So, I heard that the EARN IT Act has been rebuilt from the ground-up, and it’s not looking any better than the previous version. Instead of the whole “best practices” thing, the bill essentially does what FOSTA/SESTA did but with CSAM this time. It creates a CDA 230 carve-out for that material. However, there’s one part that’s worrisome. Unlike FOSTA, this bill is going to make websites comply with STATE LAWS, and that is going to be messy and likely detrimental, since it will definitely be a race to the bottom. In essence, I’m worried that this reworked bill is going to impact lawful adult content… Plus, the threat of encryption bans still remain, even if it’s not as direct as it was in the original bill. Anyway, if you want more info, look here:
Does anybody have any predictions on what’s going to happen if/when this is passed, since I fear that this is an inevitability, as it passed its committee unanimously?
Estimates say after the election. Senator Wyden is blocking it from passing on grounds of unanimous consensus so it shouldn’t happen too soon. Senator Blumenthal is working very hard to get lawmakers to agree on his bill and pass it immediately by unanimous consensus.
He is spouting nonsense that every view of illegal content “traumatises” someone when it isn’t that simple. This assumes someone knows it exists, which should be assumed because they always do at the worst possible time. And even then, they would be worried on the basis of it existing, rather than getting electrocuted every time someone views it.
Some of the views are likely not even humans but bots. For one, if someone posts something 100k times, if Googlebot crawls it, that is a view. And again every time Googlebot crawls it. And every other bot. 50% of traffic on the web are bots. How would you even know? What if there is no view counter?
Oppose Earn it? How you going to hold pornhub and facebook acountable? Why you want big corp to have impunity? Why you want this? No sense this makes. None what so ever. How we hold big corp account?
We already do hold websites accountable for CSAM. They’re required by law to report all instances of CSAM to the NCMEC if they wish to maintain their Section 230 protections, in addition to clearing out bad content in good faith. The issue with holding them to the standards of each individual state is that it’s impossible for each website/service to accommodate different standards and still be effective. Having a federal mandate and definition is easier for everyone to understand.
“We already do hold websites accountable for CSAM. They’re required by law to report all instances of CSAM to the NCMEC if they wish to maintain their Section 230 protections,”
I think this not the truth! They only mandated report of they come across abuse imagery of the child. No requirement for them to actively search for abuse image of the child ONLY TO REPORT WHEN THEIR USERS REPORT. Not good enough they must be mandated to seek out content on their own platforms to report should be reform that must be passed no exception
Ok, but doing away with 230 completely most definitely is not the solution and is overkill. Same for letting state governments decide their arbitrary requirements to earn 230, or the other idea of letting an unaccountable body to decide it.