Slashdot Mirror
Supreme Court Will Not Examine Tech Industry Legal Shield (reuters.com)
An anonymous reader shares a Reuters report: The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday let stand a lower court's decision that an online advertising site accused by three young women of facilitating child sex trafficking was protected by a federal law that has shielded website operators from liability for content posted by others. The refusal by the justices to take up the women's appeal in the case involving the advertising website Backpage.com marked a victory for the tech industry, which could have faced far-reaching consequences had the Supreme Court decided to limit the scope of the Communications Decency Act, passed by Congress in 1996 to protect free speech on the internet.
It was written to DENY free speech -- specifically porn.
It just had to have the happy side effect that, after the porn ban was ruled unconstitutional, the "safe harbor' provision stayed in effect.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
Of course they are.
The real complaint here is that "tech companies" are getting all the protections of being common carriers without any of the responsibilities of being common carriers. So they're not liable for ads posted for criminal services, but they can cancel ads that conflict with their own political agenda.
SCOTUS made the correct decision in this case. One can only presumed these women sued Backapages because their pimps - who actually forced them into prostitution - didn't have any more.
The remedies are already in place. Suppose someone posts on Slashdot advertising a human trafficking operation. If Slashdot were liable for user comments, Slashdot would immediately be guilty of abetting said operation. Of course, the site isn't liable so they're not immediately at risk of a lawsuit over the situation. The proper response is to report the comment and Slashdot either takes it down (and thus shields themselves from liability) or decides to leave it up (in which case, they might expose themselves to liability). Alternatively, the authorities could subpoena Slashdot (through proper legal channels) to get information on the person who made the post.
With this system in place, sites can host user-generated content without hiring armies of human (as opposed to automated) moderators. (Imagine how many moderators YouTube, Twitter, or Facebook would need to hire just to keep up with the flood of content!) Meanwhile, it also allows for illegal comments to be removed - something that any site worth its salt wants to ensure anyway if only to keep the spam out.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
The RIAA and MAPP are very strong lobbies. Laws are different depending on the amount of money in the industry backing/opposing them.