Last Month In An LA Court I Witnessed The Future Of A World Without Section 230; It Was A Mess
from the couldn't-you-have-done-more dept
Disclosure: I was an expert witness for RedBubble in this case (and another case) and submitted some reports regarding this case much earlier in the process, though I did not testify at this trial. I had nothing to do with this trial other than attending it as an interested observer, concerned about litigation involving content moderation. As you can see, however, my opinions on this remain identical to my opinions on content moderation going back basically forever...
There's been a lot of talk lately about "repealing" or "reforming" Section 230. We've explained at great lengthy why this would be a mistake and would lead to a ton of frivolous litigation. Section 230 co-author Senator Ron Wyden has referred to this as creating a situation where website operators would face "death by ten thousand duck-bites." Professor Eric Goldman has explained the procedural benefits of Section 230 in that it helps get rid of these cases more quickly. And while some (including myself) have pointed out that the 1st Amendment would still protect most claims, without the procedural benefits of Section 230, we'd still see a ridiculous number of nuisance lawsuits in which companies would have to defend each and every content moderation decision. This would be made significantly worse if the law changes in a manner proposed by folks like law professor Danielle Citron, to require websites to show that their content moderation practices are "reasonable," which would require expensive litigation to determine.
The thing is: we have an area where we can actually see this in practice. There is something of a loophole within Section 230: trademark law. From the beginning, Section 230(e)(2) has excluded intellectual property law. For copyright, that gap was filled (not particularly well) by the notice-and-takedown provisions of the DMCA Section 512. But trademark has no official intermediary protections in US law. Experts like Mark Lemley have long advocated for harmonizing the various intermediary laws so that they're all consistent. Many people had thought that perhaps the courts had settled the issue with regards to trademark in the infamous Tiffany case against eBay, in which the courts said that eBay shouldn't be expected to be perfect, and as long as it has some sort of program to deal with counterfeits, then it is no longer liable for counterfeits on its site.
However, last summer, a federal judge in LA effectively re-opened the issue in a case brought by the holding company that controls the "Brandy Melville" clothing brand against print-on-demand website RedBubble. Brandy Melville argued that RedBubble was violating its trademarks (and copyrights) in printing some of its designs, and while the judge did toss out much of the case, he allowed a few parts to move forward to a jury trial. The judge said that the Tiffany v. eBay rule didn't necessarily apply -- since that was a case of users selling physical products, whereas with RedBubble, the company would take designs uploaded by users, and pass them on to various print shops for the actual printing. So the open question, in theory, was whether or not that deeper involvement opened itself up to contributory liability (the judge correctly dismissed the claims about direct infringement). There were a few other oddities about the judge's ruling as Eric Goldman noted at the time:
However, the Ohio State ruling didn’t address contributory trademark infringement, and this court sends that issue to the jury. Unlike Tiffany v. eBay, which involved legitimate used resales of Tiffany items, the court says “Redbubble is not burdened by the need to parse valid uses of Brandy Melville’s trademarks from invalid ones, as Brandy Melville has made clear to Redbubble that there are no legitimate sales of Brandy Melville products through its site. As such, all uses of Brandy Melville’s marks that appear on Redbubble’s website are presumptively infringing.” I doubt the court means this statement so baldly, as it disregards parodies, nominative uses, and other legitimate activities. Similarly, the plaintiff complained that RedBubble hasn’t disabled internal consumer keyword searches for its trademarks, but that doesn’t seem like a right exclusive to the trademark owner in light of MTM v. Amazon.
In practice, however, pretty much the entire trial revolved around whether or not RedBubble "did enough" in its content moderation. Over and over again, the lawyers for Brandy Melville kept trying to insist that any failures by RedBubble's content moderation was proof that it did not do enough. Indeed, in the closing arguments, even after it had been pointed out that RedBubble spent millions of dollars per year on its content moderation efforts, and had removed every example that Brandy Melville's lawyers had sent them within a day or two, the lawyer straight up asked the jury "don't you think RedBubble could have done more?"
There were a number of other oddities that came out during the trial. The trial was explicitly about just three specific trademark designs that Brandy Melville held -- two of which never actually appear on the front of t-shirts or other products (the company said it only used them on clothing hang tags and on store signs), and one that the company registered just weeks before suing. Incredibly, Brandy Melville put on the stand a manager of some of their stores who admitted two incredible things: (1) that she was unable to tell which products on RedBubble were legitimate and which were infringing (so how the hell could they expect RedBubble to just know?!?) and (2) that in many years of working and managing Brandy Melville stores, she could not recall a single time that anyone ever brought in a RedBubble product to "return" it. That latter point really stuck with me because it highlighted the near total lack of confusion, which is a key point in trademark infringement. There needs to be confusion.
Another oddity: Brandy Melville kept focusing on the fact that RedBubble refused to block all tags that included "Brandy Melville" or any search results on "Brandy Melville." But as Goldman noted above (and the judge seemed to miss), that's not a right that trademark law gives a trademark holder. RedBubble pointed out that it actually used the tagging system as part of its content moderation efforts -- and that letting users tag stuff "Brandy Melville" made it easier for its content moderation team to find and review those items to see if they infringed. Also, while it only came up exceptionally briefly, one of the products that was on RedBubble's site was a t-shirt that read: "Fuck Brandy Melville," which is clearly commentary/parody -- and not something anyone would assume came from Brandy Melville itself. Brandy Melville cannot abuse trademark law to say any and all use of the term must be blocked. That's not how trademark law works.
For its part, RedBubble spent plenty of time describing the extreme lengths it goes to try to prevent infringing works on its site, including making use of various technologies, having a large team of human reviewers, and working closely with lots of brands to better understand what is and what is not infringing. But, again, the plaintiff's focused on "is it enough."
And, because they kept focusing on a very few examples where Brandy Melville logos or other designs were found on RedBubble, that was proof that, no, the company did not do enough. And... the jury bought it. At the end of the three day trial, the jury said that RedBubble was liable as a contributory infringer, including not just for trademark infringing, but for counterfeiting. This was particularly bizarre because for there to be counterfeiting, there needs to be an actual copying of a product sold by the trademark holder. And, as already noted, two out of the three designs were never actually used on the front of products by Brandy Melville, and as for the third design (the "LA Lightning" mark -- which, seems like it may have its own trademark issues, considering it was yanked from an independent professional basketball team), they never seemed to show exact copies of it on any RedBubble products either. Instead, somewhat bizarrely, Brandy Melville focused on very distinct and different variations on the logo that appeared on RedBubble products -- including a clear parody one for University of Florida students. And the counterfeiting issue was key to Brandy Melville's case, because it would allow them to ask for statutory damages, running up into multiple millions of dollars.
And this is a clear issue with litigation around content moderation: the jury was primed over and over again to believe that any mistake makes the company liable. Brandy Melville's lawyers just kept showing designs that mention Brandy Melville or looked similar to Brandy Melville (frequently for products that Brandy Melville had no trademark over) and then just kept harping on the fact that Brandy Melville didn't approve any of this, and clearly RedBubble was a "counterfeiting" site. In the end, the jury awarded $520,000 to Brandy Melville ($300k "counterfeiting" for the "Brandy Melville" mark, $200k for "counterfeiting" the LA Lightning mark, and then $20k for trademark infringement.)
At the close of the case, RedBubble immediately sought a judgment as a matter of law to effectively try to take the case out of the jury's hands (arguing that Brandy Melville failed to present enough evidence and the judge could rule on the matter directly without needing the factual deliberation of the jury). This week the judge did in fact rule that the $300k for contributory counterfeiting on the Brandy Melville mark was improper, bouncing the award down to $220,000.
As the judge noted, the fact that RedBubble's products were not the same as anything Brandy Melville made regarding those logos, meant that there couldn't be a legitimate counterfeiting claim for that mark:
Here, Plaintiff failed to present evidence of products that bore a spurious Brandy Melville Heart Mark and were offered for sale on Redbubble.com that were remotely similar to products that Plaintiff offered for sale, let alone "stich-for-stitch copies" of Plaintiff's products. The Court therefore concludes that the evidence presented at trial permits only one reasonable conclusion--Plaintiff failed to establish that Redbubble is liable for contributory counterfeiting of the Brandy Melville Heart Mark.
The end result is way below the many millions of dollars Brandy Melville was seeking, though even the small amount it got seems ridiculous based on an understanding of what actually happened.
But, there's a larger point here: this case was an unfortunate alternate reality universe view of what will happen without Section 230 or if we moved to a Citron-style "reasonable" standard. You'd get a ton of litigation in which everyone was just going back and forth arguing over what the "right" level of content moderation is, and arguing that any mistakes were evidence that "not enough" was being done by the companies. That's a disaster scenario, one in which any simple mistake (even where there's perhaps strong evidence that no mistake was actually made) is subject to the whims of a jury (or a judge) and an expensive, time-consuming trial. I recognize that law professors might not care that much about all of this wasteful litigation, but in the real world it matters a ton. This kind of thing can, and will, kill off smaller companies, even if they can succeed in court. And that doesn't help anyone, except possibly some trial lawyers who can threaten and shake down tons of websites.
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Filed Under: content moderation, counterfeiting, intermediary liability, jury trials, print on demand, section 230, trademark
Companies: brandy melville, redbubble
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Trademark Lawyers Would Hate Us
The goal of Brandy Melville is the removal of content. Any trace if content not removed is considered by them to be a problem, even if accidental. The goal of section 230 reformers is the INCLUSION of content. The removal of political speech is typically not an automated decision, and so is often a deliberate decision.
-Getting censored proves that your opinion is the strongest.
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Re: Trademark Lawyers Would Hate Us
The goal of section 230 reformers is the INCLUSION of content.
No, only among those who don't understand the 1st Amendment. Most of the serious proposals for 230 reform is to force more deletion of content.
The removal of political speech is typically not an automated decision, and so is often a deliberate decision.
What political speech has been removed Koby? People keep asking you this and you disappear each and every time. What political speech has been "deliberately" removed?
-Getting censored proves that your opinion is the strongest.
No one who knows even the first thing about any of this would think that's a true statement. It's nonsense, Koby.
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Re: Re: Trademark Lawyers Would Hate Us
Klubochar is no reformer; she is a censor. Whether you take her proposals seriously or not is up to you.
This week's political censorship highlight is Twitter banning the Audit War Room. Primarily aimed at the Arizona ballot audit, their other accounts for disseminating news for other states were banned as well. There's usually a high profile case of political censorship every week from a major social media corporation. Perhaps it could make for an interesting series.
-Getting censored proves that your opinion is the strongest.
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For what reason should Twitter be forced to host blatant falsehoods about the 2020 election results, Koby?
And if Twitter could censor somebody, you might have had a point. But they can’t. So you don’t.
And I’ll ask the question again, just to be sure you get the point Mike was trying to make: On average, what kind of “political” content is being deleted from Twitter? Be exhaustively specific.
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Re:
By political content, he's referring to misinformation and propaganda. He thinks free speech means that propagandists should be able to force platforms to host their lies and manipulations.
It's the propagandists that have turned things like lies and misinformation into political issues since they've made them apart of their political identity. To other people this stuff isn't political, it's just stupid.
This is like a variation on the "it's my religion to force my religion on others so you can't stop me or you're discriminating against my religion" argument, except you just swap out "it's my religion" with "I decided this was political, therefore you can't discrimiante against me for saying it."
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Re: Re: Re: Trademark Lawyers Would Hate Us
Primarily aimed at the Arizona ballot audit, their other accounts for disseminating news for other states were banned as well.
Yes, I can't imagine why a social media site wouldn't want to host a bunch of cranks perpetuating the election fraud lie that's already resulted in one failed insurrection and that's undermining trust in the election system long-term by pandering to gullible fools for short-term gains...
(Unless of course they were regularly and rightly mocking those people and pointing out the the repeated 'audits' are nothing but grossly dishonest PR stunts, but somehow I doubt it.)
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Re: Re: Re: Trademark Lawyers Would Hate Us
No true Scotsman would do such a thing.
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Re: Re: Re: Trademark Lawyers Would Hate Us
"This week's political censorship highlight is Twitter banning the Audit War Room"
You mean...this week's example of someone telling someone to gtfo off their private property that's being cried about by right-wingers who wouldn't tolerate a fraction of that kind of dissent on their own property, yet leaving them free to say whatever they want to say anywhere outside of Twitter's property?
"Primarily aimed at the Arizona ballot audit"
The hilarious farce where they're trying to claim that if they destroy machines and look for bamboo then they'll still just find enough "fraud" to make Trump magically win less votes than he lost the last election by?
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Re: Re: Re: Trademark Lawyers Would Hate Us
"Getting censored proves that your opinion is the strongest."
Is that what you tell yourself after your shit post gets flagged?
Because that's got a funny vote from me.
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Re: Re: Re: Trademark Lawyers Would Hate Us
That's one way to admit you Republicans are the weakest.
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Re: Re: Re: Trademark Lawyers Would Hate Us
"This week's political censorship highlight is Twitter banning the Audit War Room. Primarily aimed at the Arizona ballot audit"
You mean this week a private entity tossed a bunch of unpleasant liars out of their private property, Koby?
Because the shit-show "Audit" in Arizona won't end up with a resounding victory for Trump or the revelation that there was some massive voter fraud. You are - almost literally - blustering in outrage because a group of people with the arguments of kindergartners throwing tantrums weren't provided space to spread their bullshit in a private forum.
This has gone beyond merely sad and pathetic, Koby. I suggest you grow the fuck up and learn to basic logic.
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The goal of section 230 reformers is the forced INCLUSION of content despite the privately owned platform not wanting to host it.
You left a few words out there Koby, fixed for honesty.
The removal of political speech is typically not an automated decision, and so is often a deliberate decision.
Which 'political speech' is being removed, and as always be specific(or run away like a bloody coward again, your choice).
-Getting censored proves that your opinion is the strongest.
You wish, what being moderated actually means is that people think you're an asshole and are showing you the door. Don't like it then stop being an asshole, something strangely enough a majority of users don't have a problem managing.
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Re:
You have just perfectly described censorship based upon political disagreement. Make no mistake, it is not "moderation". It is fear that someone will see it and become convinced.
-Getting censored proves that your opinion is the strongest
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Oh, you know...
Which politics are those Koby, be specific.
-Repeatedly lying about being 'censored' because people keep showing you the door of their private property proves that you're not just a person no-one wants to be around but a dishonest one who refuses to own their own words and deeds and instead blames others.
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Shut the fuck up with this, Koby.
The assholes spreading lies about the 2020 election results haven’t been “censored” because they’re all free to go to Parler, Gab, and whatever other shitpits will have them and spread their lies on those platforms. Losing an audience, a platform, and a reach to which you were never entitled in the first place isn’t censorship—especially if it’s the owner/operator of a privately owned service showing you the door.
I get that you’re a communist who wants the government to seize the means of social media production and all that, but that’s not an excuse to lie about moderation being censorship, you dipshit.
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Re: Re:
"You have just perfectly described censorship based upon political disagreement."
You're free to spread your ridiculous fantasies anywhere you want. You just can't use the property of other people to do it if they have objected.
"-Getting censored proves that your opinion is the strongest"
No, sometimes it means that you're just an obnoxious asshole and everyone else prefers talking with grown ups. Which is their right via the first amendment.
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Re: Re:
"Getting censored proves that your opinion is the strongest"
You realize that by your argument every child sent to their room for throwing a tantrum should be considered in the right?
Incredible. You people have become such man-children you are now relying on the logic of pre-school kindergarten bullies...
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Re: Trademark Lawyers Would Hate Us
I bet you are one of the people that believe that the Jan 6 prisoners are "political prisoners" and should be released because that is the government censoring their political opinions.
After all, it was just a kerfuffle, right? A peaceful tourist visit?
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Re: Trademark Lawyers Would Hate Us
Lies are not protected speech just because you view them as an essential part of conservative ideology, and you do not have a right to spout them on other people's property.
If you want to nail a 'Fck Biden' sign to your house, people will judge you for it but you're free to do so. If you want to nail a 'Fck Biden' sign to your neighbours house, they aren't depriving you of free speech rights when they tear down the sign and throw you off their property.
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Re: Re: Trademark Lawyers Would Hate Us
It is a close call. At least some inaccurate statements may still be protected, especially as they relate to public figures. See NY Times Co. v. Lester B. Sullivan, 376 U.S. 254 (1964). There, the Court called out some inaccuracies in the published advertisement:
Sullivan viewed these things as actionable lies. There were other problems with his view as well, though not enough to deter an Alabama jury from finding for him to the tune of an half-million dollars.
The Court said that some error is inevitable and the First Amendment rights need ``breathing space'. Id. at 271, quoting earlier case. Judgment for Sullivan reversed.
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Re: Re: Trademark Lawyers Would Hate Us
"Lies are not protected speech "
They are protected speech, but they're only protected against government censorship.
"If you want to nail a 'Fck Biden' sign to your house"
That's not a lie. While the opinion is often attached to a lie, people can honestly hate Biden. But, yeah, no matter how truthful you only have a right to express that opinion on your own property, or that owned by the government - and it's perfectly free speech to tell you to not do it on property owned by someone else who objects.
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Re: Trademark Lawyers Would Hate Us
An opinion you use to avoid admitting that your politics are not as popular as you your delusions make you think they are.
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I didn't even realise trademark issues like this could be decided by jury.
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'What would my idea be like if I were on the other end of if?'
I recognize that law professors might not care that much about all of this wasteful litigation, but in the real world it matters a ton.
It's easy to look at an issue purely through an academic lens when you know you'll never be dragged to court and threatened with massive legal fees and fines thanks to the idea you're pushing and/or you've fallen for the lie/misconception that moderation is easy so any platform that gets it wrong does so purely because they're lazy/greedy and the law just needs to be changed to incentivize them to nerd harder.
230 shouldn't be necessary but so long as the legal system is stupid enough that you can sue a platform for exercising it's first amendment rights in way that hurts someone's feelings or for the actions of one of the users it's sadly very much needed on the books, and no amount of liars with their hurt feelings and suckers who've been conned into believing them change that.
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Given that the judge was striking down a jury award, this ... says something about what you can expect from juries.
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Re: Can Also Go the Other Way
Both of the juries in Google v Oracle largely found in favor of Google and both were overturned by the Federal Circuit.
In particular, in the second trial, the jury found Google's use of Java to be a fair use. That was overturned by the Federal Circuit as clearly an impossible interpretation of the law. And yet the Supremes said otherwise as well, finding that all four fair use elements favored Google.
Juries are unpredictable. Trademark is so outside the bailiwick of the ordinary person one might as well start rolling hundred sided dice.
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Re: Re: Can Also Go the Other Way
In Oracle v Google, though, the Juries got it right, while CAFC made up new law like that to give Oracle a win.
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Section 230
Section 230 was never meant to deprive individuals of their 1st Amendment Rights. It was meant to protect a nascent 1st Amendment industry. Amazon, Apple, Google, Facebook, Twitter, and You Tube, have gone way beyond being nascent services. These companies with multi-billion dollar valuations don't need protection. These companies are also taking direction from members of the Democrat Party.
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Hard to do something it literally can't do
Section 230 was never meant to deprive individuals of their 1st Amendment Rights.
I've got great news for you in that case, it doesn't in any way deprive anyone of their first amendment rights and in fact it protects the first amendment rights of the platform owners(even if you don't buy into the 'companies have first amendment rights' legality the people who run and own those companies still have their first amendment rights), so if that's your objection then 230 isn't at all a problem and what you're actually objecting to is the first amendment and property rights of those people/companies being used in a way you don't agree with.
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Yes or no: Do you believe the government should have the legal right to compel any privately owned interactive web service into hosting legally protected speech that the owners/operators of said service don’t want to host?
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Re: [same question]
Same answer as before. And certainly a better answer than you shall have from the usual troll, who might benefit from some starvation rather than regular feedings.
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Re: Section 230
Section 230 was never meant to deprive individuals of their 1st Amendment Rights.
Right. Nor does it.
It does protect the 1st Amendment rights of website owners AND users, and also enable websites to create their own rules, which creates more spaces for speech online. At no point has 230 ever deprived anyone of their 1st Amendment rights.
It was meant to protect a nascent 1st Amendment industry.
This is simply not true. It was in response to two cases, one against CompuServe (owned by accounting giant H&R Block) and the other against Prodigy (founded by CBS and owned by IBM and Sears at the time of the case). And the authors of 230 have long said that it had nothing to do with "protecting a nascent" industry, but rather about properly applying liability across the internet.
Amazon, Apple, Google, Facebook, Twitter, and You Tube, have gone way beyond being nascent services.
Again, it has nothing to do with being nascent.
These companies with multi-billion dollar valuations don't need protection.
Again, when 230 passed Prodigy was owned by two multi-billion dollar companies in IBM and Sears. So, under your argument, Prodigy didn't need protection, even though 230 was written directly after Prodigy lost a case, and for the explicit intent of overturning it.
These companies are also taking direction from members of the Democrat Party.
Lol. You're an idiot. They are not. The White House made some silly statements, and the Republican Party has made just as many, if not more, silly statements. In neither case is there any evidence of any of the websites complying with those silly statements based on them.
You're really coming off as an ignorant, deluded fool. You should stop that.
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Re: Section 230
It doesn't, as all the first amendment does is prevent the government from stopping you speaking or publishing your words. It does not guarantee that anybody else will help you spread your words.
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Re: Re: Section 230
I Have Been Silenced!
http://leftycartoons.com/?s=silenced
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Re: Section 230
As soon as Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, etc. become part of the federal government, then we can talk about people being deprived of their 1A rights.
Otherwise, realize that being moderated on social media is social media exercising their own 1A rights.
Too bad people don't understand this as it as simple as this XKCD comic.
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Re: Section 230
I love the notion that companies run by soulless capitalist billionaires like Thiel and Bezos and libertarian tech bros are all left leaning and in cahoots with the the democrats. They don't give a damn about left leaning people, Facebook has a former member of the Bush admin actively harming leftwing content and any attempt to stop Ben Shapiro and others from gaming the system, Amazon fights tooth and nail to kill unionisation efforts and ran adverts against it on their Twitch service, left wing content gets demonetised and banned continually on youtube and so on and so forth... The difference is that the left doesn't get to go on TV or write op eds to drone on and on how they're being silenced by big tech, unlike the persecuted minority/silent majority on the right, who never shut up about any inconvenience they face as a consequence of their sense of entitlement preventing them from obeying the rules they agree to when they sign up to use a service.
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Re: Section 230
"Section 230 was never meant to deprive individuals of their 1st Amendment Rights"
Good news - it still doesn't.
"Amazon, Apple, Google, Facebook, Twitter, and You Tube, have gone way beyond being nascent services"
You just named a bunch of services that are either in entirely different industries, openly compete with each other and/or host other services that express "opposing views" without issue
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Re: Section 230
Amazon was 2 years old and Apple was almost bankrupt. The rest of those companies didn't even exist. You wanna take a second swing?
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Re: Section 230
"Section 230 was never meant to deprive individuals of their 1st Amendment Rights."
What part of "Congress shall make no law..." was unclear to you? Do you people even english, motherfuckers?
No private corporation can deprive anyone of their 1A right because no corporation can make laws.
Of course that cuts no ice with the benighted morons of the alt-right who can't read and haven't a clue what their constitution actually says.
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Unfair v. Fair use? Is the very definition of YMMV
All my attempts at parodying Disney / The Beatles so far suggests "RedBubble spent plenty of time describing the extreme lengths it goes to try to prevent infringing works on its site, including making use of various technologies, having a large team of human reviewers, and working closely with lots of brands to better understand what is ████████████ infringing"
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The Whrildwind
You witnessed the results of your refusal to back Free Speech in social media backfire on you. 230 needs to be dismantled. Who cares how messy it will get? It could not be any worse than what we have now.
There used to be a bumper sticker, it was an answer to the common bumper stickers of America, love it or leave it. The alternative was: America, change it or lose it.
They had the opportunity to preserve freedom and fair play while under 230 protection. They didn't, cheered on by writers such as yourself.
Bye bye to 230, sooner or later. Bring the mess.
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shut up, Meg
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Re: The Whrildwind
Literally nothing in this comment makes sense. You have made everyone dumber for you stupidity here.
You witnessed the results of your refusal to back Free Speech in social media backfire on you.
I have been an unwavering supporter of free speech. You have regularly demanded otherwise. But, this case has nothing to do with any of that. Trademark has never been covered by Section 230. My views would not have changed the outcome of this case.
230 needs to be dismantled.
Which would mean... MORE liability for websites, meaning they are MORE AGGRESSIVE and MORE LIKELY to take down content to avoid liability. In other words, your position would be an actual attack on free speech.
It could not be any worse than what we have now.
You have NO fucking clue. In every other country in the world, none of which have a 230, the ability for the powerful to silence those speaking truth to power is MUCH, MUCH greater, in part because of their lack of intermediary liability protections. It will be MUCH worse than it is now. If you think right now is bad, you are even dumber than I suspected.
There used to be a bumper sticker, it was an answer to the common bumper stickers of America, love it or leave it. The alternative was: America, change it or lose it.
Lol, wut?
They had the opportunity to preserve freedom and fair play while under 230 protection. They didn't, cheered on by writers such as yourself.
Lol, wut? Again, this case had fuck all to do with 230. Are you suggesting that websites must be forced to allow all trademark infringement? Or are you just so stupid that you don't know what the fuck you're talking about?
Bye bye to 230, sooner or later. Bring the mess.
The mess being much more takedowns, especially of you and your friends' idiocy, because of the massive liability you freaks bring?
You anti-230 Trumpists are truly the dumbest fucking people around.
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'Winning' the battle and immediately losing the war
The mess being much more takedowns, especially of you and your friends' idiocy, because of the massive liability you freaks bring?
It is admittedly a slim silver lining given how much damage in general it would cause but there is at least a bit of schadenfreude and humor to be found in the fact that the people most vehemently against 230 will be the first who suffer the consequences and the hardest hit long term should it ever be revoked.
If they think they've got it bad and are being 'persecuted' now...
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Re: The Whrildwind
[Projects facts not in evidence]
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Re: The Whrildwind
"Who cares how messy it will get?"
The fun part is that people like you will really care when you see the actual results of repealing 230 rather than the silly fantasy you imagined for yourselves..
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Re: The Whrildwind
"The Whrildwind"
Didn't they close that ride in 2017?
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"(1) that she was unable to tell which products on RedBubble were legitimate and which were infringing (so how the hell could they expect RedBubble to just know?!?) "
Perhaps because RedBubble was not selling any second-hand physical goods, but, as you said a few sentences above that, the trial court found that "with RedBubble, the company would take designs uploaded by users, and pass them on to various print shops for the actual printing".
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Re:
OK, but that doesn't answer the question - how can RedBubble know which designs are infringing? Them printing the items instead of stocking pre-printed items does not impart them with magical knowledge as to whether or not the customer is lying when they claim to own the rights to request the printing.
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