LOS ANGELES—Following his May executive order “on preventing online censorship,” Donald Trump requested that the Federal Communications Communications “review” Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act, with the intent of revising the law often referred to as the “First Amendment of the Internet.”
But according to a new report by the Reuters news agency, the FCC now appears unlikely to take any action to revise the 24-year-old online freedom with Trump leaving office on January 20, and FCC Chair Ajit Pai — a Trump appointee — announcing that he will also step down on that date.
Section 230 is a crucial law not only for free speech online generally, but for the adult industry in particular. Sexual content is frequently among the first type of material to face censorship when free speech protections are absent.
Despite stating in October that he would create new rules to “clarify” Section 230, Pai has taken no further action on the issue. The FCC’s next scheduled meeting is January 13, but Pai did not place any matters pertaining to Section 230 on the agenda, according to the Reuters report.
In December, the United States Senate confirmed Trump’s latest nominee to the FCC board, Nathan Simington, who had helped to write the May executive order. But due to his involvement in the effort to repeal or rewrite Section 230, Simington said in a statement this week that he may be forced to recuse himself from any FCC decisions on the law.
“As there is no currently-pending Section 230 matter before the commission to be discussed with specificity, it could not comprehensively rule out potential recusal in the future,” a statement from Simington’s office read, as quoted by Reuters. “However, no grounds were identified for recusal on this topic at this time."
But the campaign to weaken of repeal Section 230 appears certain to continue. A segment on the CBS News 60 Minutes program that aired January 3 focused on “the ramifications of the legislation and why it could be repealed in the near future.” An analysis by the technology news site TechDirt, however called the 60 Minutes segment “quite simply, blatant disinformation.”
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