Hi everyone,
In September https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/publicpolicy/2017-September/001683.html, we wrote to you about SESTA, a bill which would weaken internet platforms’ intermediary liability protections under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. The Wikimedia Foundation favors safe harbor rules https://policy.wikimedia.org/policy-landing/liability/ like Section 230, since they allow website hosts to act neutrally and avoid interfering with community governance. For that reason, we submitted a letter in support of the current legal framework https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/publicpolicy/2017-September/001691.html to the Senate Commerce Committee. In October, in a House Judiciary Committee Hearing, Chris Cox gave a great summary of the importance of Section 230 https://youtu.be/DyxD260Wz2Y?t=36m23s for Wikipedia and similar projects.
Since then, a Manager’s Amendment to SESTA was released. The revised version of the bill makes some important changes over the original, but still makes troubling amendments to the protections granted by Section 230. The Senate Commerce Committee approved the Manager’s Amendment last Wednesday, and SESTA will now likely proceed to a full Senate vote at some point. Senator Wyden, one of the original authors of Section 230, has put a hold https://www.wyden.senate.gov/news/press-releases/wyden-issues-warning-about-sesta on SESTA, which means there is a pause before the next vote.
Last week, we published a blog post on Medium https://medium.com/@Wikimedia/three-principles-in-cda-230-that-make-wikipedia-possible-c0fb0006a932 (and on our blog https://blog.wikimedia.org/2017/11/09/cda-230-principles-wikipedia/), highlighting the importance of Section 230 for Wikipedia's growth, and some core principles that lawmakers should keep in mind as they evaluate SESTA and similar bills. Section 230 has encouraged good-faith content moderation, under a single federal standard, and protected not only large websites, but also small startups and nonprofits. Congress should avoid disrupting the balance that has made projects like Wikipedia possible.
If you want to follow SESTA and Section 230 developments more closely, I recommend Eric Goldman's Technology & Marketing Law Blog http://blog.ericgoldman.org/. They are providing good quick legal analysis with each step for the bill.
Best, Leighanna & Stephen
Not wishing to distract from the SESTA work you’re doing, but I’ve got a somewhat tangential question:
Is there, or could wmf-legal create, a list of the “necessary” legal principles/acts/precedents/rights that underpin why the WMF can operate in the USA and not in any other country?
I hear of certain things a lot: like Fair Use, Safe Harbours, Freedom of Speech rights... but I’ve never heard of “section 230 of the communications decency act” despite the fact that “the Wikipedia we know today simply would not exist without [it].”
It would be useful to have a list (dare I say on Meta?) that enumerates these *crucial* things in USA Law that protect Wikimedia/pedia/WMF.
The logical extension is to then compare with other jurisdictions to see what are the missing elements in each place which, if “fixed”, could mean that country could potentially be a legal home for the WMF. Best-case scenario the digital-right community of xyz-country use our “list of necessary laws for hosting Wikipedia” as a rallying-point to lobby their parliament to make some incremental improvement.
-Liam
On Tue, 14 Nov 2017 at 19:13, Leighanna Mixter lmixter@wikimedia.org wrote:
Hi everyone,
In September https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/publicpolicy/2017-September/001683.html, we wrote to you about SESTA, a bill which would weaken internet platforms’ intermediary liability protections under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. The Wikimedia Foundation favors safe harbor rules https://policy.wikimedia.org/policy-landing/liability/ like Section 230, since they allow website hosts to act neutrally and avoid interfering with community governance. For that reason, we submitted a letter in support of the current legal framework https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/publicpolicy/2017-September/001691.html to the Senate Commerce Committee. In October, in a House Judiciary Committee Hearing, Chris Cox gave a great summary of the importance of Section 230 https://youtu.be/DyxD260Wz2Y?t=36m23s for Wikipedia and similar projects.
Since then, a Manager’s Amendment to SESTA was released. The revised version of the bill makes some important changes over the original, but still makes troubling amendments to the protections granted by Section 230. The Senate Commerce Committee approved the Manager’s Amendment last Wednesday, and SESTA will now likely proceed to a full Senate vote at some point. Senator Wyden, one of the original authors of Section 230, has put a hold https://www.wyden.senate.gov/news/press-releases/wyden-issues-warning-about-sesta on SESTA, which means there is a pause before the next vote.
Last week, we published a blog post on Medium https://medium.com/@Wikimedia/three-principles-in-cda-230-that-make-wikipedia-possible-c0fb0006a932 (and on our blog https://blog.wikimedia.org/2017/11/09/cda-230-principles-wikipedia/), highlighting the importance of Section 230 for Wikipedia's growth, and some core principles that lawmakers should keep in mind as they evaluate SESTA and similar bills. Section 230 has encouraged good-faith content moderation, under a single federal standard, and protected not only large websites, but also small startups and nonprofits. Congress should avoid disrupting the balance that has made projects like Wikipedia possible.
If you want to follow SESTA and Section 230 developments more closely, I recommend Eric Goldman's Technology & Marketing Law Blog http://blog.ericgoldman.org/. They are providing good quick legal analysis with each step for the bill.
Best, Leighanna & Stephen -- Leighanna Mixter Technology Law and Policy Fellow Wikimedia Foundation 1 Montgomery Street, Suite 1600 San Francisco, CA 94104 lmixter@wikimedia.org
NOTICE: *This message might have confidential or legally privileged information in it. If you have received this message by accident, please delete it and let us know about the mistake. As an attorney for the Wikimedia Foundation, for legal/ethical reasons I cannot give legal advice to, or serve as a lawyer for, community members, volunteers, or staff members in their personal capacity. For more on what this means, please see our legal disclaimer https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Legal_Disclaimer.* _______________________________________________ Publicpolicy mailing list Publicpolicy@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/publicpolicy
Very good question. I like the idea of having a rallying point for incremental improvement.
This is one of the goals of the policy site https://policy.wikimedia.org/. The legal principles/acts/precedents/rights that underpin our work is a very broad question. We distill this down on the policy site into five general areas, where we describe each topic with a few principles in detail (the section on intermediary liability https://policy.wikimedia.org/policy-landing/liability/ briefly covers Section 230) and we provide further information in blog posts and the mailing list here. The rules on intermediary liability are extremely important, have wide variation around the world, and (in my opinion) are not as clearly established as free culture principles for copyright (as one example). These are some of the reasons we're working with Yale Law School on their new initiative on intermediaries and information https://law.yale.edu/yls-today/news/yls-and-wikimedia-foundation-create-new-initiative-intermediaries-and-information. As some background, you may also like the Standford Center for Internet and Society's world intermediary liability map http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/our-work/projects/world-intermediary-liability-map-wilmap .
It's difficult to make a concrete list of minimum laws and regulations though—this kind of legal analysis always involves some trade-offs, and will affect users, projects, content, and the organization in different ways. Enumerating essential parts of the law is a little like asking Carl Sagan to bake an apple pie from scratch. That's why we focus on high-level principles in the policy site.
Best, Stephen
On Tue, Nov 14, 2017 at 2:11 PM, Liam Wyatt liamwyatt@gmail.com wrote:
Not wishing to distract from the SESTA work you’re doing, but I’ve got a somewhat tangential question:
Is there, or could wmf-legal create, a list of the “necessary” legal principles/acts/precedents/rights that underpin why the WMF can operate in the USA and not in any other country?
I hear of certain things a lot: like Fair Use, Safe Harbours, Freedom of Speech rights... but I’ve never heard of “section 230 of the communications decency act” despite the fact that “the Wikipedia we know today simply would not exist without [it].”
It would be useful to have a list (dare I say on Meta?) that enumerates these *crucial* things in USA Law that protect Wikimedia/pedia/WMF.
The logical extension is to then compare with other jurisdictions to see what are the missing elements in each place which, if “fixed”, could mean that country could potentially be a legal home for the WMF. Best-case scenario the digital-right community of xyz-country use our “list of necessary laws for hosting Wikipedia” as a rallying-point to lobby their parliament to make some incremental improvement.
-Liam
On Tue, 14 Nov 2017 at 19:13, Leighanna Mixter lmixter@wikimedia.org wrote:
Hi everyone,
In September https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/publicpolicy/2017-September/001683.html, we wrote to you about SESTA, a bill which would weaken internet platforms’ intermediary liability protections under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. The Wikimedia Foundation favors safe harbor rules https://policy.wikimedia.org/policy-landing/liability/ like Section 230, since they allow website hosts to act neutrally and avoid interfering with community governance. For that reason, we submitted a letter in support of the current legal framework https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/publicpolicy/2017-September/001691.html to the Senate Commerce Committee. In October, in a House Judiciary Committee Hearing, Chris Cox gave a great summary of the importance of Section 230 https://youtu.be/DyxD260Wz2Y?t=36m23s for Wikipedia and similar projects.
Since then, a Manager’s Amendment to SESTA was released. The revised version of the bill makes some important changes over the original, but still makes troubling amendments to the protections granted by Section 230. The Senate Commerce Committee approved the Manager’s Amendment last Wednesday, and SESTA will now likely proceed to a full Senate vote at some point. Senator Wyden, one of the original authors of Section 230, has put a hold https://www.wyden.senate.gov/news/press-releases/wyden-issues-warning-about-sesta on SESTA, which means there is a pause before the next vote.
Last week, we published a blog post on Medium https://medium.com/@Wikimedia/three-principles-in-cda-230-that-make-wikipedia-possible-c0fb0006a932 (and on our blog https://blog.wikimedia.org/2017/11/09/cda-230-principles-wikipedia/), highlighting the importance of Section 230 for Wikipedia's growth, and some core principles that lawmakers should keep in mind as they evaluate SESTA and similar bills. Section 230 has encouraged good-faith content moderation, under a single federal standard, and protected not only large websites, but also small startups and nonprofits. Congress should avoid disrupting the balance that has made projects like Wikipedia possible.
If you want to follow SESTA and Section 230 developments more closely, I recommend Eric Goldman's Technology & Marketing Law Blog http://blog.ericgoldman.org/. They are providing good quick legal analysis with each step for the bill.
Best, Leighanna & Stephen -- Leighanna Mixter Technology Law and Policy Fellow Wikimedia Foundation 1 Montgomery Street, Suite 1600 San Francisco, CA 94104 lmixter@wikimedia.org
NOTICE: *This message might have confidential or legally privileged information in it. If you have received this message by accident, please delete it and let us know about the mistake. As an attorney for the Wikimedia Foundation, for legal/ethical reasons I cannot give legal advice to, or serve as a lawyer for, community members, volunteers, or staff members in their personal capacity. For more on what this means, please see our legal disclaimer https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Legal_Disclaimer.* _______________________________________________ Publicpolicy mailing list Publicpolicy@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/publicpolicy
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