Jeffrey Toobin's Zoom Dick Incident Is The Perfect Example Of Why We Need Section 230

from the look,-it's-2020,-okay dept

I know that it's 2020 and the normal concepts no longer make any sense, but on Monday of this week, quite a story broke that spread quickly through the media world. CNN and New Yorker famed legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin was apparently suspended from both companies, after it was revealed that he was caught masturbating on a Zoom call with New Yorker colleagues, in which they were playing an election simulation game (that appears to be similar, but not identical to the election simulation game we created -- though I swear that ours does not involve any masturbating legal analysts).

Shoshana Weissmann noted that this story -- as horrific as it might be -- is also a perfect example of why we have Section 230.

Revealing one's self in a work setting can invariably lead to lawsuits. And if lawsuits are filed, Toobin, rather than Zoom, should be liable. Zoom likely had no knowledge of the incident until it was reported, nor did Zoom have anything to do with his actions. Toobin is also not an employee of Zoom. It is this same principle that Section 230 protects: that platforms should not be liable for content published by users. But platforms are liable for their own content that they publish, such as tweets from @Twitter or any static pages on Facebook.com created by Facebook.

It's this fairly simple concept that so many people seem to be having difficulty grasping: Section 230 is about the proper application of liability. The person who actually did the thing should be held responsible, rather than the tools that they use. That's Section 230 in a nutshell, and the reasoning is bizarrely demonstrated by what is now being called the Zoom Dick Incident.

Weissmann's piece goes on to explain why this is so important for free speech:

Furthermore, if Section 230 protections were removed, that would mean that websites would face liability for all user content if they moderated any user content. Websites would then moderate nothing, so they're not liable, or they would moderate so much that users would face massive barriers to posting. If conservatives think that too much of their content is being censored now, just wait until Facebook becomes liable for everything its users post. This is known as the "moderator's dilemma." In terms relevant to the Toobin news, Zoom would either have to allow everybody to show their genitals on the platform or strictly police meetings to ensure that none made it through. This regulatory burden would likely be crushing to new market entrants who lack the resources for a robust moderation program. As we learned from the GDPR regulations in Europe, these types of regulations harm competition by squashing startups and entrenching existing players.

If you read Techdirt enough, you know this already. However, if you hear people talking about the Zoom incident, now you have yet another way to talk about the importance of 230. Toobin should be held responsible for his own actions. Not Zoom.

Filed Under: intermediary liability, jeffrey toobin, liability, section 230
Companies: zoom

Reporter Toobin Lashes Out At Reporters Who Use 'Stolen' Documents; Leaves Out His Own History Of Doing The Same

from the it's-just-not-civilized-to-do-real-reporting dept

David Carr, over at the NY Times, has a good article looking at how many of the people who have been involved in reporting on recent leaks concerning government abuses -- from Wikileaks to the Snowden leaks -- have been attacked by more "traditional" journalists, like David Gregory of Meet the Press and Jeffrey Toobin of CNN and the New Yorker. Carr says that this is the war on leaks, "pitting journalist v. journalist," but others have noted that it's a little more involved than that. Ryan Singel simplified it down to journalists vs. sycophants, since those complaining about Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras, Julian Assange and others tend to be "insider" journalists -- those who rely on good relationships with government officials to "report" the news. Mathew Ingram, similarly, noted that the old school journalists were dealing with "the shock of inclusion," in that journalism is now done in a different way, and they don't like it.

The unavoidable sense one gets — not just from Carr's piece, but from all the other responses by Gregory and others to the NSA story and to WikiLeaks, and even to events like Reddit's attempt to contribute to the reporting around the Boston bombings — is of an "us vs. them" mentality, in which bloggers like Greenwald or more extreme personalities like Julian Assange are treated like invaders storming the barricades of the journalism establishment. As Carr puts it:

“The larger sense I get from the criticism directed at Mr. Assange and Mr. Greenwald is one of distaste — that they aren’t what we think of as real journalists. Instead, they represent an emerging Fifth Estate composed of leakers, activists and bloggers who threaten those of us in traditional media. They are, as one says, not like us.”

Carr also has this interesting exchange with Toobin, who has been among the angriest haters against Snowden, Greenwald and the rest:

Mr. Toobin agrees that an important debate has been joined, but says no story, no matter how big, justifies journalists’ abetting illegal acts, saying, “Journalists are not above the law.”

“The Jane Mayers, Sy Hershes and Walter Pincuses have all done superb work for decades without the rampant lawlessness that was behind these stories,” he said, adding later, “I’ve never heard any of those journalists endorsing the wholesale theft of thousands of classified government records.”

That seems especially ironic, given that just last week it came out that Toobin himself has been accused of taking a ton of classified documents for a book he was writing:

In journalist Michael Isikoff’s book, Uncovering Clinton: A Reporter’s Story, he described how Toobin was caught “having absconded with large loads of classified and grand-jury related documents from the office of Iran-Contra independent counsel Lawrence Walsh” in 1991:

Toobin, it turned out, had been using his tenure in Walsh’s office to secretly prepare a tell-all book about the Iran-contra case; the privileged documents, along with a meticulously kept private diary (in which the young Toobin, a sort of proto-Linda Tripp, had been documenting private conversations with his unsuspecting colleagues) were to become his prime bait to snare a book deal.   Toobin’s conduct enraged his fellow lawyers in Walsh’s office, many of whom viewed his actions as an indefensible betrayal of the public trust.  Walsh at one point even considered pressing for Toobin’s indictment.

Toobin was “petrified” that he would have to face criminal charges for stealing information for a rather dubious book deal. According to Isikoff, he either “feared dismissal and disgrace, or simply wanted to move on.” Toobin “resigned from the U.S. Attorney’s office in Brooklyn (where he had gone to work after Walsh) and abandoned the practice of law.”

Read that again, then go back and read Toobin's whining to David Carr. And try not to choke back the laughter. Toobin isn't upset that documents were taken as a part of journalism, since it appears that he, himself, had no problem with that. He's upset that it's used in a way that he doesn't like.

It is true that there are differences between many of those old school journalists and the new school who are breaking all of this news. The old school tried to buddy up with government sources to get their story. The new school would rather get the story. Apparently that upsets the old school, because it makes their stenography "reporting" a bit less interesting.

Filed Under: activism, david carr, glenn greenwald, jeffrey toobin, journalism, laura poitras, leaks