It's deceptive to say that "the law" hasn't changed since 1996 when case law certainly has. The EFF's Ernesto Falcon made the point that given Roommates, section 230 might not even immunize the things that Haugen says need fixing.
Megaconstellations of thousands to tens of thousands of artificial satellites (satcons) are rapidly being developed and launched. These satcons will have negative consequences for observational astronomy research, and are poised to drastically interfere with naked-eye stargazing worldwide should mitigation efforts be unsuccessful. Here we provide predictions for the optical brightnesses and on-sky distributions of several satcons, including Starlink, OneWeb, Kuiper, and StarNet/GW, for a total of 65,000 satellites on their filed or predicted orbits. We develop a simple model of satellite reflectivity, which is calibrated using published Starlink observations. We use this model to estimate the visible magnitudes and on-sky distributions for these satellites as seen from different places on Earth, in different seasons, and different times of night. For latitudes near 50 degrees North and South, satcon satellites make up a few percent of all visible point sources all night long near the summer solstice, as well as near sunrise and sunset on the equinoxes. Altering the satellites' altitudes only changes the specific impacts of the problem. Without drastic reduction of the reflectivities, or significantly fewer total satellites in orbit, satcons will significantly change the night sky worldwide.
Orac and I were even on the same blog collective for a while (scienceblogs.com, then owned by Seed Magazine). His was one of the blogs that people actually read; mine, less so. The story of how scienceblogs.com was implausibly funded, badly managed and eventually fragged could make an interesting retrospective that I ought to write some day. But it would need a BoJack Horseman style intro set to "Generic Two Thousand and Ten pop song".
As for Professor Doctor Joseph Chikelue Obi GKB (Biafra) FIDPO (UK) FRCAM(Dublin), his Royal College of Alternative Medicine was only a mailbox and a telephone service in 2005, but now it's risen in the world, giving out medical degrees "duly recognized by the Medical Licensing Council" whose Executive Chairman and Chief Regulator is Professor Doctor Joseph Chikelue Obi. But it's a "Fully Accredited Regulator of the Government of Biafra", whose State Counsellor, "Chief Public Servant & Top Government Envoy" is "The Most Excellent Professor Obi GKB".
Man, I wish my domain-name registrar had your spam filter. Someone who claims to lead a "medical association" founded by Biafran Druids in 1200 BC keeps writing them threatening to sue for half a billion dollars because in 2008, I shared a copy of a blog post. And yes, they're claiming copyright infringement. (Or, more fully, that my poor little website "has been wrecklessly [sic] (and unlawfully) violating our various Trademarks , our various Copyrights , and our various rights to a Peaceful Racial Existence.") The subject of the blog post was them making legal threats to have blog posts taken down.
Chairman Ashby brings back up HB 20 - the social media bill Cain presented this morning - and the committee approves the bill by a strict party line vote of 9-5. This bill, too, heads to the full floor.
On this general topic, there's an interesting opinion column in Physics, the news service of the big professional society for American physicists, calling for satellite regulation. An excerpt:
First, tens of thousands of new objects in LEO mean that there would be more pieces of “stuff” that need to be avoided by other “stuff:” One spacecraft crashing into another orbiting object could start a cascade of collisions that could create a volume of debris a million times larger than that of the two initially colliding objects. It is already challenging to keep track of both the currently operating spacecraft in LEO and the thousands upon thousands of pieces of space junk from derelict spacecraft and rocket bodies. Adding to this problem makes no sense.
Second, putting so many spacecraft in LEO is a threat to safely launching other satellites to higher altitude orbits. Most space researchers believe that we need more scientific “eyes in the sky” at middle Earth orbit (about 2000–30,000 km altitude) and at geostationary Earth orbit (around 36,000 km). If things become too congested in LEO, it may become impossible to safely launch rockets through to these higher observing perches. By the same token, it is crucial to allow crewed or robotic vehicles to safely pass through LEO on their return to Earth. We cannot allow an impenetrable barrier to form around our planet.
Finally, a huge swarm of smallsats could diminish astronomers’ ability to observe the cosmos from Earth’s surface (see Drawing a Line in the Sky: Astronomers Confront Satellite Threat). No matter how carefully designed, any satellite will reflect sunlight and block the transmission of light from distant astronomical objects. A massive cloud of small spacecraft may corrupt the view of the night sky (or even of the day sky!) and make ground-based astronomy nearly impossible, which would have a tragic impact for key fields of science.
Through this framework, "Online Communications Services" (the government lists Facebook, YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, and Twitter as examples)
But it sure as hell isn't limited to those examples. Quoting item 1(A).2:
The Act should define the term Online Communication Service (OCS) as a service that is accessible to persons in Canada, the primary purpose of which is to enable users of the service to communicate with other users of the service, over the internet.
That's every forum, bulletin board, fediverse instance and comment section. Once again, lawmakers act as though Facebook is the Internet ... and propose a regulatory regime under which it will be.
DeSantis doesn't have an incentive to stop, does he? The worst case, for him, is that he gets advertising and a way to raise more campaign cash off the QAnon base. Florida's ruling party will ride this as long as they can --- and with a judiciary more bonkers than we've ever seen.
if not bound by Circuit precedent I would hold that the term “publisher” under section 230 reaches only traditional activities of publication and distribution—such as deciding whether to publish, withdraw, or alter content—and does not include activities that promote or recommend content or connect content users to each other.
Am I the only one who finds it hard to follow the distinction between "activities that promote or recommend content" and "traditional activities of publication"? Like, book reviews sound pretty "traditional" to me. So does printing a Top 40 list of radio hits, or a list of bestselling novels, or a list of movies in descending order of weekend box-office. What distinction is the judge actually trying to get at here, and how much does it depend upon a warped impression of what a "machine-learning algorithm" is?
On the post: Why Section 230 'Reform' Effectively Means Section 230 Repeal
Is there a bill tracker for all these different bad proposals? I can't keep them straight in my head any longer.
On the post: If Your Takeaway From Facebook's Whistleblower Is That Section 230 Needs Reform, You Just Got Played By Facebook
It's deceptive to say that "the law" hasn't changed since 1996 when case law certainly has. The EFF's Ernesto Falcon made the point that given Roommates, section 230 might not even immunize the things that Haugen says need fixing.
On the post: Tesla 'Self-Driving' NDA Hopes To Hide The Reality Of An Unfinished Product
Re: Re:
That's what they get for not using object-oriented programming.
On the post: The SHOP SAFE Act Is A Terrible Bill That Will Eliminate Online Marketplaces
It passed the Judiciary Committee today; here's Nadler's press release. The actual result of the markup doesn't seem to be available yet.
On the post: Amazon, Space X Throw Hissy Fits As They Bicker Over Government Contracts, Subsidies
A new preprint of interest: Visibility Predictions for Near-Future Satellite Megaconstellations: Latitudes near 50 Degrees will Experience the Worst Light Pollution.
For an overview, here's a Twitter thread by one of the authors.
On the post: Officer Claims Sheriff's Office Told Him To Play Copyrighted Music To Shut Down Citizens' Recordings
Ouch. Tell us what you really think.
On the post: Texas Legislature Says You Can't Teach About Racism In Schools, But Social Media Sites Must Host Holocaust Denialism
The scary thing is that any lawsuit over this would go to the Fifth Circuit....
On the post: Copyright Scammers Getting More Sophisticated, Just As The US Is About To Make It Easier For Them
Re: Re: Re:
The King James Version is technically under some weird "Crown Copyright" rule, but what exactly that implies on the ground I don't know.
On the post: Copyright Scammers Getting More Sophisticated, Just As The US Is About To Make It Easier For Them
Re: Re:
Orac and I were even on the same blog collective for a while (scienceblogs.com, then owned by Seed Magazine). His was one of the blogs that people actually read; mine, less so. The story of how scienceblogs.com was implausibly funded, badly managed and eventually fragged could make an interesting retrospective that I ought to write some day. But it would need a BoJack Horseman style intro set to "Generic Two Thousand and Ten pop song".
As for Professor Doctor Joseph Chikelue Obi GKB (Biafra) FIDPO (UK) FRCAM(Dublin), his Royal College of Alternative Medicine was only a mailbox and a telephone service in 2005, but now it's risen in the world, giving out medical degrees "duly recognized by the Medical Licensing Council" whose Executive Chairman and Chief Regulator is Professor Doctor Joseph Chikelue Obi. But it's a "Fully Accredited Regulator of the Government of Biafra", whose State Counsellor, "Chief Public Servant & Top Government Envoy" is "The Most Excellent Professor Obi GKB".
On the post: Copyright Scammers Getting More Sophisticated, Just As The US Is About To Make It Easier For Them
Man, I wish my domain-name registrar had your spam filter. Someone who claims to lead a "medical association" founded by Biafran Druids in 1200 BC keeps writing them threatening to sue for half a billion dollars because in 2008, I shared a copy of a blog post. And yes, they're claiming copyright infringement. (Or, more fully, that my poor little website "has been wrecklessly [sic] (and unlawfully) violating our various Trademarks , our various Copyrights , and our various rights to a Peaceful Racial Existence.") The subject of the blog post was them making legal threats to have blog posts taken down.
On the post: Academic: Problems Created By Undermining Section 230 Can Be Solved... By Undermining Section 230?
I'm pretty sure that people who depend upon their OnlyFans to buy food and make the rent don't exactly have a lot of spare cash to hire lawyers.
On the post: Texas Legislature Has Another Ridiculous And Unconstitutional Content Moderation Bill; Say Goodbye To Email Filters
According to a local CBS affiliate reporter this morning:
On the post: Texas Legislature Has Another Ridiculous And Unconstitutional Content Moderation Bill; Say Goodbye To Email Filters
They can pry my spam filters from my cold dead hands.
On the post: Judge Shoots Down ViaSat's Quest To Stall Starlink Launches
On this general topic, there's an interesting opinion column in Physics, the news service of the big professional society for American physicists, calling for satellite regulation. An excerpt:
On the post: Canadian Government Continues Its War On Internet Freedom With New 'Online Harms' Legislation
But it sure as hell isn't limited to those examples. Quoting item 1(A).2:
That's every forum, bulletin board, fediverse instance and comment section. Once again, lawmakers act as though Facebook is the Internet ... and propose a regulatory regime under which it will be.
On the post: Florida
ManGovernor Wastes More Florida Taxpayer Money Appealing Ruling About His Unconstitutional Social Media Law(sigh)
DeSantis doesn't have an incentive to stop, does he? The worst case, for him, is that he gets advertising and a way to raise more campaign cash off the QAnon base. Florida's ruling party will ride this as long as they can --- and with a judiciary more bonkers than we've ever seen.
On the post: Texas Legislature Sees Florida's Social Media Bill Go Down In Unconstitutional Flames; Decides 'We Can Do That Too!'
The story of the special legislative session has heated up: It sounds like Texas Democrats are skipping the state to deny the Republicans a quorum.
On the post: Texas Legislature Sees Florida's Social Media Bill Go Down In Unconstitutional Flames; Decides 'We Can Do That Too!'
"'Censor' means 'to give me a sad'."
On the post: Ninth Circuit Appeals Court Says Some Disturbing Stuff About Section 230 While Dumping Another Two 'Sue Twitter For Terrorism' Lawsuits
Am I the only one who finds it hard to follow the distinction between "activities that promote or recommend content" and "traditional activities of publication"? Like, book reviews sound pretty "traditional" to me. So does printing a Top 40 list of radio hits, or a list of bestselling novels, or a list of movies in descending order of weekend box-office. What distinction is the judge actually trying to get at here, and how much does it depend upon a warped impression of what a "machine-learning algorithm" is?
On the post: Texas Supreme Court Completely Confuses Section 230, Makes A Total Mess Of FOSTA
Internet law is starting to sound like Russian history. "Somehow, everything got worse."
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