- CDA 230 gives ISPs immunity for third party content not related to intellectual property, AND it *encourages* ISPs to exercise discretion, get rid of defamatory posts, etc. So here the immunity is definitely not tied to staying neutral.
- DMCA 512 gives ISPs immunity for third party intellectual property content (as long as they respond to take-down notices), but it says that ISPs must engage in "transmission, routing, provision of connections, or storage... through an automatic technical process without selection of the material by the service provider." I'm not sure that this has been tested in court, so I'm not sure what exactly it means.
Why in the world would they give it to Verisign? I thought we were trying to move away from Verisign controlling anything other than.com (and I guess.net too)?
Could someone please point me to where the info comes from that pre-publication editing broadly affects CDA 230 immunity? I know that significant pre-publication editing of specific user-generated comments / submissions could affect immunity related to those comments / submissions. But I was not under the impression that it affects immunity as it relates to the rest of the site. Generally CDA 230 immunity is quite broad, unlike the DMCA safe harbor which relies on lack of knowledge.
in part:
CDA 230(c)(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;
I don't know anything about the other case, but Roommates.com seems like they may be liable b/c they're specifically inducing infringement of the fair housing act. (Unlike craigslist, which pretty much lets people post whatever they want, roommates.com specifically asks and then uses race, religion, and other factors in their matching.) So I'm not sure that's so bad for future section 230 immunity, though it may (for better or worse) make certain business practices (like what roommates.com was using) more difficult.
But here's an interesting part that a friend pointed out to me, from footnote 15 of the Roommates.com decision:
"The Internet is no longer a fragile new means of communication that could easily be smothered in the cradle by overzealous enforcement of laws and regulations applicable to brick-and-mortar businesses. Rather, it has become a dominant--perhaps the preeminent--means through which commerce is conducted. And its vast reach into the lives of millions is exactly why we must be careful not to exceed the scope of the immunity provided by Congress and thus give online businesses an unfair advantage over their real-world counterparts, which must comply with laws of general applicability."
yeah, I'm confused. The article suggests that they're considering IP re: CDA 230, but that doesn't make sense, b/c 230 specifically exempts IP, which is generally dealt with by the more restrictive DMCA.
oh my god people. i know this is from microsoft, but it actually sounds like interesting research that could help us better understand and potentially deal with the whole polarization / daily me problem. (see cass sunstein for the background)... i mean it's an interesting ongoing research problem. this isn't intended to be a magical solution.
I think the interesting thing, regardless of this guy's culpability, is to see how things change when actions that were generally accepted offline move online where they can be more easily monitored. (Not that cheating is accepted offline, but study groups certainly are.)
In the same way, mix tapes and sharing music with friends were ok until it moved online.
I'm confused. What is "the 'white space' broadband that might be offered by whoever wins the 700mhz auction?" Unless I'm very much mistaken, the 700 mhz auction and the white space spectrum are unrelated. I guess winners of the 700 mhz auction could go in on white spaces if the FCC decides to allow it.
At least according to AT&T, the phones aren't just going to disappear. What the article says is that AT&T is getting out of the pay phone business, turning some or all of their phones over to independent operators.
"Isn't this community getting a little hypocritical?" said Chad Stoller, director of emerging platforms at Organic, a digital advertising agency. "Now, all of a sudden, they don't want to share something?"
See, this guy is missing the whole point. Of course people want to share stuff. But they want to share it on what they perceive to be their terms, not on some company's terms!
Anyways, this change to Beacon is good news, even tho the info is still sent to Facebook's marketing database, and there is still no global opt-out. Actually the thing that still really bothers me is that when people do ok one of these notifications, or they "fan" a product w/ Facebook's new product pages service, ads pop up in newsfeeds for that product, using the user's picture. There's no way to opt out of these newsfeed ads, so this could get really annoying if people start clicking ok and/or becoming fans of a lot of products. I guess I could just de-friend any friend who does that, but that doesn't seem like the best solution.
I agree that it's important to consider the consequences of posting photos of people online, but, otoh, it is not the photographer's job to prevent Virgin Mobile from breaking the law. (If I understand the law correctly, it was Virgin's responsibility to acquire a model release.
re: privacy considerations, as an amateur photographer, I try to be aware of which people I know are sensitive to photos being posted online. I ask those people to ok photos before I post them. There's the danger that I may miss some people, and it is often impossible to ask strangers. That's a concern, but I think that there is no way to get around this and still maintain the important art of photography. And of course if anyone asks me to take a photo of them down, I'm happy to do that.
Furthermore, I never tag flickr photos with last names. Facebook presents an interesting issue, b/c everyone tags photos with full names. In that case, I make my photos friends-only. But of course, since albums are public by default, photos of me that other people post are publicly viewable. This would be solved if they would add the ability to block the public (non-friends) from viewing any photos tagged to you.
Of course, by cc-licensing all of my photos, I still run the risk that my photos of people can be abused by non-commercial entities, b/c AFAIK you don't need a model release for non-commercial purposes. I think this is a small risk, though I could eliminate the risk by claiming full copyright on all photos of people.
A friend, who was very much not a Mac person, just bought a Mac rather than a new Windows PC because she was unable to find a low-end Windows PC without Vista.
Precisely. Preventing personal data from leaking onto P2P networks is simply a matter of proper configuration of the client. As the summary states, there's very little detail in the article about how the information was actually accessed; all that would be required is a few pointers to help people prevent the sharing of sensitive files, but TFA seems to be following the fear-mongering route instead with quotes like "If you are running file-sharing software, you are giving criminals the keys to your computer".
mod parent up!
Since the article doesn't say otherwise, I assume that the p2p apps in question do not actually share the entire drive by default. They probably ask what folder(s), and some users mistakenly share the entire drive. So the applications should better educate users about what they're doing.
Even if some particular apps really do automatically share the entire drive, the article should be discussing the dangers of THOSE apps, not of p2p in general. The way it's written, it sounds awfully fear-mongering.
The type of peer-reviewed, open-access journals that people are suggesting already exist and are, from my understanding, quite good. See Public Library of Science, for example. The problem is that universities still see Science, etc. as the most respected place to publish. Which means that if someone wants to get hired by a university, he or she publishes in Science rather than PLoS. This is true despite the fact that the universities have been bitterly complaining about the ridiculous cost of licensing journals.
So you'd rather just have the views of the mainstream media? I can think of things that are shut out all the time. Entire issues are never even brought to the table because they aren't seen by the media owners as palatable or interesting. Politicians' lies and distortions, for example, are often ignored because there is no talking politician head to quote. Or, to take an issue that was discussed at great length, I'd say that those with real arguments against the Iraq war back before it began were shut out of the corporate media.
That said, I'm not sure that this particular system will result in anything more than corporate spin.
But there are lots of adults with expertise that could be useful to others.... the problem is finding filters so that we know what to trust.
Is this related to the Save Our Spectrum coalition? I believe that group is asking for the following:
establish a service rule for broadband services operating in the 700 MHz band that protects the consumer's right to use any equipment, content, application or service on a non-discriminatory basis without interference from the network provider.
allow third-party access to spectrum owned by other companies. This "open access" plan to include wholesale access to networks would enable more competitors to offer services
institute anonymous bidding in auctions to lessen the possibility of bid signalling and bid rigging that studies found to have taken place in prior auctions.
Also, what about open spectrum? Does it work well in practice? Would that be a better solution? (though I know it's a moot point for the upcoming auction.)
Awhile ago I was reviewing internship apps. Almost every application contained blatant grammatical or spelling errors. (Many people also misspelled our company name or were applying for random positions that did not exist at our company.) One person ended the cover letter by writing "thank u". Apparently people simply do not understand that different writing styles are appropriate for different settings.
Google is still free to implement these measures, they are just not forced to do it. From a management perspective, it leaves more options on the table.
I don't know much about the politics of public companies, but it seems to me that if Google goes ahead with a policy that was specifically voted down by shareholders, then the shareholders are likely to accuse them of not fulfilling their responsibility. Regardless, Google's Board of Directors opposed the proposal, so it doesn't seem likely they'd try to implement it anyways.
On the upside though, the fact that shareholders effectively voted for censorship sounds pretty bad... If a lot of people hear about that it could continue to put pressure on the company to pass a similar proposal in the future.
from the article: Across town, police on the beat suddenly can't reach headquarters on their radios. In an ambulance, the EMTs are trying to call in vital signs for a patient they are transporting to the hospital, but they can't get through.
Go form your own Internet. Don't try to take away the Internet in order to ensure that emergency services and voip and all-in-one convergence devices run ok on it. Likely people will continue to flock to voip and new technologies we haven't even thought of, because the quality is good enough. But if you have to destroy the Internet as we know it (by creating a two-tiered Internet, thus limiting innovation) in order to run life or death services, go run those services on some other network.
I don't know, people... I've read probably 50 comments on here today saying that no one will buy HD-DVD/etc. because it is a) too expensive / b) incompatible / c) DRM'd... does anyone here really think most people care enough about the DRM to not adopt it? Hell, I hated the DRM and inability to skip FBI warning, etc. on normal DVD's, but that didn't prevent me from immediately switching over to DVD's for their incredible improvement over VHS in terms of both quality and ease of use. And HD just looks SO much better than SD that it seems obvious to me that folks will adopt it quickly. price will come down quickly, drm will eventually be broken, and it's my guess that most people (at least most folks who aren't still using VHS's!) will be buying everything on HD-DVD or whatever by this xmas. We shall see...
I, for one, would much rather pay the $2 to download an ad-free episode that I can watch whenever and wherever I want, rather than yet another way to watch a streamed(?) version with ads.
Slashdot Mirror
Here's my understanding.
ISPs are not common carriers, BUT:
- CDA 230 gives ISPs immunity for third party content not related to intellectual property, AND it *encourages* ISPs to exercise discretion, get rid of defamatory posts, etc. So here the immunity is definitely not tied to staying neutral.
- DMCA 512 gives ISPs immunity for third party intellectual property content (as long as they respond to take-down notices), but it says that ISPs must engage in "transmission, routing, provision of connections, or storage... through an automatic technical process without selection of the material by the service provider." I'm not sure that this has been tested in court, so I'm not sure what exactly it means.
Why in the world would they give it to Verisign? I thought we were trying to move away from Verisign controlling anything other than .com (and I guess .net too)?
in part:
But here's an interesting part that a friend pointed out to me, from footnote 15 of the Roommates.com decision:
yeah, I'm confused. The article suggests that they're considering IP re: CDA 230, but that doesn't make sense, b/c 230 specifically exempts IP, which is generally dealt with by the more restrictive DMCA.
oh my god people. i know this is from microsoft, but it actually sounds like interesting research that could help us better understand and potentially deal with the whole polarization / daily me problem. (see cass sunstein for the background)... i mean it's an interesting ongoing research problem. this isn't intended to be a magical solution.
Good comment, parent. :)
I think the interesting thing, regardless of this guy's culpability, is to see how things change when actions that were generally accepted offline move online where they can be more easily monitored. (Not that cheating is accepted offline, but study groups certainly are.)
In the same way, mix tapes and sharing music with friends were ok until it moved online.
Giving the FCC authority can stop the telcos & cablecos from arguing that the FCC is not allowed to regulate them.
See Harold Feld's commentary on this bill.
How about the iPod Touch's lack of 3G or, more generally, any always-on Internet connectivity? Unless I'm mistaken, the Touch only works w/ wifi.
I'm waiting for that and at least another doubling of capacity.
I'm confused. What is "the 'white space' broadband that might be offered by whoever wins the 700mhz auction?" Unless I'm very much mistaken, the 700 mhz auction and the white space spectrum are unrelated. I guess winners of the 700 mhz auction could go in on white spaces if the FCC decides to allow it.
At least according to AT&T, the phones aren't just going to disappear. What the article says is that AT&T is getting out of the pay phone business, turning some or all of their phones over to independent operators.
Anyways, this change to Beacon is good news, even tho the info is still sent to Facebook's marketing database, and there is still no global opt-out. Actually the thing that still really bothers me is that when people do ok one of these notifications, or they "fan" a product w/ Facebook's new product pages service, ads pop up in newsfeeds for that product, using the user's picture. There's no way to opt out of these newsfeed ads, so this could get really annoying if people start clicking ok and/or becoming fans of a lot of products. I guess I could just de-friend any friend who does that, but that doesn't seem like the best solution.
I agree that it's important to consider the consequences of posting photos of people online, but, otoh, it is not the photographer's job to prevent Virgin Mobile from breaking the law. (If I understand the law correctly, it was Virgin's responsibility to acquire a model release.
re: privacy considerations, as an amateur photographer, I try to be aware of which people I know are sensitive to photos being posted online. I ask those people to ok photos before I post them. There's the danger that I may miss some people, and it is often impossible to ask strangers. That's a concern, but I think that there is no way to get around this and still maintain the important art of photography. And of course if anyone asks me to take a photo of them down, I'm happy to do that.
Furthermore, I never tag flickr photos with last names. Facebook presents an interesting issue, b/c everyone tags photos with full names. In that case, I make my photos friends-only. But of course, since albums are public by default, photos of me that other people post are publicly viewable. This would be solved if they would add the ability to block the public (non-friends) from viewing any photos tagged to you.
Of course, by cc-licensing all of my photos, I still run the risk that my photos of people can be abused by non-commercial entities, b/c AFAIK you don't need a model release for non-commercial purposes. I think this is a small risk, though I could eliminate the risk by claiming full copyright on all photos of people.
A friend, who was very much not a Mac person, just bought a Mac rather than a new Windows PC because she was unable to find a low-end Windows PC without Vista.
Since the article doesn't say otherwise, I assume that the p2p apps in question do not actually share the entire drive by default. They probably ask what folder(s), and some users mistakenly share the entire drive. So the applications should better educate users about what they're doing.
Even if some particular apps really do automatically share the entire drive, the article should be discussing the dangers of THOSE apps, not of p2p in general. The way it's written, it sounds awfully fear-mongering.
The type of peer-reviewed, open-access journals that people are suggesting already exist and are, from my understanding, quite good. See Public Library of Science, for example. The problem is that universities still see Science, etc. as the most respected place to publish. Which means that if someone wants to get hired by a university, he or she publishes in Science rather than PLoS. This is true despite the fact that the universities have been bitterly complaining about the ridiculous cost of licensing journals.
My phone fails to display the time whenever I'm out of a service area (on the subway, for instance.) And so I need a watch anyway.
So you'd rather just have the views of the mainstream media? I can think of things that are shut out all the time. Entire issues are never even brought to the table because they aren't seen by the media owners as palatable or interesting. Politicians' lies and distortions, for example, are often ignored because there is no talking politician head to quote. Or, to take an issue that was discussed at great length, I'd say that those with real arguments against the Iraq war back before it began were shut out of the corporate media.
That said, I'm not sure that this particular system will result in anything more than corporate spin.
But there are lots of adults with expertise that could be useful to others.... the problem is finding filters so that we know what to trust.
Sorry. I think I rambled off a bit there.
- establish a service rule for broadband services operating in the 700 MHz band that protects the consumer's right to use any equipment, content, application or service on a non-discriminatory basis without interference from the network provider.
- allow third-party access to spectrum owned by other companies. This "open access" plan to include wholesale access to networks would enable more competitors to offer services
- institute anonymous bidding in auctions to lessen the possibility of bid signalling and bid rigging that studies found to have taken place in prior auctions.
Also, what about open spectrum? Does it work well in practice? Would that be a better solution? (though I know it's a moot point for the upcoming auction.)What is this third pipe? What are the other two?
Cable & DSL, apparently. At least that's what I get from the article.
Awhile ago I was reviewing internship apps. Almost every application contained blatant grammatical or spelling errors. (Many people also misspelled our company name or were applying for random positions that did not exist at our company.) One person ended the cover letter by writing "thank u". Apparently people simply do not understand that different writing styles are appropriate for different settings.
On the upside though, the fact that shareholders effectively voted for censorship sounds pretty bad... If a lot of people hear about that it could continue to put pressure on the company to pass a similar proposal in the future.
from the article:
Across town, police on the beat suddenly can't reach headquarters on their radios. In an ambulance, the EMTs are trying to call in vital signs for a patient they are transporting to the hospital, but they can't get through.
Go form your own Internet. Don't try to take away the Internet in order to ensure that emergency services and voip and all-in-one convergence devices run ok on it. Likely people will continue to flock to voip and new technologies we haven't even thought of, because the quality is good enough. But if you have to destroy the Internet as we know it (by creating a two-tiered Internet, thus limiting innovation) in order to run life or death services, go run those services on some other network.
I don't know, people... I've read probably 50 comments on here today saying that no one will buy HD-DVD/etc. because it is a) too expensive / b) incompatible / c) DRM'd... does anyone here really think most people care enough about the DRM to not adopt it? Hell, I hated the DRM and inability to skip FBI warning, etc. on normal DVD's, but that didn't prevent me from immediately switching over to DVD's for their incredible improvement over VHS in terms of both quality and ease of use. And HD just looks SO much better than SD that it seems obvious to me that folks will adopt it quickly. price will come down quickly, drm will eventually be broken, and it's my guess that most people (at least most folks who aren't still using VHS's!) will be buying everything on HD-DVD or whatever by this xmas. We shall see...
I, for one, would much rather pay the $2 to download an ad-free episode that I can watch whenever and wherever I want, rather than yet another way to watch a streamed(?) version with ads.