Re: more bad lawyering about Parler

[William Herrin <bill () herrin us>]

On Sun, Jan 10, 2021 at 8:13 PM John Levine <johnl () iecc com> wrote:
> In article <CAP-guGXi6wrRpCMu9CBC-GN+qB9GvRG9pvbNp+e7DTvo66KMzA () mail gmail com> you write:
> > With private organizations it gets much more complicated. No
> > organization is compelled to publish anything. But then section 230 of
> > the DMCA comes in and says: if you exercise editorial control over
> > what's published then you are liable for any unlawful material which
> > is published. ...
>
> Sigh. This is false. 100% false. It is the exact opposite of what 47
> USC 230 really says. Also, it's the CDA, not the DMCA.

Hi John,

I conflated some of the DMCA safe harbor stuff with the CDA publisher
stuff. My bad.

I stand by the gist of what I said which, while imprecise, is
consistent with what you posted. The common law precedent is that
publishers are liable for what they publish. Section 230 carves out
the rules for when an online service is not a publisher (which is
decidedly not "always"), and while I don't have the cases on the tip
of my tongue, there have been some real post-CDA head scratchers where
a court decided that an online service exercised sufficient control of
the content to have made itself a publisher.

That said, I encourage folks to refer to your message for the
excellent quotes and references.

Regards,
Bill Herrin


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