More Details Emerge As States' Attorneys General Seek To Hold Back Innovation On The Internet
from the this-is-a-bad-idea dept
We already wrote about how various states' attorneys general (AGs) are seeking to get Congress to give them an exception to Section 230 of the CDA, which would let them pin liability on internet companies for the actions of their users. Now, more details are coming out, as reported in TechHive. The effort is apparently being led by South Dakota's attorney general, Marty Jackley, with help from AGs Bob Ferguson of Washington and Chris Koster of Missouri. Ferguson being included is a bit of a surprise, since Washington state has some big internet companies, and it's bizarre that he'd push for a law that would create so much harm to the internet. In the article, Jackley is quoted as complaining about:the unintended consequence of Section 230 in that "you've essentially given these guys immunity" when state criminal laws are broken.Except, that's wrong. Section 230 does not grant them immunity if they broke state criminal laws. It gives them immunity if their users broke state criminal laws. And that's perfectly reasonable, because the AGs should be going after the actual criminals, not the company who made the tools they used. In fact, since many companies will cooperate with legitimate law enforcement requests, having a good relationship with these companies should help these AGs catch criminals. That is, rather than blame Craigslist for criminals using it, they should be working with them to use information on the site to catch criminals. But I guess actually catching a pimp is less exciting than falsely calling Craigslist a pimp-enabler and attacking them in the press.
Meanwhile, some other AGs are looking to completely reinterpret section 230 to their liking. We already noted just recently that Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood is trying to blame Google because he could search and find counterfeit goods for sale (by others). In comments, at the NAAG meeting, Hood is now trying to argue that because of Google's "autocomplete," it shouldn't be subject to 230 safe harbors.
One avenue prosecutors may seek to explore is the statute’s vague definition of an intermediary versus a content provider, Reidenberg suggested. During discussion after the panel presentations, Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood pressed that angle, asking the panelists what acts by a site operator might be sufficient to categorize it as a content provider, not simply an intermediary.Except that if Hood actually understood how autocomplete worked, he'd know that's ridiculous. Google is not creating that content. It's just showing you what terms others are searching for. That is, it's providing factual information. That information could actually be useful to Hood, if he wanted to actually do his job and go after those who are selling the counterfeit drugs, rather than stupidly attacking the platform that would be a big help in tracking down the criminals. But, apparently, stopping truly rogue pharmacies is less headline grabbing than going after Google, even if Google has nothing to do with the actual sale of the counterfeit drugs.
Hood zeroed in on autocomplete in particular, saying, “We know they manipulate the autocomplete feature.” He is concerned about search engines, particularly Google, where for example a user entering “prescription drugs online” is given “prescription drugs online without a prescription” as an autocomplete option.
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Filed Under: attorneys general, bob ferguson, chris koster, innovation, jim hood, marty jackley, secondary liability, section 230, states
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Immunity
The actual criminals breaking the law.
Why bother trying to investigate and find some rogue pharmacy? That sounds like hard work! Once you get Google to pay up, and the AG gets to do his song and dance in front of the press, the case is over, and the people running that pharmacy got off scott-free.
That's what would happen in practice, and anyone who can read between the lines sees it.
So who is the one really standing up for the rule of law?
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Re: Immunity
Spent so much time
Not looking for an answer
But someone else to blame
As long as you don't take the drop
To you it's all the same
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Redmond
Redmond.
Redmond.
Redmond, Washington.
Redmond.
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Re:
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So...
Get a computer involved, and suddenly down is up and black is white. Perhaps they'll be killed in the next zebra crossing...
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Re: So...
Colt and Ruger and Ford and Toyota do not maintain a constant connection to their products after they are sold. Service providers do. If Colt were required to assist every time a trigger were pulled or Ford needed to participate every time a car ignition were turned, there may indeed be a question of responsibility.
A landlord who has people dealing drugs or committing crimes on his or her property may be liable if they were aware of it and didn't do anything about it, and taking affirmative steps to judiciously avoid knowing about it probably wouldn't be looked kindly-upon in court. There's a duty of care.
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Re: Re: So...
Or we could realize that the people actually committing the crimes are the ones we should go after.
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Re: Re: Re: So...
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Re: Re: Re: Re: So...
Kudos for making an effort, don't be disappointed that it failed, Anonymous Coward (Jun 19th, 2013 @ 5:17pm), your success is that you argued without being a jerk about it.
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Re: Re: So...
Or do you want to be a bigger Luddite?
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Re: Re: Re: So...
Google really isn't akin to a phone line, rather it's much more akin to the yellow pages. There is consideration for what is published in the yellow pages, and clear if they published certain information in the yellow pages, they could be held liable. If the first 10 entries in "movie rentals" was "pirating movies for free!" listings, there would be issues. Yet, as a search engine, we give them a pass when they decide (and they do decide, they write the algo) what to publish in their search result pages.
The level of automation is not particularly relevant here. Google chooses what goes in their results, they have made many, many changes to their algorithms of the years to limit spam, to punish this type of site, to support that type of site. Clearly, Google chooses NOT to punish sites that violate copyright, they CHOOSE to list sites know to have significant amounts of pirated material, and they CHOOSE to offer those things up as their recommended best results.
AT&T doesn't get to choose who is on the phone. It's silly to try to make that type of comparison. Nobody is holding the company that makes the network cables Google uses or the networking gear they use liable, because they don't get to choose what is on the Google website. However, Google has full control.
Section 230 basically gives them a pass for actions that would be considered illegal in any other media or medium. That just isn't acceptable.
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Re: Re: So...
I don't see how that's a meaningful distinction.
That's right. And the exact same thing is true right now with service providers as well. So, what's your point?
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Immunity
The charitable interpretation is that Jackley knows this to be false but favors power over justice. The not-so-charitable interpretation is that Jackley is a clueless buffoon who doesn't understand the law.
Which is it then, Jackley?
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Re: Immunity
Hypocrites!
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Expected Techhive to be one of Mike's piratey pals...
We've done had the "innovative" era on teh internets, Mike, and the result is mega-corporations on the one hand, and nasty kids going beyond decency to actual harm.
Service providers, even if a mere free-to-use physical bulletin board, DO in fact have SOME degree of responsibility to police their area.
Mike and his grifter pals want money coming without responsibility, whether their services have comments or infringed files. Mike's pro-corporate view is that corporations are above "natural" persons, don't have to actually serve the society they exist in. That's not an attitude that sustains civilization, it's just elitism of the 1% who skim off the productive 99% without even being grateful, grifters who don't trade value for value.
Google can spend a tiny fraction of the billions they're hiding offshore from taxes on being a good citizen, JUST as newspapers do. It's not onerous or some special burden, it's ORDINARY, just a part of common law they've for a while had a special exemption FROM, not the way Mike spins it.
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Re: Expected Techhive to be one of Mike's piratey pals...
Nigel
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Re: Expected Techhive to be one of Mike's piratey pals...
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Re: Expected Techhive to be one of Mike's piratey pals...
You got a real stick up your butt for Google.
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Re: Re: Expected Techhive to be one of Mike's piratey pals...
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Re: Expected Techhive to be one of Mike's piratey pals...
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Re: Expected Techhive to be one of Mike's piratey pals...
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Re: Expected Techhive to be one of Mike's piratey pals...
One, two, the Googleman is coming for you.
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Re: Expected Techhive to be one of Mike's piratey pals...
One, two, the Googleman is coming for you.
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Re: Expected Techhive to be one of Mike's piratey pals...
Hard to take seriously someone who compares a search engine to TV and newspapers. Not hard for Blue though...
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Re: Expected Techhive to be one of Mike's piratey pals...
Incompetence perhaps?
The law shields Google against user content they have no control it doesn't shield Google from bad partnerships or dubious business practices and the consequences of doing business with known crooks and criminals.
Aside from that have you seen the tech that would take over in a world without Google?
Is not Bing, is not Yahoo that will gain users is things like Seeks and YaCy which are distributed search engines that nobody have control over, now you could try to block it until people find out that you can use distributed DNS like NameCoin.
Take a look in the EFF website listing all the alternatives to scape tracking.
http://prism-break.org/
Pray hard that Google doesn't fall, the day it happens, things could become very difficult to the lot of you, those tools have zero economic anchors, thousands of developers in every corner of the world and are decentralized meaning there is no one who has control over them, you think Google is bad, wait until people realize that there are things like Freenet, I2P, NightWeb, Sindie and TOR.
Then you will cry that the internet is bad.
Meow.
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Re: Expected Techhive to be one of Mike's piratey pals...
Fixed that for you. Your side didn't see any threat in file sharing until you realised you could use it to bilk the public. Then it was "piracy", needing new laws to allow you to extort innocent people.
A large amount of the innovations your industries use online, you didn't pay for or tried to stop without just cause, but now you expect the profits you mistakenly think you deserve.
"...grifters who don't trade value for value."
You speak of yourself, it cannot be denied.
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Re: Expected Techhive to be one of Mike's piratey pals...
While true, said policing goes hand-in-hand with the notion that a service provider can’t and won’t end up on the wrong side of a legal action (civil or criminal) because someone used the service they provide (‘the tool’) to sell drugs or trade child porn or any other sort of heinous act (‘the crime’).
We don’t prosecute gun manufacturers or knifemakers or automobile companies every time someone uses a gun or a knife or a Volvo to kill another person. We don’t prosecute cell phone companies and wireless service providers when people use throwaway phones to plan and commit crimes, or PC manufacturers and OS creators when people use computers to download movies and burn DVDs, or major oil/gasoline companies when people use gas to commit an act of arson.
We also don’t expect those companies to police every last thing people do with those products or services. But, somehow, we (and by we I mean you) expect Google and Facebook and all these other Internet companies to do it. No matter how much you want to believe otherwise, those who run these companies from the human race. They miss stuff. They can’t see everything at every moment in time. They will inevitably miss things even with the most ardent policing of their provided service.
Why should we give secondary liability shields to gun manufacturers, knifemakers, automobile companies, et al and take away those same shields from Internet companies who do nothing more than what those companies do vis-á-vis providing a service or tool that some people use for crimes?
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Re: Re: Expected Techhive to be one of Mike's piratey pals...
I really gotta stop posting comments before I eat breakfast.
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Re: Expected Techhive to be one of Mike's piratey pals...
If Google knew that the ads were in violation of the law, then Section 230 does not shield them.
Whether or not this is true depends on what you mean by "police". If you mean proactively scour user-submitted content looking for illegal content, then, no, there is no responsibility. If you mean taking action on illegal content once its presence has been made known to them, then yes, they do have a responsibility.
The rest of your comment is pure, unadulterated BS and not worthy of a response.
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You also have websites like Ripoff Reports which refuses to ever remove ANYTHING meaning a business can be libeled and ruined. They should be held accountable. Topix is pretty much a straight up libel and defamation site and they don't even make their users register for an account. They should be held accountable as well.
If you say it, you should own up to it. If a website knows there is libel, child prostitution, threats, etc. and they still refuse to try and limit it and remove content, then they are at least partially guilty. Hate for profit is not cool. Changing the law to an extent has become necessary because cowards get really brave hiding behind a keyboard.
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