The CDA Is Dead, But States Are Trying To Revive It

oliphaunt writes "This week at The Legality, Tracy Frazier has an article discussing the damage that can be done by anonymous online comments. While regulars here are familiar with infamous bits of Net censorship like the Fishman Affidavit fiasco, and everyone has been an anonymous coward at least once or twice, some of you may not know about the conflict between Heide Iravani and AutoAdmit.com. Heide eventually filed a lawsuit because the first result for a Google search on her name brought up anonymous comments on AutoAdmit that accused her of carrying an STD and sleeping her way to the top of her class. The Communications Decency Act was supposed to prevent this kind of thing, but an injunction prevented it from ever being enforced and eventually the Supreme Court killed it. Should the law be changed?" The article links to a proposal from last summer in the New Jersey legislature that would institute a DMCA-like takedown regime for allegedly defamatory content posted on a Web site, and would allow aggrieved parties to demand the identity of anonymous posters without a subpoena. No indication of how that proposal fared. Also linked is a recent North Carolina proposal that would criminalize the act of defaming someone using an electronic medium. This proposal shields Web sites from liability and explicitly does not apply to anonymous speech.

Comments

Re:Criminalise?

[Mr. Slippery]

In capitalism every single individual is both a producer and consumer.

No, in capitalism, the capitalist class skims off the labor of producers by charging them for access to the resources that capitalists "own" and producers need to get stuff done.

This is all as opposed to socialism in which the government controls all of the means of exchange and production.

No, socialism is a system based on the exchange of labor and the democratic control of capital. State socialism, as practiced by Marxists, is not the only variety. Anarchists are socialists.

Even if you just hold a "9 - 5" you sell your labour in exchange for a mutually-agreed-upon paycheck. It's a voluntary exchange.

No arrangement made in the face of an overwhelming imbalance of power is "voluntary". So long as a state-backed minority class of "owners" controls the vast majority of economic resources, referring to the wage slavery that all but the most skilled workers have to sell themselves into as "voluntary" is a sick joke.