LOS ANGELES—With Congress now considering multiple bills in the Senate and the House to drastically cut back the free speech protections under the “First Amendment of the Internet,” Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act, the attacks on the law have now spread to the local level, at least in California.
Section 230 protects online platforms from legal responsibility for content posted by users. The law is especially crucial for the online adult industry which has historically faced near-constant threats of censorship — which would become much more likely if the 1996 law were weakened or repealed.
Now, the League of California Cities, an organization of local city officials who “combine resources so that they may influence policy decisions,” according to the group’s website, may jump on the anti-Section 230 bandwagon, with a vote coming up on a resolution to scale back the law’s protections.
The resolution — which would have no legal weight, but would be designed to influence members of Congress who may eventually vote on the issue — calls for online platforms to lose their Section 230 protections unless they regularly comb through every post on their sites and remove any content that “solicits criminal activity.”
But the main purpose of Section 230 was to relieve platforms of that cumbersome task, because the burden of doing do makes it more likely that sites will simply censor broad swaths of content based on their general subject matter.
According to a report by TechDirt, the California League of Cities resolution was inspired by a crime that never took place. Unidentified users posted on Instagram calling for followers to “work together to loot Cerritos Mall.” But no such looting took place.
The post did, however, prompt Cerritos city officials to draw up the resolution calling on the League of Cities to demand a rollback of Section 230. Four other cities have since signed on to the Cerritos resolution, meaning that it will soon come to a vote by the entire membership.
But according to TechDirt, the most sinister aspect of the resolution would require platforms — such as Instagram, Facebook and others — to hand over user data to law enforcement agencies upon request.
“That's not reforming Section 230 (indeed, it's entirely unrelated to 230). It's about ignoring the 4th Amendment,” wrote TechDirt columnist Mike Masnick. “And the 1st Amendment, since it seeks to attack protected speech.”
In addition, Masnick points out, internet platforms already cooperate regularly with law enforcement agencies, when those agencies follow legally required procedures for requesting user information. The League of Cities resolution appears to eliminate the procedural requirements, simply allowing police to request any data they want, and forcing online platforms to comply.
The League’s Public Safety Committee has already approved the resolution, albeit by a narrow 19-18 vote, on September 29.
“The City of Cerritos and a few allies are urging the League to ask for a new type of Internet,” wrote the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which submitted evidence in opposition to the League resolution. “It would be one in which their own residents are under constant surveillance online, and local newspapers and blogs would have to either close their online discussion sections, or patrol them for behavior that might offend local police.”
Photo By Soumil Kumar / Pexels
