ALBANY, NY—An article published today on Motherboard.com, titled “Online Whiz Kid Joe Biden Thinks We Should Trash a Crucial Law for the Internet,” includes the opinions of prominent adult industry attorney Maxine Lynn.
The genesis of the article was that last week, former Vice President and current presidential candidate Joe Biden said in an interview for The New York Times, "[t]he idea that [Facebook is] a tech company is that Section 230 should be revoked, immediately should be revoked, number one. For Zuckerberg and other platforms."
Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (CDA) provides, in summary, that a provider of an “interactive computer service” is not to be treated as the publisher or speaker of information shared on the service by a third-party user. This releases websites from certain liabilities for actions of users on the sites.
The article, written by Samantha Cole, explains, “Section 230 is … one reason why platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, and 4chan have flourished—for better or worse, Section 230 has allowed them to amass millions of users without having to take the blame every time one of those users does something illegal.”
The piece quotes various experts on aspects that relate to the CDA. To this end, Lynn contributed the following statement:
"Marginalized communities who already have trouble accessing good and accurate sex education and products would have an even harder time without Section 230[.]" She continued, "[R]epeal of Section 230 could open the door to even more systemic censorship on what some believe is 'immoral' content'... Without a free and open internet, it could leave many people vulnerable to inaccurate, and just plain wrong information, or possibly no information at all, about sex, sexual wellness products, and pornography[.]"
The full article can be accessed at this link.
Maxine Lynn is an intellectual property and adult industry attorney with the law firm of Keohane & D’Alessandro, PLLC. Through her company, Unzipped Media, Inc., Maxine publishes a blog titled, UNZIPPED Sex, Tech and the Law and a podcast titled, UNZIPPED The Business of Sex.
