FCC Chairman says he will move to 'clarify' Section 230, threatening tech's legal shield

[mahatmakanejeeves]

Source: CNBC

TECH

FCC Chairman says he will move to 'clarify' Section 230, threatening tech's legal shield
PUBLISHED THU, OCT 15 2020 3:38 PM EDT UPDATED 7 MIN AGO

Lauren Feiner
@LAUREN_FEINER https://twitter.com/lauren_feiner

KEY POINTS
-- Federal Communication Commission Chairman Ajit Pai plans to move forward with rulemaking to "clarify" the scope of tech's legal liability shield, Section 230, he said in a statement Thursday.
-- The decision follows an executive order issued by President Donald Trump in May directing the FCC to set new rules on Section 230?s protections.
-- It's still unclear how the FCC would seek to "clarify" Section 230, but if tech platforms' protection under the law is limited, it would force them to rethink their business models entirely.

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai said Thursday he plans to move forward with rulemaking to "clarify" the scope of Section 230, an important legal shield for tech companies like Facebook, Google and Twitter.

Section 230 protects tech platforms from being held liable from their users' posts. It also allows them to moderate content in good faith without repercussions. The law was passed in the early days of the internet in the 1990s as part of the Communications Decency Act, but lawmakers across the political spectrum have since called for it to be revised as the tech companies have grown to massive scale and influence.

Politicians disagree about how that should be done. Democrats want to preserve protections that allow platforms to remove harmful and harassing content. But Republicans want to root out alleged anti-conservative bias by limiting the scope of those protections.

In a statement, Pai said the decision came after the FCC's general counsel determined the agency has the legal authority to interpret the statute. The Department of Commerce petitioned the FCC to "clarify ambiguities in section 230" after President Donald Trump issued an executive order in May. The order directed the FCC to set new rules on platforms' protections under Section 230 and came after Twitter added fact-check labels to Trump's tweets for the first time. ... It's not clear how the FCC would seek to clarify Section 230, but it would almost certainly narrow its scope.

{snip}

Read more: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/10/15/fcc-chairman-says-he-will-to-clarify-tech-legal-shield-section-230.html

---

Hat tip, Mike Masnick, as retweeted by Popehat

IWILLKISSYOUALLHat Retweeted

https://twitter.com/Popehat

pretty much the tl;dr on this one!!! https://techdirt.com/articles/20201015/11555145508/blatant-hypocrite-ajit-pai-decides-to-move-forward-with-bogus-unconstitutional-rulemaking-section-230.shtml

Link to tweet

[beachbumbob]

1. Zero impact on this election

[The Magistrate]

2. This Isn't Something They Really Want To Do, Sir

If the platform is made liable for the content, in self-defense its owners must shut down defamatory and slanderous speech, which pretty much removes any 'conservative' presence on the platform.

[yaesu]

3. just more crap Dems will have to undo as soon as pai gets the boot. nt

[mahatmakanejeeves]

4. Ajit Pai Decides To Move Forward With Bogus, Unconstitutional Rulemaking On Section 230

Blatant Hypocrite Ajit Pai Decides To Move Forward With Bogus, Unconstitutional Rulemaking On Section 230

Stupidity

from the that's-not-how-any-of-this-works dept
Thu, Oct 15th 2020 12:05pm — Mike Masnick
For years, FCC Chair Ajit Pai has insisted that the thing that was most important to him was to have a "light touch" regulatory regime regarding the internet. He insisted that net neutrality (which put in place a few limited rules to make sure internet access was fair) was clearly a bridge too far, and had to be wiped out or it would destroy investment into internet infrastructure (he was wrong about that). But now that Section 230 is under attack, he's apparently done a complete reversal. He is now happy to open a proceeding to reinterpret Section 230 to place a regulatory burden on the internet. This is because Ajit Pai is a hypocrite with no backbone, and no willingness to stand up to a grandstanding President.

I intend to move forward with an
@FCC
rulemaking to clarify the meaning of #Section230.

Read my full statement below.

Link to tweet

{snip}

[Miguelito Loveless]

5. Dear Media:

This is your guy. You sold him to the public. You made tons of money off him. He's coming for you now.

[SWBTATTReg]

6. These companies will protect themselves quite well. They have deep pockets, w/ literally untold

$billions of dollars to defend themselves in the courts and the public utility commissions across the entire country, in every state. It will literally take decades to do anything. Look at the antitrust settlement that AT&T settled in 1983 w/ the FCC, it took decades to finally come up w/ a solution (break the AT&T monopoly up, into LD and the RBOCs, and behold! Today, AT&T is back together now, bought out by the old RBOC SWBT, and the name retained as the new resurrected AT&T, which owns several of the original RBOCs split up in 1983.

I'm not worried. Goggle, FB, and and all of these Internet companies don't really have much worry about. They also are a big source of campaign funds too.

[getagrip_already]

7. Biden presidential directive #1

All presidential directives issued after 1/21/2017 qnd before 1/21/2021 are heretofore nullified and retracted.

Also, all departmental rules issued between those dates are rolled back.

[ancianita]

8. Techdirt knows 230 inside and out. These changes will create control of ALL small business sites,

not just the monopolistic companies.

From Ajit Pai:

“As elected officials consider whether to change the law, the question remains: What does Section 230 currently mean? Many advance an overly broad interpretation that in some cases shields social media companies from consumer protection laws in a way that has no basis in the text of Section 230. The Commission’s General Counsel has informed me that the FCC has the legal authority to interpret Section 230. Consistent with this advice, I intend to move forward with a rulemaking to clarify its meaning.


“Throughout my tenure at the Federal Communications Commission, I have favored regulatory parity, transparency, and free expression. Social media companies have a First Amendment right to free speech. But they do not have a First Amendment right to a special immunity denied to other media outlets, such as newspapers and broadcasters.”

This is bullshit. And what's worse is that Pai knows it's bullshit. And he's still doing it. Because he's a coward. He saw what happened when his fellow Commissioner Mike O'Rielly -- who was effectively fired for daring to point out that the 1st Amendment blocked forcing internet websites to carry his propaganda -- and Pai folded like a cheap suit.

Pai is wrong in almost everything he says above. The FCC has no jurisdiction over internet websites. Previous lawsuits have already held that. Furthermore, the FCC has no jurisdiction over Section 230, which was explicitly written to deny the FCC any authority over websites. The FCC has no power to reinterpret the law.

The final paragraph is the most ridiculous of all. He is correct that social media companies have a 1st Amendment right to free speech. And Section 230 as was written and properly and regularly interpreted by dozens of court decisions -- none of which the FCC has ever said a word about -- helps guarantee that right is not diminished through frivolous, bogus, and mis-directed litigation. That Pai would ignore all of that to keep a whiny President happy should tarnish Pai's legacy much more than his dismantling of net neutrality.

The fact that he now goes back on everything he has ever said in the past about the FCC and regulations on the internet is just the fetid, rotten cherry on top of a giant pile of bullshit that he has created over the years.

Also, the claim that the immunity is "denied to other media outlets" is straight up wrong. ANY outlet is protected from liability for 3rd party content on their websites. It's why Fox News and Breitbart can have comments on their websites. It's why things like Parler and Gab can exist. Pai knows this. He's just being disingenuous.

In terms of actual impact, all this will serve to do is rile people up, waste a ton of time, and not actually change anything. Because it can't. But it will create a huge mess in the meantime, distracting everybody, and wasting a ton of resources.

As a final note: we've long disagreed with Pai about his stances on many issues, regarding net neutrality, the digital divide, municipal broadband and more. But at least he was consistent.

I'd previously believed that he was misguided, but stuck true to his principles. That is clearly no longer the case. He's a lying hypocrite with no principles, no backbone, and should be regarded as a complete joke.

No one can even say that his stance on net neutrality was a principled "small government, fewer regulations" stance any more, because this move proves it was not. He has no problem moving for regulating the internet when it's politically convenient. And that's just pathetic.

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