Hi David and Patrik
We're closely watching developments around SESTA. As we explain on the public policy portal https://policy.wikimedia.org/policy-landing/liability/, we strongly support intermediary liability protections, such as CDA 230, which are of existential importance to community driven platforms like Wikipedia. We rely on such rules to ensure we can continue to be a neutral host of content that can stay away from editorial decisions. In other words, the rules allow us to defer to community consensus on editorial decisions. The SESTA bill is problematic because it is written too broadly, as the EFF describes https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/09/stop-sesta-amendments-federal-criminal-sex-trafficking-law-sweep-too-broadly, and would open up states to write more laws that affect website hosts.
On the EFF's campaign page https://stopsesta.org/, Katherine Maher briefly explains our views on CDA 230. We are in conversations with several advocacy groups who are focusing on the SESTA bill and have submitted a letter to the Senate in which we explain our concerns. We shared an update https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/publicpolicy/2017-September/001691.html about that with the public policy mailing list. We invite you to discuss the issue with other Wikimedians on that list, if you'd like. Please join the list https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/publicpolicy if you'd like to receive further updates and join the conversation.
Best,
Jan
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Jan Gerlach Public Policy Manager Wikimedia Foundation 149 New Montgomery Street, 6th Floor San Francisco, CA 94105 jgerlach@wikimedia.org
On Fri, Sep 8, 2017 at 1:34 PM Patrik Zill patrik@pobox.com wrote:
There is a Katherine Maher quote prominently featured on < https://stopsesta.org/#quotes%3E.
I'd be interested in what exactly the problem is for the Foundation, though. The EFF leaves aside that question at least in the blog post that David referred to, which is instead focussed entirely on some exception to the exception that allegedly doesn't apply. What it doesn't talk about is why and when - in the cases at issue here - a hosting provider like the Wikimedia Foundation needs to rely on 47 U.S.C. § 230 in first place. It's not so obvious (at least not to someone legally trained outside the U.S.) that you would attract criminal liability for somehow being involved in "Sex trafficking of children or by force, fraud, or coercion" (18 U.S.C. § 1591(e)) or otherwise get into conflict with provisions relating to sex trafficking by hosting an open web encyclopedia that may be abused in some way (how?) by some random third party. Naturally, laws don't penalize all conduct remotely linkable to a criminal act - there's always some kind of threshold, implicit or explicit, and I'd be curious as to where/what for specifically the Wikimedia Foundation needs a section 230 defense in this area.
I believe if you want to communicate your position effectively, you (that is, the Wikimedia Foundation) should produce one or two example scenarios and then contrast your liability analysis under the present legislative framework with that under the proposed new regime, so an interested observer can follow along the relevant provisions and get an idea of where exactly we'd reach the point where the proposed changes would cause the Foundation extra troubles. If you've already done that, all the better, and, like David, I would appreciate a pointer :).
Patrik
On 7 September 2017 at 21:13, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/09/stop-sesta-congress-do esnt-understand-how-section-230-works
What's our position/analysis on this?
- d.
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