Section 230 of the CDA: Internet Exceptionalism as a Statutory Construct

Since its enactment in 1996, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act has become perhaps the most significant statute in the regulation of online content, and one of the most intensely scrutinized. The essay begins with a brief introduction to Section 230. As interpreted and applied by the judiciary, this statute is now conceived as a broad grant of immunity from tort liability.—broad not only in terms of those who can claim its protection but also in terms of predicate acts and causes of action to which such immunity extends. Working from this foundation, I then seek to position the courts’ expansion of Section 230 immunity within the larger debate over Internet governance, suggesting that proponents of expanded immunity are successfully creating what might be characterized as a modified, less demanding form of cyber-libertarian exceptionalism than what Eric Goldman calls, in his essay in this book, the “First Wave of Internet Exceptionalism.” (one of “Internet Utopianism”), as articulated in the mid-1990s. The dramatic expansion of Section 230 immunity has in a limited sense effectuated a vision of a community in which norms of relationship, thought and expression are yet to be formed. The tort liability from which Section 230 provides immunity is, together with contract, a primary means by which society defines civil wrongs actionable at law. In the near absence of these external norms of conduct regulating relationships among individuals, the online community is free to create its own norms, its own rules of conduct, or none at all. It is a glimpse of an emergent community existing within, rather than without, the sovereign legal system. Finally, I make the case for preserving broad Section 230 immunity. As an initial matter, many of the reforms offered by commentators are both unnecessary and unwise because the costs of imposing indirect liability on intermediaries are unreasonable in relationship to the harm deterred or remedied by doing so. Moreover, the imposition of liability would undermine the development of Web 2.0 communities as a form of modified exceptionalism that encourages the development of communal norms, efficient centers of collaborative production, and open forums for communication

Section 230 of the CDA: Internet Exceptionalism as a Statutory Construct

Since its enactment in 1996, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act has become perhaps the most significant statute in the regulation of online content, and one of the most intensely scrutinized. The essay begins with a brief introduction to Section 230. As interpreted and applied by the judiciary, this statute is now conceived as a broad grant of immunity from tort liability.—broad not only in terms of those who can claim its protection but also in terms of predicate acts and causes of action to which such immunity extends. Working from this foundation, I then seek to position the courts’ expansion of Section 230 immunity within the larger debate over Internet governance, suggesting that proponents of expanded immunity are successfully creating what might be characterized as a modified, less demanding form of cyber-libertarian exceptionalism than what Eric Goldman calls, in his essay in this book, the “First Wave of Internet Exceptionalism.” (one of “Internet Utopianism”), as articulated in the mid-1990s. The dramatic expansion of Section 230 immunity has in a limited sense effectuated a vision of a community in which norms of relationship, thought and expression are yet to be formed. The tort liability from which Section 230 provides immunity is, together with contract, a primary means by which society defines civil wrongs actionable at law. In the near absence of these external norms of conduct regulating relationships among individuals, the online community is free to create its own norms, its own rules of conduct, or none at all. It is a glimpse of an emergent community existing within, rather than without, the sovereign legal system. Finally, I make the case for preserving broad Section 230 immunity. As an initial matter, many of the reforms offered by commentators are both unnecessary and unwise because the costs of imposing indirect liability on intermediaries are unreasonable in relationship to the harm deterred or remedied by doing so. Moreover, the imposition of liability would undermine the development of Web 2.0 communities as a form of modified exceptionalism that encourages the development of communal norms, efficient centers of collaborative production, and open forums for communication

Sony, Cyber Security, and Free Speech: Preserving the First Amendment in the Modern World

Reprinted from 16 U.C. Davis Bus. L.J. 309 (2016). This paper explores the Sony hack in 2014 allegedly launched by the North Korean government in retaliation over Sony’s production of The Interview and considers the hack’s chilling impact on speech in technology. One of the most devastating cyber attacks in history, the hack exposed approximately thirty- eight million files of sensitive data, including over 170,000 employee emails, thousands of employee social security numbers and unreleased footage of upcoming movies. The hack caused Sony to censor the film and prompted members of the entertainment industry at large to tailor their communication and conform storylines to societal standards. Such censorship cuts the First Amendment at its core and exemplifies the danger cyber terror poses to freedom of speech by compromising Americans’ privacy in digital mediums. This paper critiques the current methods for combatting cyber terror, which consist of unwieldy federal criminal laws and controversial information sharing policies, while proposing more promising solutions that unleash the competitive power of the free market with limited government regulation. It also recommends legal, affordable and user-friendly tools anyone can use to secure their technology, recapture their privacy and exercise their freedom of speech online without fear of surreptitious surveillance or retaliatory exposure

Promoting Research through Improved Online Collaboration Software

The purpose of this project was to create an online platform to facilitate and promote research collaboration among faculty and students at the Financial University in Moscow. We gathered data on this problem through holding interviews and focus groups. Using this data we decided which online research collaboration tool would work best for the university, and we developed a prototype SharePoint website that delivers the features we determined to be most essential for successful online research collaboration

Intergenerational interpretation of the Internet of Things

This report investigates how different generations within a household interpret individual members’ data generated by the Internet of Things (IoT). Adopting a mixed methods approach, we are interested in interpretations of the IoT by teenagers, their parents and grandparents, and how they understand and interact with the kinds of data that might be generated by IoT devices. The first part of this document is a technical review that outlines the key existing and envisaged technologies that make up the IoT. It explores the definition and scope of the Internet of Things. Hardware, networking, intelligent objects and Human-Computer Interaction implications are all discussed in detail. The second section focuses on the human perspective, looking at psychological and sociological issues relating to the interpretation of information generated by the IoT. Areas such as privacy, data ambiguity, ageism, and confirmation bias are explored. The third section brings both aspects together, examining how technical and social aspects of the IoT interact in four specific application domains: energy monitoring, groceries and shopping, physical gaming, and sharing experiences. This section also presents three household scenarios developed to communicate and explore the complexities of integrating IoT technologies into family life. The final section draws together all the findings and suggests future research

AI for the Common Good?! Pitfalls, challenges, and Ethics Pen-Testing

Recently, many AI researchers and practitioners have embarked on research visions that involve doing AI for "Good". This is part of a general drive towards infusing AI research and practice with ethical thinking. One frequent theme in current ethical guidelines is the requirement that AI be good for all, or: contribute to the Common Good. But what is the Common Good, and is it enough to want to be good? Via four lead questions, I will illustrate challenges and pitfalls when determining, from an AI point of view, what the Common Good is and how it can be enhanced by AI. The questions are: What is the problem / What is a problem?, Who defines the problem?, What is the role of knowledge?, and What are important side effects and dynamics? The illustration will use an example from the domain of "AI for Social Good", more specifically "Data Science for Social Good". Even if the importance of these questions may be known at an abstract level, they do not get asked sufficiently in practice, as shown by an exploratory study of 99 contributions to recent conferences in the field. Turning these challenges and pitfalls into a positive recommendation, as a conclusion I will draw on another characteristic of computer-science thinking and practice to make these impediments visible and attenuate them: "attacks" as a method for improving design. This results in the proposal of ethics pen-testing as a method for helping AI designs to better contribute to the Common Good.Comment: to appear in Paladyn. Journal of Behavioral Robotics; accepted on 27-10-201

Adding Value in Business by Utilizing Social Media

Development of an approach that considers country specific data (Canada, The United States, Brazil, and Mexico – “The Americas”), cultural norms, and other criteria to assist businesses’ in executing a marketing strategy utilizing social media. Social media provides a significant opportunity to enhance current growth initiatives.The intention will be to utilize social media with clients, but also to exploit it to become the business’ greatest form of connection to new and existing customers. Questions such as: Can social media be effectively used as a sales channel? What approach should be used in each country? Are competitors utilizing social media? Are there best practice uses of social media? Can success be measured? Can the best social media platform be predicted given certain criteria? Organizations must utilize a focused social media strategy that considers the specific objectives, the cultural norms, and the popularity of each social media platform in each country

Digital Rights Management and the Process of Fair Use

Producers of digital media works increasingly employ technological protection measures, commonly referred to as digital rights management (or DRM ) technologies, that prevent the works from being accessed or used except upon conditions the producers themselves specify. These technologies have come under criticism for interfering with the rights users enjoy under copyright law, including the right to engage in fair uses of the DRM-protected works. Most DRM mechanisms are not engineered to include exceptions for fair use, and user circumvention of the DRM may violate the Digital Millennium Copyright Act even if the use for which the circumvention occurs is itself noninfringing. The academic literature on fair use in digital media has suggested several possible ways to resolve the tension between fair use on the one hand and DRM on the other. Among the more provocative possibilities is that DRM technologies themselves may evolve to incorporate greater built-in protections for end-user rights. This article examines several such proposals and finds that they are not likely to provide users with the same measure of protections for fair use of copyrighted works that exists in the offline world. The failure of these proposals, however, does not suggest that the broader goal of protecting fair use rights in digital media is unattainable. It is possible to advance much more closely towards that goal by altering the design philosophy of DRM technologies to focus more on the processes by which fair uses occur and less on attempting to replicate the substantive law of fair use in machine-administrable form. The article concludes by outlining one possible system engineered to protect the process of fair use