year I would just jump in. Hold on to your old address for at least a year just to be sure. The worst that could happen is that you wasted 15 EUR (or less) and learned nothing. Besat would be that you nbow have your own domain that you can use and abuse with email, website, linking to home (dynamic DNS might be needed. Zoneedit has this and is free.) and that you learned a lot about things along the way.

As an added bonus of unlimited aliasses, I now use a different email for different companies. e.g. slashdot.org@example.com here. So that way I know if something strange goes on. An email from my bank to a differnt address? Spam! A mail to my bank address and not from my bank. Breach at the bank or sold email!
Easy to filter on top of whatever filters I deside to use.

Main thing: See that the domain is actually on your name before you hand it out. That way you can transfer it to anywhere away from the DNS company, if you so desire. That is also the reason I use zoneedit. That way my provider can never hold me hostage. I just point the DNS elsewhere and 48 hours later (at most) all will work at a new provider.

Not only the IP. It is Browser Fingerprinting. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

That will tell them who you are. GDPR related to Brwoser Fingerprinting

Here's what the law basically says. I'm paraphrasing: A company that hosts online user-generated content (Facebook, Twitter, etc., yes?) is protected from liability from that content, as long as the content is end-user-controlled. HOWEVER... if the hosting company controls that content, i.e. censors it or otherwise restricts what that content may be, then the company assumes liability for that content. Another way to put it is: when they suspend accounts over speech they find objectionable, they are accepting liability for all the other content that remains. There is legal precedent for this and in fact it's pretty clear in the law. They are protected if they take down illegal content, but not content they just don't like.

That's what the law said in 1995. The U.S. New York Supreme Court decision Stratton Oakmont, Inc. v. Prodigy Services Co., 1995 WL 323710 held that online service providers could be held liable for the speech of their users. However, in 1996 the Communications Decency Act was passed, which includes the crucial section 230:

"No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider. ... [Section 230] remains in force and allows ISPs and other service providers to restrict customers' actions without fear of being found legally liable for the actions that are allowed. The act was passed in part in reaction to the 1995 decision in Stratton Oakmont, Inc. v. Prodigy Services Co.,[3] which suggested that service providers who assumed an editorial role with regard to customer content, thus became publishers, and legally responsible for libel and other torts committed by customers. This act was passed to specifically enhance service providers' ability to delete or otherwise monitor content without themselves becoming publishers. In Zeran v. America Online, Inc., the Court notes that "Congress enacted 230 to remove the disincentives to self-regulation created by the Stratton Oakmont decision.[4]"

So section 230 overturned Stratton Oakmont v. Prodigy 1995. The Electronic Frontier Foundation explains:

"CDA 230 also offers its legal shield to bloggers who act as intermediaries by hosting comments on their blogs. Under the law, bloggers are not liable for comments left by readers, the work of guest bloggers, tips sent via email, or information received through RSS feeds. This legal protection can still hold even if a blogger is aware of the objectionable content or makes editorial judgments."

That editorial judgments link lists several court cases upholding this law, including Blumenthal v. Drudge, 922 F. Supp. 44, 52 (D.D.C. 1998): "230 forbids the imposition of publisher liability on a service provider for the exercise of its editorial and self-regulatory functions."

The Electronic Frontier Foundation FAQ makes this clear:

Do I lose Section 230 immunity if I edit the content?

"Courts have held that Section 230 prevents you from being held liable even if you exercise the usual prerogative of publishers to edit the material you publish. You may also delete entire posts. However, you may still be held responsible for information you provide in commentary or through editing. For example, if you edit the statement, "Fred is not a criminal" to remove the word "not," a court might find that you have sufficien

The services to which you refer are not now, nor were they ever considered to be common carriers.

They are however protected from liability by section 230 of the communications decency act, specifically "No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider."

That means that the owner/operator of the website is not liable for the bullshit you post.

This is not related to their right to ban you. They can ban you, or block you, or remove your posts at their discretion. It is still private property. No one is under any obligation to give you a forum in which to speak.

>"That said, the TFA is right to be concerned because elsewhere Taylor says "We need access to digital networks and devices, and to the data on them", which does imply an attack on encryption. Now, I'm no fan of our current government, or regressive right-wing government in general, but "

I don't know about how it is with left/right in Australia, but in the US, it is not a "right-wing" issue. For example, the Patriot Act was passed by both parties and extended by both parties. Obama is quite "left-wing" and signed the extension into law....

This is a "hysteria" issue.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/...

Funny you should ask. The answer is: no one knows! This mess is all because of a large range of opinion among both the public and the judiciary about how copyright should work; there is even a large range of conceptualization around these concepts (typically "property" versus "monopoly" --- practically no one thinks about it as an "usufruct", which is my favorite).

See the recent ruling: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/...

Cloudflare is an adversary and is doing its utmost to break the world wide web. You can have no reasonable expectation of privacy from them, either. Cloudflare is a MiTM attack on the web and should be treated as such. They have a track record of spreading disinformation and even messing with bug tickets of privacy projects like tor to try to make themselves look better without fixing anything.

Your ISP should not *have* your browser history. You should be using tor. If your ISP can see your browsing history, you're already screwed.

For expert users and IT pros accustomed to having fine-grained control over the update process, these changes might seem wrenching and even draconian...

How proprietors use their power over the user power varies and perhaps increasingly obtuse, but is completely explainable in terms corporate media mostly doesn't dare to explain even as it documents a proprietors' excesses: the power is firmly rooted in denying users software freedom—the freedom to run, inspect, modify, and share published computer software. Proprietary software users get as much control as the proprietors let them have. Microsoft has shown its users a taste of their power before such as when Windows 10 ignored user's privacy settings (including sending identifiable information to Microsoft, even if a user turns off its Bing search and Cortana features, and activates the privacy-protection settings) or when Microsoft forcibly and immediately imposed "upgrades" to Windows 10.

DRM, jailing, tyrannical control, surveillance, interference with ordinary activities, and sabotage are all there. When and if Microsoft deems it time for Windows users to take their updates without warning or opportunity for delay (including enterprise users), Microsoft will do so. This isn't unique to Microsoft either, this is part of an ongoing pattern of which Microsoft is but one proprietor wielding this control. Proprietors get to make these decisions stick based on your willingness to submit to their authority; you determine the limit of their control over your system by how long you'll let proprietary software (such as most of Microsoft's software) be installed on your computer. You can choose to favor software freedom instead, even if it means giving up some conveniences and learning new things. In doing so you take a step in the direction of controlling your computer and getting back the power you deserve over your computer.

Next thing will probably be outlawing 3D printers.

If they treat it like paper printers then it will be government-mandated watermarking. From the EFF:

...all major manufacturers of color laser printers entered a secret agreement with governments to ensure that the output of those printers is forensically traceable.

It appears likely that all recent commercial color laser printers print some kind of forensic tracking codes...