[00:00.000 --> 00:05.140]  And thanks, everybody, for having us here to talk about some of our favorite subjects,
[00:05.140 --> 00:11.060]  online speech and privacy. I'm Cathy Gellis, half of this duo, and I'm going to be going first
[00:11.060 --> 00:16.500]  because if we're going to be talking about potential changes to Section 230, which is what
[00:16.500 --> 00:22.860]  the EARN IT Act does in part, we should have a good idea about what Section 230 is, how it works,
[00:22.860 --> 00:27.940]  and really understand it before we break it and find out that maybe that was a mistake.
[00:27.940 --> 00:34.120]  It will be a mistake. Stay tuned. We will explain why. By way of introduction, I am a solo cyber
[00:34.120 --> 00:40.180]  lawyer in the San Francisco Bay Area. I like to work on online speech issues, including Section
[00:40.180 --> 00:46.580]  230 issues. I am a lawyer. Rihanna's a lawyer. We are not your lawyers. If we were your lawyers,
[00:46.580 --> 00:50.320]  we would have all signed letters saying so, and there's been no letters. So just to make that
[00:50.320 --> 00:56.340]  clear. But we do know what we're talking about. So this presentation has two parts. The reason I'm
[00:56.340 --> 01:00.840]  going first, doing the crash course, and then I will be joined by Rihanna to talk more.
[02:58.300 --> 03:03.960]  Hi, everyone. We are back again with more technical difficulties. But have no fear,
[03:03.960 --> 03:09.500]  I've got everyone back. I don't know if anyone's ever done OBS over a virtual desktop. Apparently,
[03:09.500 --> 03:16.760]  tip for the other folks learning from this stream, if you are logged into a Zoom in a virtual machine
[03:17.560 --> 03:23.700]  using OBS, and somebody else logs into that virtual machine, Zoom disconnects the user
[03:23.700 --> 03:28.380]  that is connected to Zoom on that virtual machine. So we're back. We've learned this new
[03:28.380 --> 03:33.800]  thing about technology. I will give it back over to Kathy, who's going to talk about the
[03:33.800 --> 03:41.020]  overarching principles. Okay, thanks, Whitney. I'm not quite sure where we got cut off. But
[03:41.020 --> 03:46.260]  Rihanna and I, both lawyers, not your lawyers, but it does mean we know what we're talking about.
[03:46.760 --> 03:51.460]  The first bit that we're going to do is crash course in Section 230. Because speaking of
[03:51.460 --> 03:57.860]  learning curves, stuff breaks, but it'd be really stupid to break it on purpose, because we didn't
[03:57.860 --> 04:02.540]  understand this really great and important law before we start changing it with proposals like
[04:02.540 --> 04:07.200]  the earn it and various other things that are floating through the halls of our government.
[04:07.520 --> 04:14.900]  So getting into it, as we go into this lesson, this crash course, couple of things to keep in
[04:14.900 --> 04:21.560]  mind, overarching principles. The first thing, Section 230 is a really hot topic these days.
[04:21.680 --> 04:26.320]  Everybody's talking about it. Everybody's complaining about it. Bear in mind that much
[04:26.320 --> 04:30.900]  of what people are complaining about, because people are saying bad stuff, saying and doing bad
[04:30.900 --> 04:36.460]  stuff on the internet, is really a byproduct of we've got a First Amendment. Freedom of speech
[04:36.460 --> 04:42.080]  tends to protect an awful lot of stuff that we are upset about. And if we were going to try to
[04:42.080 --> 04:45.940]  change the law to change it, that means we'd have to get rid of the First Amendment, and that's
[04:45.940 --> 04:51.840]  probably not a really good idea. So it also means that basically, if we're unhappy about something,
[04:51.840 --> 04:56.960]  the correct policy choice is not to change Section 230, because it's not actually Section 230's fault.
[04:57.540 --> 05:03.480]  A second overarching point that we need to bear in mind is that litigation can be cripplingly
[05:03.480 --> 05:09.140]  expensive, even when the position that you've got as a defendant is the better one.
[05:09.140 --> 05:15.440]  The fact you might win the lawsuit doesn't necessarily help. Lawsuits are expensive and
[05:15.440 --> 05:21.140]  potentially bankrupting, and what Section 230 is designed to do is to make sure that
[05:21.820 --> 05:26.040]  platforms can stay in business without feeling like they're going to be financially obliterated
[05:26.040 --> 05:30.580]  because one of their users says or does something stupid, and somebody tries to hold them responsible
[05:30.580 --> 05:37.040]  to it. Because if you think about the tremendous volume of what even the smallest platforms end up
[05:37.040 --> 05:43.280]  facilitating in terms of user-generated content, that's enormous. Even if they just had to, like,
[05:43.280 --> 05:48.780]  call up a lawyer to find out, do we need to really respond to this? That gets expensive. That meter
[05:48.780 --> 05:55.340]  ticks. It's not realistic. And what Section 230 is designed to do is make sure that a platform
[05:55.340 --> 06:03.180]  cannot be bled dry financially by getting called into court by legal threats, real or even
[06:03.540 --> 06:10.180]  actual ones as well. Put another way, the overall goal of Section 230, and we're going to get back
[06:10.180 --> 06:15.760]  to this a lot, is to ensure that we get the most good stuff online and the least bad.
[06:16.080 --> 06:22.700]  There are a lot of really cool things that people say or do over the internet. We want to make sure
[06:22.700 --> 06:28.820]  that the internet remains as available as possible to get the most of that. If platforms had to fear
[06:28.820 --> 06:34.580]  liability, they would not be in the position to facilitate all that good stuff. It would end up
[06:34.580 --> 06:40.120]  much more limited or maybe not be possible at all. At the same time, there's a lot of crap on the
[06:40.120 --> 06:45.160]  internet, and we would like to minimize the crap. So the other point of Section 230 is to put
[06:45.160 --> 06:50.340]  platforms in a position where they can minimize the crap without worrying about getting into trouble
[06:50.340 --> 06:56.080]  if they actually do the best they can on that front. So in order to optimize the most good and
[06:56.080 --> 07:02.940]  least bad, we have Section 230. It doesn't mean that we'll ever hit optimum on either front,
[07:02.940 --> 07:08.320]  but it gets us as close as we can reasonably get. And that gets to the fourth point.
[07:08.600 --> 07:14.360]  Effective regulation doesn't need to be punitive. Carrots can work best with sticks. And what Section
[07:14.360 --> 07:19.560]  230 is best understood as is all carrot, no stick. That basically, we want the platforms to be there
[07:19.560 --> 07:24.620]  to get us the most good stuff and the least bad stuff, and we're going to make it... we're going
[07:24.620 --> 07:28.900]  to incentivize them to do the best they can on both fronts. And the reason they're going to be
[07:28.900 --> 07:33.760]  able to do the best they can is because they're not scared. They're not scared of being punished
[07:33.760 --> 07:40.040]  financially through liability, etc. That's the magic of Section 230, to make it possible that
[07:40.040 --> 07:46.200]  the platforms and policy can all be aligned to do the best that we can. That's why we have the
[07:46.200 --> 07:54.580]  Internet today. So let's take a look at our next slide and talk about how we got Section 230.
[07:54.580 --> 08:00.440]  So if we get in our time machine and go back to 1995, a couple of things were happening. The first
[08:00.440 --> 08:04.120]  thing that was happening was that the Internet, which had been existing for quite some time,
[08:04.120 --> 08:10.220]  but was starting to enter the public consciousness. And as it hit the public consciousness,
[08:10.220 --> 08:15.420]  Congress became aware of it and started to become concerned that, oh my gosh, the Internet,
[08:15.420 --> 08:21.940]  there's porn on the Internet. Oh no, this is terrible. Some of it, probably not so great,
[08:21.940 --> 08:25.260]  but some of it is maybe a little overreaction. But in any case, they were very concerned about
[08:25.260 --> 08:30.200]  the amount of porn on the Internet and didn't want any of it there. Meanwhile, there was also
[08:30.200 --> 08:36.500]  this lawsuit that came up in a state court of New York involving the system Prodigy. So Prodigy,
[08:36.500 --> 08:42.260]  at the time, there were a number of dial-up, bulletin board-type services. Some were somewhat
[08:42.260 --> 08:50.580]  large and commercial. Prodigy, CompuServe, eventually AOL. They were small in the sense of
[08:50.580 --> 08:55.860]  not as big as today's platforms, but they were relatively big. Prodigy had been around for
[08:56.480 --> 09:01.140]  10 years, at least, at that point. And they handled an awful lot of user-generated content.
[09:01.540 --> 09:07.920]  And a user had arguably defamed the plaintiff in this lawsuit. But the plaintiff decided to
[09:08.400 --> 09:15.020]  Prodigy, basically under the theory of how dare you produce a system that allowed a user to defame
[09:15.020 --> 09:20.660]  me. And they filed this lawsuit. And a judge in a state court in New York said, well, that sounds
[09:20.660 --> 09:25.460]  good. Go ahead with your lawsuit. Sure, Prodigy should be in trouble for allowing this to happen.
[09:25.740 --> 09:30.840]  And a couple of members of Congress looked at that case with alarm. Senator Wyden and then
[09:30.840 --> 09:35.660]  Congressman Chris Cox. And they said, this is not going to be good. The Internet is coming. We've
[09:35.660 --> 09:42.080]  got all these cool services. And they're going to not be able to be available to provide,
[09:42.080 --> 09:47.040]  to facilitate user-generated speech. Nor are they going to be in a position to take down the
[09:47.040 --> 09:52.920]  terrible stuff. So again, we have a crisis. If this law becomes a thing, we won't get the most
[09:52.920 --> 09:58.360]  good stuff. We won't be able to minimize the most bad stuff. This is a problem. So these two ideas
[09:58.360 --> 10:04.060]  came together and formed the Communications Decency Act of 1996. And then there was a lawsuit
[10:04.060 --> 10:10.440]  challenging most of it because the getting rid of porn parts happened to infringe on the First
[10:10.440 --> 10:17.420]  Amendment quite severely. And in a case called Reno v. ECLU, the U.S. Supreme Court said, nope,
[10:17.420 --> 10:22.720]  those parts go away. They made clear that the First Amendment applies to online speech just
[10:22.720 --> 10:28.300]  as much as it applies to offline speech. Those parts of the CDA went away, but Section 230
[10:28.300 --> 10:34.100]  survived. And it survived, and it did its job clearing the way to make sure that people
[10:34.100 --> 10:43.980]  continue to innovate internet services. So we're now looking at statute. Don't worry. If you're
[10:43.980 --> 10:48.440]  not a lawyer, you will survive. This is okay. It's a good statute. It's pretty readable by
[10:48.440 --> 10:53.900]  normal human beings. But I will give you a scenic tour of some of the parts. So this particular
[10:53.900 --> 10:58.920]  page that we're on, they put in the beginning of the statute some preamble text, and it basically
[10:58.920 --> 11:05.060]  boils down to Congress finds that the internet is pretty awesome. They go through two pages worth
[11:05.060 --> 11:09.760]  of awesomeness, and then they get to their policy, and that the policy of the United States is to
[11:09.760 --> 11:15.260]  keep the internet awesome. So this sort of sets what Congress is trying to accomplish. And one
[11:15.260 --> 11:19.520]  of the things that it kind of articulates, most good stuff, but it also puts in some, we want to
[11:19.520 --> 11:25.940]  make sure that there's some leverage so we can get rid of the bad stuff. Here we go. That's what
[11:25.940 --> 11:37.560]  I just said. Okay. This is the most magnificent part of section 230. It is 26 words. Professor
[11:37.560 --> 11:43.000]  Jeff Koseff wrote a book called the 26 words that created the internet. And I've tried to read it
[11:43.000 --> 11:48.820]  out loud at conferences before, and it sounds terrible when pronounced, but it is fantastic.
[11:48.820 --> 11:54.720]  And if I'm to summarize it in more understandable language, it basically means whoever creates the
[11:54.720 --> 12:01.080]  problematic content is totally responsible for the problematic content, but not the service they used
[12:01.080 --> 12:07.320]  to express it. And if we look at the bits that I highlighted, the bit at the bottom, the information
[12:07.320 --> 12:12.860]  content provider, that's who created the content. And that other bit, the interactive computer
[12:12.860 --> 12:19.380]  service, that's the platform. Internet platforms, interactive computer services,
[12:19.380 --> 12:23.460]  it can be a lot of different things, but it's basically the platform that facilitated
[12:23.980 --> 12:32.940]  a third party's expression. Here we go. Okay. This is the part of the statute that looks at
[12:32.940 --> 12:37.300]  those definitions and basically says what I just told you. The information content provider is the
[12:37.300 --> 12:42.260]  person who created it, and the interactive computer service is the part that facilitated it.
[12:42.260 --> 12:47.360]  And that first part basically said the facilitator's not liable, but the people who
[12:47.360 --> 12:54.560]  created it are. And so there's some question about what sort of, you know, who gets to be counted as
[12:54.560 --> 12:59.800]  an interactive computer service. And, you know, we think a lot about social media. That's the easiest
[12:59.800 --> 13:04.700]  thing to kind of get our heads around. But an email provider, they're facilitating other people's
[13:04.700 --> 13:12.180]  expression, a bulletin board service like Prodigy, comment sections on blogs and online newspapers,
[13:12.180 --> 13:18.560]  these are things that, you know, whoever posted the article is responsible for the content of the
[13:18.560 --> 13:22.980]  article, but the things that the community provides to comment on the article, that's a
[13:22.980 --> 13:28.160]  textbook case of Section 230. And then there's also a lot of courts that have looked at this
[13:28.160 --> 13:33.240]  and said, you know, it also could apply to you, individuals. If you have a Facebook post that
[13:33.240 --> 13:39.440]  takes comments on it, and somebody posts a comment, you're not responsible for the comment if
[13:39.440 --> 13:45.240]  something is wrong with it. That's an important thing. I think when people talk about Section 230,
[13:45.240 --> 13:50.860]  they tend to think of it in terms of, well, Google, Twitter, Facebook, and however you feel about
[13:50.860 --> 13:56.520]  these companies tends to color your view. But understand that it's not about them. A, yes,
[13:56.520 --> 14:01.840]  true, it was a law that allowed these innovative companies to come and exist. But it's also what
[14:01.840 --> 14:07.880]  allows any company to come and exist. And it also is enabling an awful lot of online behavior that
[14:07.880 --> 14:17.560]  ordinary people actually do themselves. There is a companion piece to Section 230. It's not
[14:17.560 --> 14:23.840]  something that has actually, like, carried as much weight as the Section C1 part. But that whole bit
[14:23.840 --> 14:28.600]  of, we want the companies to, we want the platforms to be able to do two things, keep the most good
[14:28.600 --> 14:34.900]  stuff and the least bad stuff. And so what we've done with that carrot approach is said, okay,
[14:34.900 --> 14:41.100]  here's the carrot. You're not liable if something wrong gets posted on your systems. And that's a
[14:41.100 --> 14:45.580]  carrot because it basically means that the companies can say, I'm fine. I don't have to
[14:45.580 --> 14:49.600]  worry if I'm not able to keep something bad off the internet. And that means that they're safe
[14:49.600 --> 14:55.420]  to sort of be as expansive as possible to allow the most good stuff. If they had to fear the
[14:55.420 --> 14:59.960]  punishment, then they would scrutinize a lot of content and take down a lot of content that
[14:59.960 --> 15:05.080]  probably would have been just fine and completely lawful. So carrot-based approach to make the
[15:05.080 --> 15:10.500]  platforms feel safe to leaving content up. But we also wanted to make them feel safe to take
[15:10.500 --> 15:16.920]  content down because that's the other part, least bad stuff. If companies had to fear that they could
[15:16.920 --> 15:23.000]  be punished or held liable for taking content down, they wouldn't bother at all. It would just
[15:23.000 --> 15:27.720]  be too risky. But we want them to be partners in helping maintain internet hygiene. So we've also
[15:27.720 --> 15:34.840]  given them a carrot in this department to say, go ahead. So here we are next. The other part of the
[15:34.840 --> 15:38.960]  statute is there's section E where they threw in a couple of other things that end up being really
[15:38.960 --> 15:44.640]  important. This particular clause is not really important. They sort of thought back then that
[15:44.640 --> 15:50.020]  there would be a collision with another law that was on books, ECPA. And so they basically wrote
[15:50.020 --> 15:56.160]  this text to say, no collision, no issue, go away, let's move on. And so indeed, let's move on.
[15:56.760 --> 16:03.640]  This is an important clause because if we stop and think about the internet, this is inherently
[16:04.600 --> 16:10.000]  interstate. It's very difficult to put something on the internet that stays in any one locality.
[16:10.000 --> 16:13.400]  If you put something on the internet, it's available everywhere, everywhere throughout
[16:13.400 --> 16:19.560]  the country, even throughout the world. And so we kind of ruin this whole policy if we let each
[16:19.560 --> 16:25.700]  individual state pass a law that will somehow impact it. So if the companies are feeling safe
[16:25.700 --> 16:30.660]  in Iowa to like, well, we're not going to be liable here, it really doesn't help them if
[16:30.660 --> 16:35.180]  Illinois passes a law that says, no, no, if it happens in Illinois, you're in trouble.
[16:35.180 --> 16:39.760]  So this is essentially a preemption statute. And so Congress put this in to say, look,
[16:39.760 --> 16:44.360]  it's federal government, we got it, states sit this one out. And that's important because
[16:44.360 --> 16:50.040]  internet policy is complex enough. It really would be overwhelming if all 50 states plus
[16:50.040 --> 16:56.440]  territories and local jurisdictions could have their say. Okay, but they did put an exception.
[16:56.440 --> 17:03.180]  So Section 230 applies for almost everything that could be legally wrong with user content with a,
[17:03.180 --> 17:07.680]  but there's a few exceptions. And one of the big ones that they baked in originally was
[17:08.120 --> 17:14.060]  the thing wrong with the content is that it potentially infringed on an intellectual property
[17:14.060 --> 17:19.060]  right. Easiest one to get our head around is it might have infringed a copyright. Then
[17:20.040 --> 17:25.480]  Section 230 doesn't apply. No protection for the platform. They might, they're going to be on the
[17:25.480 --> 17:31.380]  hook for the liability in the user. Now it turns out that shortly thereafter, Congress passed
[17:31.380 --> 17:37.400]  another law, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which does give platforms some protection.
[17:37.400 --> 17:44.180]  But the reason I've put up this slide is this is a tiny piece of a tiny section of just one of
[17:44.180 --> 17:50.160]  pieces of the Digital Millennium Copyright, Section 512 alone, and this isn't particularly
[17:50.160 --> 17:57.400]  readable. It's not even particularly understandable. And companies go bankrupt trying to litigate.
[17:57.400 --> 18:02.360]  There is a terrible situation like if you think that it's a problem that YouTube is so big, you
[18:02.360 --> 18:07.620]  should know that there used to be a competitor to YouTube that got sued for copyright infringement
[18:07.620 --> 18:13.200]  allegedly in their users content. And they went bankrupt in the process of litigating it
[18:13.200 --> 18:17.180]  to the point where the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals actually said there's no infringement.
[18:17.180 --> 18:21.200]  They're not liable for this. They should have been just fine. At that point, the company was gone
[18:21.200 --> 18:26.240]  and we lost a competitor, which now we're missing because it actually might be nice to have more
[18:26.240 --> 18:31.840]  competition online. So when we think about messing with these liabilities or making these liabilities
[18:31.840 --> 18:36.980]  complicated or conditional, this is what happens. We tend to obliterate them, and that's not what
[18:36.980 --> 18:42.500]  we want to have happen. There was also an exception from the very beginning that said
[18:42.500 --> 18:48.620]  there is no effect on federal criminal law. So that means that if the thing that was wrong with
[18:48.620 --> 18:54.820]  the content is that it violates a federal criminal law, also section 230 wouldn't apply.
[18:54.940 --> 19:01.200]  And for a while that was fine. I basically sort of said like child porn. That's bad. That tends
[19:01.200 --> 19:06.760]  to violate federal criminal law. And so we would impose on the platforms that they needed to
[19:07.580 --> 19:14.040]  do something about it. But that was one ask of a platform. And it's difficult and it's got some
[19:14.040 --> 19:19.720]  issues tied up in how do you do that effectively, but basically it was a single ask, our most
[19:19.720 --> 19:23.740]  important ask of what we could ask for a platform, and at least they could focus their resources on
[19:23.740 --> 19:31.580]  that and not have to be dragged into any other things that they might have to look for. But then
[19:32.220 --> 19:40.160]  things changed recently. A couple years ago, Congress put forth the first significant change
[19:40.160 --> 19:46.360]  to section 230 since it was passed. You might have heard it called SESTA, but by the time it
[19:46.360 --> 19:51.820]  got passed, it was referred to as FOSTA. And FOSTA basically said, you know, there's another type of
[19:51.820 --> 19:58.880]  bad content. We don't want sex trafficking either. And that's true. That's bad. But they
[19:58.880 --> 20:03.880]  poked a big hole in section 230. And one of the things to note, just looking at the slide,
[20:03.880 --> 20:11.320]  is they poked a very complicated hole in section 230. That's hard to read and understand. And you
[20:11.320 --> 20:16.700]  can see those hyperlinks are pointing you to other areas of the U.S. Code where they've put
[20:16.700 --> 20:25.020]  another criteria. It's made platforms really unsure about what sort of content is okay for
[20:25.020 --> 20:31.400]  them to facilitate and what sort of content is not. And as a result, they've started taking down
[20:31.400 --> 20:38.040]  or making themselves unavailable for content that would be totally lawful. A very famous example is
[20:38.040 --> 20:44.860]  Craigslist took down entire sections of classified ads, like dating ads. Dating ads are... they've
[20:44.860 --> 20:50.680]  been around for ages. Couples have met that way. There's nothing inherently wrong about an ad
[20:50.680 --> 20:57.580]  looking for dates and matchmaking. But because this is sort of adult content that can, you know,
[20:57.580 --> 21:02.840]  tip into the period, Craigslist quite reasonably got scared because they didn't really know,
[21:02.840 --> 21:07.280]  I think we might be held responsible for it. And that's just too big a chance to take.
[21:07.540 --> 21:12.640]  The other thing that this law did is it made it somewhat unsafe, and actually more than somewhat,
[21:12.640 --> 21:19.400]  it made an unsafe for a platform to take stuff down. Because... and we'll talk about this as
[21:19.400 --> 21:24.760]  we talk about other attempts to reform Section 230. They tend to mess with the idea of, like,
[21:24.760 --> 21:28.980]  if you knew it was there, then you're on the hook for it. So if you didn't know it was there,
[21:28.980 --> 21:34.180]  you might be okay. But then why should a platform take the time and energy to look for what might be
[21:34.180 --> 21:38.500]  there? Because it's just tempting trouble for themselves. So all of a sudden, now the platform
[21:38.500 --> 21:44.460]  is not a partner in dealing with the internet hygiene. And that's not constructive. It's not
[21:44.460 --> 21:50.880]  going to help us get the most good stuff or the least bad stuff. So remember these thoughts,
[21:50.880 --> 21:56.700]  how cripplingly expensive it is to be sued, even if the lawsuit is without merit. Remember that
[21:56.700 --> 22:01.160]  we want the most good stuff and the least bad stuff. And that carrots are more effective than
[22:01.160 --> 22:05.900]  sticks to helping us get that. And when we think about what some of these other laws are,
[22:05.900 --> 22:11.080]  you know, tested against that notion, and I think you'll find that most of these proposals fail.
[22:11.080 --> 22:18.100]  So with that, we're about to bring up Rihanna to talk to her. And one of the things we'll tip on
[22:18.100 --> 22:25.060]  is there is one proposal floating out there, which is okay. The first one, the examination
[22:25.060 --> 22:30.300]  of secondary effects for sex workers study. One of the things is that FOSTA kind of got rammed
[22:30.300 --> 22:33.960]  through where people said, I think we have a problem. But instead of really understanding
[22:33.960 --> 22:38.820]  the dynamic of that problem, they went ahead and changed the law around it without really
[22:38.820 --> 22:44.360]  understanding if that was a good solution, an effective solution, or one that didn't actually
[22:44.360 --> 22:48.740]  make the problem worse. Because it turns out there's a lot of evidence that it's actually made
[22:48.740 --> 22:55.220]  the problem they were trying to fix worse, worse. Women, there's a body count attached to FOSTA,
[22:55.220 --> 23:00.000]  sad to say. And this is a proposal to basically let's figure out what the effects are before we
[23:00.000 --> 23:05.760]  do anything else to it. But the rest is not okay. We're hearing executive orders trying to challenge
[23:05.760 --> 23:11.900]  Section 230. The DOJ has put out a guidance document that doesn't really understand it at all.
[23:11.900 --> 23:17.580]  The PACT Act is the most plausible where it seems to at least understand the statute,
[23:17.580 --> 23:22.720]  but it still creates problems. It seems like every week Senator Hawley is producing a bill
[23:22.720 --> 23:27.760]  to change it. And then there is the ERNED Act, which is sort of the bane of our existence,
[23:27.760 --> 23:33.000]  because it does more than change Section 230. I'm going to bring up Rhiannon now.
[23:33.000 --> 23:40.260]  We're going to close the sides and hopefully things don't break. And did I succeed?
[23:41.460 --> 23:50.000]  Okay. So, do we have Rhiannon? Yay! Okay, we're back to a single person.
[23:50.400 --> 23:58.560]  Great. Well, I was going to suggest we've gotten a few questions coming in over the Discord. Thanks,
[23:58.560 --> 24:05.120]  everybody. Maybe we could try knocking out a few of these, Kathy, before we get to talking a bit
[24:05.120 --> 24:13.560]  more about ERNED. Okay, excellent. Let's see. I see that... I'm seeing questions about moderation
[24:13.560 --> 24:19.960]  by bot and whether that is somehow bad or not, or that 230 speaks to it. And basically,
[24:19.960 --> 24:24.440]  230 has a deliberately very light touch. It can apply to a whole bunch of systems
[24:25.900 --> 24:30.560]  in a whole bunch of contexts, and it's not very specific, which makes it very flexible. It was
[24:30.560 --> 24:34.980]  written in the mid-90s, and the internet has obviously changed quite a bit ever since,
[24:34.980 --> 24:43.000]  and it's flexible. It doesn't directly speak to AI, but if we stop and think about what AI is,
[24:43.000 --> 24:49.440]  AI, in theory, is the computer outsourcing of the brain of the people in the company.
[24:50.200 --> 24:54.620]  They have made decisions about how they want things moderated, and they deploy their bots to
[24:54.620 --> 25:01.000]  do it. The fact that you have technology pressing the button instead of a human being pressing the
[25:01.000 --> 25:08.220]  button, it doesn't change it. The core thing about Section 230 is that the intermediary is not
[25:08.220 --> 25:16.600]  responsible for the wrongfulness of the content that somebody else created, and the bots don't
[25:16.600 --> 25:21.920]  change that. They're still connected to the editorial discretion of the platform, and
[25:22.520 --> 25:27.500]  no, 230 is fine. It's not like it's an end run around it. They had an essential equation of who
[25:27.500 --> 25:32.680]  created the content and who made it wrongful. That's still core Section 230 stuff the way it
[25:32.680 --> 25:41.700]  was in the 1990s. And then I see the question about who gets to determine bad stuff. You know,
[25:41.700 --> 25:46.580]  I like to use the general term just to help people get their heads around it, but basically,
[25:46.580 --> 25:50.900]  the platform does. Because remember, I brought up that example of, like, you have a Facebook post
[25:50.900 --> 25:56.560]  and somebody posts a comment on it. You know, if they come and they insult your kid, you want to
[25:56.560 --> 26:02.300]  be able to delete that comment. Whereas if they come and they say your kid is awesome, you want
[26:02.300 --> 26:06.340]  to be able to leave that comment up. That is sort of the editorial discretion that the First Amendment
[26:06.340 --> 26:12.520]  protects. Same thing if you extend that. Instead of your own personal Facebook post, it applies
[26:12.520 --> 26:18.500]  to Facebook as a whole. They get to decide, because essentially, it offends the First Amendment
[26:18.500 --> 26:26.180]  to have an external government entity force anybody to carry speech. Minor exceptions to this,
[26:26.180 --> 26:30.140]  if we want to quibble, but they are very minor and they tend to be applied to things that are
[26:30.140 --> 26:35.040]  not the internet. So no, that's something that does get talked about a lot, where people are like,
[26:35.040 --> 26:41.500]  wait a minute, who gets to decide this? A private platform is a private platform, whether they're a
[26:41.500 --> 26:45.800]  large corporation of a lot of people who got together or a single person with their own post,
[26:45.800 --> 26:53.240]  it's the same equation. And the name of the YouTube competitor who got sued out of existence is,
[26:53.240 --> 26:58.400]  I don't know, the lawsuit ended up changed to shell, it was Veo Networks. That was the name of
[26:58.400 --> 27:07.400]  the video system. Veo Networks ceased to be, it is no longer a platform. So now my question is to
[27:07.400 --> 27:14.720]  Rihanna, what is wrong with the EARN IT Act? Thanks, Kathy. So everything is wrong with the
[27:14.720 --> 27:19.160]  EARN IT Act. Okay, end of stream. We're done here. We can all go home now. Thanks, everybody. Good
[27:19.160 --> 27:26.140]  night. No, so to be serious, the EARN IT Act is, I think, one of the most serious challenges
[27:26.700 --> 27:32.880]  and threats to online privacy, security, and freedom of speech that we have seen come across
[27:32.880 --> 27:38.120]  the transom in Congress for quite some time. It is one of, as Kathy mentioned, a bumper crop of
[27:38.120 --> 27:45.000]  anti-230 bills that would aim to narrow or even repeal Section 230 entirely. And sadly, it's also
[27:45.000 --> 27:50.420]  not the only anti-encryption bill out there right now, as I'll discuss in a moment. Kathy touched
[27:50.420 --> 27:56.060]  upon SESTA-FOSTA, which created a carve out from the 230 immunity with regard to sex trafficking
[27:56.060 --> 28:03.020]  offenses. In its current instantiation, the EARN IT Act bill is kind of similar, except instead of
[28:03.020 --> 28:09.400]  sex trafficking is child sex abuse material. Now, I'll call this CSAM for short. Child sex
[28:09.400 --> 28:14.480]  abuse material is a pernicious and difficult problem on the internet. It has been around
[28:14.480 --> 28:19.280]  ever since the days when people were allowed to transmit one file to another through some of the
[28:19.280 --> 28:26.800]  earliest services that you can think of, many of which I am too young to have used. And it's
[28:26.800 --> 28:30.800]  something that platforms have struggled with and that they've had to go through evolutions in their
[28:30.800 --> 28:36.440]  approaches to try and cut down on and prevent. The important thing to understand about CSAM is
[28:36.440 --> 28:41.960]  that it is illegal on the federal level, on the state level, across the entire planet. It's not
[28:41.960 --> 28:49.380]  legal anywhere. And as such, it is already subject to federal criminal statutes that impose duties
[28:49.380 --> 28:58.040]  on providers and platforms to report it and remove it when they learn about it on their services.
[28:58.040 --> 29:01.940]  That learning about it is important because it is what we would call an actual knowledge
[29:01.940 --> 29:07.820]  requirement in the law. Platforms are only required to take action about CSAM if they find out about
[29:07.820 --> 29:12.000]  it. That could be because a user reports it. It could be because they have an automated scanning
[29:12.000 --> 29:18.540]  service that looks at attachments that are in email or files that are uploaded to a cloud storage
[29:18.540 --> 29:27.920]  account to try and match against a database of hashes of known CSAM images. When they
[29:27.920 --> 29:31.740]  find something like this, they are required to report it to the National Center for Missing and
[29:31.740 --> 29:38.960]  Exploited Children, or NCMEC for short, which is a quasi-NGO, quasi, it's been deemed at this point
[29:38.960 --> 29:48.080]  to be an agent or an arm of the state, that handles reports of child, excuse me, of CSAM.
[29:48.420 --> 29:53.520]  Also, you might know NCMEC from the images on the side of milk cartons, the Have You Seen Me
[29:53.520 --> 29:59.660]  images. But I think at present, they're probably mostly associated with their really difficult
[29:59.660 --> 30:06.200]  role of having to process these reports that come in from providers. And providers do report CSAM
[30:06.200 --> 30:12.340]  that they learn about on their services millions of times a year. There's also federal requirements
[30:12.340 --> 30:17.920]  that say that the Department of Justice is supposed to provide funding for, conduct studies,
[30:17.920 --> 30:23.100]  conduct reporting with respect to all of these reports that are coming in with respect to trying
[30:23.100 --> 30:28.240]  to fight and minimize the abuse of children and other crimes against children online. They've been
[30:28.240 --> 30:34.420]  falling down on the job. They have not been filing their federally mandated reports most of the years
[30:34.420 --> 30:39.880]  that they have been required to do it over the last decade or so. And I think one of the motivations
[30:39.880 --> 30:44.780]  for the EARN IT Act bill is to try and point a finger away from DOJ's own shortcomings and away
[30:44.780 --> 30:49.100]  from how overwhelmed NCMEC is because they do not have the resources, they do not have the personnel
[30:49.100 --> 30:54.760]  they need in order to take on this task and deploy that platforms instead. And the way that they've
[30:54.760 --> 31:00.440]  chosen to do that is by taking kind of the, you know, the whipping boy do short, which is Section
[31:00.440 --> 31:06.680]  230. Right now there's a lot of kind of popular discontent, I think, with Section 230, much of it
[31:06.680 --> 31:13.520]  ill understood. And so thank you to Kathy for trying to explain a bit better why Section 230 is a
[31:13.520 --> 31:21.440]  important force online. But by going after Section 230, it enables, I think, the DOJ to try and both
[31:21.440 --> 31:26.520]  direct attention away from its own shortcomings and also to promote an agenda that has long had
[31:26.520 --> 31:31.340]  for greater surveillance of online speech, and in particular to go after encryption, which is
[31:31.340 --> 31:39.760]  an area that I focus on in particular in my role at Stanford. So by curtailing immunity for under
[31:39.760 --> 31:46.260]  Section 230 for CSAM, there's nothing about that that is not something that DOJ can already do.
[31:46.480 --> 31:52.140]  Kathy discussed how one of the limitations on 230 immunity is that it already does not bar
[31:52.140 --> 31:57.140]  enforcement of federal criminal law. You even saw where she noted that child sexual abuse materials
[31:57.140 --> 32:03.920]  explicitly called out in that particular clause in 230. So it is already the case that if platforms
[32:03.920 --> 32:08.720]  are not complying with those aforementioned reporting duties when they learn about CSAM
[32:08.720 --> 32:12.560]  on their services that I mentioned, nothing at all is stopping the Department of Justice
[32:13.200 --> 32:19.720]  from penalizing those platforms. All Section 230 currently does is to bar state AGs, state
[32:19.720 --> 32:24.840]  attorneys general, from bringing criminal charges against platforms because Section 230 bars state
[32:24.840 --> 32:32.280]  criminal law, and it bars private plaintiff lawsuits by individual people with private right
[32:32.280 --> 32:37.620]  of action because those two are barred by the Section 230 immunity. So we're in a situation
[32:37.620 --> 32:44.960]  where providers are subject to statutorily mandated duties with respect to CSAM by all
[32:44.960 --> 32:49.020]  of evidence they are complying with those things, but there's a sense that they should be doing
[32:49.020 --> 32:55.000]  more. The fact that they are reporting millions of pieces of CSAM a year to NCMEC is taken not
[32:55.000 --> 32:58.640]  as evidence that they are finding and reporting things, but that they aren't doing enough,
[32:58.640 --> 33:08.340]  which is a bit curious. So the point of the Grant Act bill in its current instantiation since its
[33:08.340 --> 33:14.140]  introduction earlier this year kind of doesn't make sense under the name anymore because originally
[33:14.140 --> 33:19.740]  what the bill would have done would have been to make continued immunity under Section 230
[33:19.740 --> 33:26.660]  contingent upon compliance by providers with some to-be-determined best practices. If you follow
[33:26.660 --> 33:32.120]  these best practices, you jump through the hoops, these would be set by an unelected commission of
[33:32.120 --> 33:37.680]  people headed by the Attorney General, then you could maybe continue to be eligible for continued
[33:37.680 --> 33:44.380]  Section 230 immunity for CSAM. Otherwise, you might just be sort of thrown to the wolves. That
[33:44.980 --> 33:50.080]  link between following the best practices set by the commission and continued immunity is taken
[33:50.080 --> 33:55.180]  out in the current version of ERNIT. Current ERNIT is much more like SESTA-FOSTA in that it abrogates
[33:55.180 --> 34:00.600]  the immunity full stop. It still has this commission, this 19-member commission, who are
[34:00.600 --> 34:05.280]  still charged with coming up with best practices for fighting CSAM online and protecting child
[34:05.280 --> 34:11.520]  safety online. However, those are now just non-binding voluntary recommendations that are
[34:11.520 --> 34:18.800]  not tied to any particular carrot or any particular stick under the bill. So there's nothing left to
[34:18.800 --> 34:25.700]  earn. There's no more immunity left to earn. And the ultimate upshot of all of this is because
[34:26.540 --> 34:33.360]  the removal of the 230 immunity bar opens up potential liability under what could be 50 or
[34:33.360 --> 34:39.860]  more state and territorial laws that deal with CSAM, there's a lot less certainty for platforms
[34:39.860 --> 34:45.260]  about what their duties are. Right now, they know what they have to do as specified under the federal
[34:45.260 --> 34:52.940]  reporting law. But under the ERNIT Act, there could be a variety of state laws that might open
[34:52.940 --> 34:58.480]  them up to liability for CSAM and to private civil lawsuits and to state AGs going after those
[34:58.480 --> 35:03.520]  platforms under what could be much lower bars. Going back to what I mentioned about the actual
[35:03.520 --> 35:11.800]  knowledge requirements under the federal reporting statute, that's a fairly permissive bar for
[35:11.800 --> 35:18.920]  platforms. It's not that low. Whereas, we know from a survey that a group called NetChoice has
[35:18.920 --> 35:26.880]  done of state CSAM laws, that some state level CSAM laws impose liability on those who trade or
[35:26.880 --> 35:34.500]  host or transmit CSAM under a much lower standard, such as negligence or recklessness. So platforms
[35:34.500 --> 35:40.120]  could easily potentially be held liable for CSAM on their services if they negligently or recklessly
[35:40.120 --> 35:46.360]  host it, transmit it, allow it to be promoted or presented or distributed, etc., etc.
[35:47.800 --> 35:51.960]  You might be asking yourself, wait a second, doesn't that just mean the ability to transmit
[35:51.960 --> 35:57.500]  files? Why, yes, it does. All of the things that we do online, such as talking to each other,
[35:57.500 --> 36:02.200]  such as sending files to each other, this is what the internet is for, those can also be used in
[36:02.200 --> 36:06.660]  ways that can lead to the exploitation of children or that can involve the transmission of CSAM
[36:06.660 --> 36:13.080]  online. So by potentially exposing platforms to liability for negligently or recklessly
[36:13.080 --> 36:18.320]  transmitting CSAM, they're really potentially exposing platforms to liability for hosting user
[36:18.320 --> 36:23.160]  contributing content at all, for the ability to transmit files, for the ability to speak online
[36:23.160 --> 36:29.760]  and speak to other people, some of whom may or may not be over the age of 18. So the chilling
[36:29.760 --> 36:34.820]  effect of this bill's potential cannot be overstated. We already saw with regard to
[36:34.820 --> 36:41.240]  FOSTA how it led to the shutdown of large swaths of completely legal speech on the internet.
[36:41.240 --> 36:45.260]  You may recall that Craigslist immediately shut down its entire personal section.
[36:45.260 --> 36:50.760]  They also shut down their section that allowed for therapeutic services. So massage therapists
[36:50.760 --> 36:56.200]  were suddenly out of that part of their livelihood that came from finding clients on Craigslist,
[36:56.200 --> 37:00.600]  for fear that somewhere in those personals ads, or somewhere in their massage therapy ads,
[37:00.600 --> 37:05.660]  there might be somebody who was being trafficked and exposed those platforms Craigslist to
[37:05.660 --> 37:10.780]  liability under SESTA-FOSTA. Here, similarly, we can predict that there would be a similarly
[37:11.800 --> 37:17.680]  large chilling effect on the ability of people to speak to each other online. Because again,
[37:17.680 --> 37:23.340]  what if any particular file might sneak through? What if some communication between two users on
[37:23.340 --> 37:29.780]  the service might be exploitative or enticement between an adult and a minor? These are all
[37:29.780 --> 37:33.200]  things that platforms are going to be wrestling with in the event the EARN IT Act passes,
[37:33.200 --> 37:40.060]  because they now may be exposed to liability under 50 or more state laws. So the fact that
[37:40.060 --> 37:45.340]  there have been some changes that were made to the EARN IT Act don't really fix the core problems
[37:45.340 --> 37:50.960]  with the bill. When we think about how this bill relates in particular to encryption,
[37:50.960 --> 37:54.960]  the changes that were made between the early version of the bill and the current version of
[37:54.960 --> 38:01.500]  the bill were intended to placate concerns somewhat. I'm here to tell you, it doesn't fix it.
[38:01.500 --> 38:08.420]  There's an amendment offered by Senator Leahy that was intended to protect encryption and take away,
[38:08.420 --> 38:14.200]  basically restore immunity from suit for the use of encryption, for deploying it in encryption,
[38:14.200 --> 38:22.000]  for providing device encryption, and so forth. It's not really enough, though, in my opinion.
[38:22.000 --> 38:30.280]  Both because it does not protect other forms of providing user security and would still allow
[38:30.280 --> 38:36.060]  lawsuits to arise if somebody who was determined to bring a criminal charge as a state AG or a
[38:36.060 --> 38:40.100]  private plaintiff were determined to bring a lawsuit. All they'd have to do would be to come
[38:40.100 --> 38:45.520]  up with some reason for suing, let's say WhatsApp, let's say Signal, that wasn't directly about the
[38:45.520 --> 38:49.600]  encryption. Any other pretext that they could find or any other security measure that was in use,
[38:49.600 --> 38:55.580]  even, say, data minimization practices, for example, if that would potentially get in the way
[38:55.580 --> 39:00.960]  of fighting CSAM, maybe that's something that you use as the basis for trying to make a platform
[39:00.960 --> 39:06.700]  liable. And on the other hand, I don't think that the way the Leahy amendment that is supposed to
[39:06.700 --> 39:12.300]  protect encryption is structured would necessarily mean that platforms would be safe from being
[39:12.300 --> 39:19.100]  pressured or induced into introducing other forms of user surveillance that don't touch the
[39:19.100 --> 39:24.540]  encryption. One of the moves that we have seen in the encryption debate over the last few years
[39:24.540 --> 39:29.840]  has been, as we've pushed back against proposals to weaken encryption, to insert mandatory backdoors
[39:29.840 --> 39:34.560]  into encryption, we have instead seen law enforcement proposals come out that say,
[39:34.560 --> 39:38.660]  well, how about this other idea? It doesn't involve breaking the encryption at all. And those
[39:38.660 --> 39:43.420]  include things like the so-called ghost user proposal proposed by GCHQ, the spy agency in
[39:43.900 --> 39:50.320]  the UK, which would silently add a law enforcement user to an otherwise end-to-end encrypted
[39:50.320 --> 39:54.820]  conversation while suppressing notifications to the people who are present in the conversation
[39:54.820 --> 39:59.780]  that this silent ghost law enforcement user has been added. It doesn't touch the encryption,
[39:59.780 --> 40:03.760]  right? It's still a way of undermining the privacy guarantees and security guarantees
[40:03.760 --> 40:09.000]  that you expect from using an end-to-end encrypted app. That's just an example of how the Leahy
[40:09.000 --> 40:15.440]  amendment doesn't really do enough to protect encryption and to keep providers from being
[40:15.440 --> 40:20.440]  disincentivized to continue offering end-to-end encryption and other security measures to their
[40:20.440 --> 40:27.420]  users. So I know I get a little head up about these things. It's hard to restrain. I could
[40:27.420 --> 40:31.960]  talk about this all day. But before I wrap up and we go on to maybe having a bit more of an
[40:31.960 --> 40:38.060]  actual fireside back and forth, I want to mention, I noted that Section 230 bills aren't the only
[40:38.060 --> 40:43.200]  threat to our encryption and privacy and online speech rights that are out there. There's another
[40:43.200 --> 40:48.360]  companion bill that was introduced by the same sponsor, Senator Graham, of the EARN IT Act. He
[40:48.360 --> 40:54.560]  introduced it just a few days before releasing the amended version of the EARN IT Act a few weeks ago.
[40:54.560 --> 40:59.320]  It's called the Lawful Access to Encrypted Data Act, or I like to say the L is silent, and it's
[40:59.320 --> 41:05.380]  the Awful Access to Encrypted Data Act. And that is just a flat-out backdoor bill. It is something
[41:05.380 --> 41:11.180]  that we have been waiting for, hoping wouldn't come out. Dreading, I think, is the word. Dreading
[41:11.180 --> 41:17.660]  is absolutely the word. It is really the full frontal nuclear assault on your ability to just
[41:17.660 --> 41:23.380]  be able to use encryption and move on with your life that we have gotten used to in recent years
[41:23.380 --> 41:29.680]  as encryption by default has become the norm in the devices that we use and in the apps and
[41:29.680 --> 41:35.620]  services that we use. So what is so dangerous about the LAED Act, or the Laid Act if you want
[41:35.620 --> 41:42.540]  to sound a little bit naughty about it, is that it would require basically any sort of larger
[41:42.540 --> 41:49.660]  provider, anybody who sold a million devices in the United States in a given year, or who has a
[41:49.660 --> 41:55.800]  million monthly active users in any given month dating back to 2016, so even retroactively,
[41:56.520 --> 42:02.560]  would have to proactively re-engineer their services to be able to comply with warrants or
[42:02.560 --> 42:06.820]  other legal process they received from law enforcement to decrypt information that was
[42:06.820 --> 42:12.380]  encrypted. They'd have to proactively redesign to build a backdoor in. If you are a smaller provider
[42:12.380 --> 42:17.740]  that's not part of that million plus club, let's say a very small handset maker or the provider
[42:17.740 --> 42:22.420]  of an end-to-end encrypted app or other encrypted service that does not have a million users,
[42:22.420 --> 42:27.980]  you still might, you're still covered by this bill because then the Attorney General would be
[42:27.980 --> 42:32.480]  able to serve a notice on you telling you to re-engineer your service and add that backdoor
[42:32.480 --> 42:38.860]  into your service, even though you would not be forced to re-engineer it proactively. So this
[42:38.860 --> 42:45.580]  bill was introduced, as I said, same sponsor, right before the EARNET amendments were made,
[42:45.580 --> 42:50.920]  clearly intended to make EARNET look more reasonable by comparison and make it look
[42:50.920 --> 42:55.300]  less like an attack on encryption by comparison because this is an overt rather than covert
[42:55.300 --> 43:00.100]  attack on encryption. But the lesser of two evils is still evil. Like the EARNET Act is bad
[43:00.100 --> 43:05.980]  and the LAED Act is worse. It's not as though Congress members have to pick between one or the
[43:05.980 --> 43:09.480]  other. They could just pick neither and, oh, I don't know, focus on making sure that millions
[43:09.480 --> 43:13.940]  of Americans don't become fucking homeless, you know, in the next few weeks and, you know, do
[43:13.940 --> 43:18.420]  something to fix the epidemic that is ravaging this country. Instead, lawmakers have been deciding
[43:18.420 --> 43:23.600]  to focus on what really matters, which is Google and Facebook are apparently annoying to some
[43:23.600 --> 43:28.360]  people. Whatever. Go and focus on what really matters, Congress, and start leaving the internet
[43:28.360 --> 43:33.800]  alone. Leave my right to encrypt alone. So please contact your Congress members. I wrote it down
[43:33.800 --> 43:39.060]  here. I'm making this very small so that nobody can just, you know, photoshop me and say something
[43:39.060 --> 43:44.200]  stupid. Know EARNETact.org. That's where you need to go. Call your Congress members. Call your
[43:44.200 --> 43:49.720]  senators in particular, because the EARNET Act bill has advanced fairly far within the Senate
[43:49.720 --> 43:53.460]  already. It's already gotten out of the committee in which it was introduced. It passed out
[43:53.460 --> 43:59.520]  unanimously out of that committee. And there has been efforts just this week by Senator Graham,
[43:59.520 --> 44:04.480]  its lead sponsor, to try and force it through by what's called unanimous consent so that it would
[44:04.480 --> 44:08.480]  pass out of the Senate without all of those members of Congress actually having to stand up
[44:08.480 --> 44:12.940]  there on the floor of the Senate and be seen on C-SPAN voting in favor of this terrible, destructive
[44:12.940 --> 44:18.380]  bill. So please contact your senators. Contact your House reps, too. And make sure that while
[44:18.380 --> 44:22.700]  you're at it, you tell them to oppose the Lawful Access to Encrypted Data Act as well. That bill
[44:22.700 --> 44:26.140]  hasn't gotten as far in the Senate. It hasn't gotten out of committee yet. But it has already
[44:26.140 --> 44:30.960]  had a companion bill introduced in the House by one of the same people who was behind the SESTA-FOSTA
[44:31.620 --> 44:37.300]  precursors and is also a threat to online speech. So make sure, tell your senators,
[44:37.300 --> 44:42.360]  tell your House reps, oppose both of these bills. And now that I can just stop being a little
[44:42.360 --> 44:48.700]  verklempt, I think we can move on and have this chat. We're not going to completely move on. We're
[44:48.700 --> 44:54.520]  going to tease out some of the reasons why this is bad. Because I think we need to, the same way
[44:54.520 --> 44:58.620]  we need to understand how 230 works, I think we need to understand what went wrong and what goes
[44:58.620 --> 45:05.920]  wrong here. So I think one of the things that's come up is, this is not a small thing. That basic
[45:05.920 --> 45:11.440]  thing we talked about, about what should Congress want from the internet providers?
[45:11.440 --> 45:15.980]  Them to help us get the most good stuff and the least bad stuff. And one of the things you talked
[45:15.980 --> 45:23.740]  about is that it does the exact opposite. You talked about how it will make platforms completely
[45:23.740 --> 45:30.680]  afraid to remain available to intermediate good content because anything could set off the
[45:30.680 --> 45:37.020]  liability threat, especially now when we're adding all those different states. So remember that
[45:37.720 --> 45:42.980]  one of the things I pointed out was there was a preemption clause in section 230 because it would
[45:42.980 --> 45:47.740]  be a mess if you had 50 different state attorney generals with 50 different opinions about how
[45:47.740 --> 45:53.400]  things should be, essentially getting to decide what internet policy was. And so you point out
[45:53.400 --> 45:59.080]  that the internet essentially does away with that preemption and now puts an awful lot of power
[45:59.080 --> 46:04.960]  among individual state attorney generals to essentially censor the internet and it'll
[46:04.960 --> 46:10.440]  essentially become a situation of the least common denominator of, you know, that may be great that
[46:10.440 --> 46:15.520]  49 states are like, yeah, yeah, whatever, be reasonable, it's fine. But if one state is like,
[46:15.520 --> 46:19.980]  I'm coming to get you if you do something that offends what I've declared to be the policy so
[46:19.980 --> 46:24.280]  that I can get re-elected next term, that's going to be a problem. And basically the rest of the
[46:24.280 --> 46:30.780]  United States, their internet experience will get shaped by that single, it's the least common
[46:30.780 --> 46:36.520]  denominator thing that if one state, you know, wants to have something that's irrational, but
[46:36.520 --> 46:41.260]  it's on the books, they've got the power now to do it because the section 230 protection goes away.
[46:41.260 --> 46:46.020]  And when that protection goes away, the choices that platforms make to have the most good stuff
[46:46.020 --> 46:52.540]  and to minimize the bad stuff goes out the window. You also talked about how it messes
[46:52.540 --> 46:59.420]  up them being partners and getting rid of the bad stuff, because right now we've already left
[46:59.420 --> 47:04.520]  because of that carve out for federal criminal law, we've told them, go ahead and, you know,
[47:04.520 --> 47:11.160]  we want you to get rid of the child porn, get rid of that. Platforms are making an effort to do it,
[47:11.160 --> 47:16.760]  but now you've sort of created a weird incentive of like, if you look for it, now you might be
[47:16.760 --> 47:22.960]  in trouble for having found it. So why would a platform now want to look for it? That seems like
[47:22.960 --> 47:26.980]  it would just be begging for trouble. Why wouldn't they just encrypt everything so that they could
[47:26.980 --> 47:33.840]  see nothing? And now we mess up your encryption. And yeah, so I mean, let's talk a little bit about
[47:33.840 --> 47:39.480]  the politics because I think one of the things and one of the reasons why we wanted to do this talk
[47:39.480 --> 47:43.700]  is because section 230 has become this very hot topic that everybody is banding about
[47:43.700 --> 47:48.340]  because it's become the easy scapegoat for anything that's wrong online and anything that's
[47:48.340 --> 47:52.840]  wrong online that's affecting the rest of our world, which is difficult these days for a variety
[47:52.840 --> 48:00.560]  of reasons. So you have people who have differing agendas, but we're all kind of unhappy these days
[48:00.560 --> 48:06.120]  and we've now found something to blame. And so you end up with these weird bedfellows of,
[48:06.120 --> 48:13.380]  Ernact Act is sponsored in part by Senator Graham, who is a Republican, but it's also
[48:13.380 --> 48:20.620]  equally pushed by Senator Blumenthal, who is a Democrat. How on earth did we get a Republican
[48:20.620 --> 48:27.820]  and Democrat in this incredibly polarized world to agree that messing up section 230 with this
[48:27.820 --> 48:34.360]  law is a good idea? How does this have appeal to both parties at the same time? And does that maybe
[48:34.360 --> 48:39.560]  suggest for each camp that maybe they should rethink it? Because if the thing they want is
[48:39.560 --> 48:45.840]  making the other side happy, maybe that should cause some concern about what it is they actually
[48:45.840 --> 48:50.240]  want. I mean, the easy answer there is this is a bill that's supposed to be about child safety.
[48:50.240 --> 48:55.120]  It's not actually going to help protect children on the internet because if major platforms like
[48:55.120 --> 48:59.440]  Facebook or like Twitter now know that they are exposed to liability unless they get a lot more
[48:59.440 --> 49:03.660]  intrusive in terms of the amount of information that they collect from users, in terms of the
[49:03.660 --> 49:08.640]  surveillance they do of their users, then everybody who is treating in this material on these major
[49:08.640 --> 49:12.620]  platforms is just going to be forced off and they're going to be using Tor hidden services
[49:12.620 --> 49:17.640]  and they're going to be on other sites that don't comply with federal CSAM reporting laws because
[49:17.640 --> 49:22.580]  they exist in order to host this kind of material, don't qualify for section 230 because they are
[49:22.580 --> 49:29.680]  themselves engaged in violating the law, and don't care. So it's not going to achieve the stated goal
[49:29.680 --> 49:34.800]  of helping protect children. By the way, this does not provide the sorts of services for housing
[49:34.800 --> 49:39.320]  stability, for removing children from abusive homes, all the stuff that you could try to do to
[49:39.320 --> 49:44.620]  prevent abuse from happening in the first place. It's just meant to be another thing of the children
[49:44.620 --> 49:50.580]  bill. And so it doesn't achieve those goals that it sets out to do. But by being out there as a
[49:50.580 --> 49:57.280]  bill that's purporting to protect child safety, it makes it much more bicameral friendly in terms of
[49:57.280 --> 50:04.060]  getting a bipartisan buy-in from each side of the aisle. And it makes it a lot harder for members
[50:04.060 --> 50:07.480]  of Congress to vote against it, because who wants to be seen as voting against something that helps
[50:07.480 --> 50:11.160]  the children? Do you hate the children? You must hate the children. Well, it prompts the two
[50:11.160 --> 50:17.540]  questions. One, this isn't actually going to help them, it's going to hurt them, correct? Right.
[50:17.680 --> 50:21.660]  Yeah. Okay. So first of all, it's not going to accomplish what it set out to do, just like FOSTA
[50:21.660 --> 50:26.960]  didn't accomplish what it set out to do. But I think the big problem is, yeah, who wants to vote
[50:26.960 --> 50:32.320]  against keeping children safe? So if it's got that banner bumper sticker, think of the children,
[50:32.320 --> 50:38.000]  vote for this, it's a very difficult thing politically to say no to. But that means that
[50:38.000 --> 50:44.800]  it becomes a really convenient cover for people who have other agendas. Because they've now made
[50:44.800 --> 50:51.060]  the poison pill that the other side can't say no to. And I mean, that was happening even with
[50:51.060 --> 50:58.240]  SESTA-FOSTA, where people who had agendas for why they wanted to get Section 230 off the books,
[50:58.900 --> 51:04.420]  were able to push that. Do you have any thoughts about what some of these agendas are?
[51:04.640 --> 51:09.400]  I mean, I absolutely agree. And you know, there's an organization of sex workers,
[51:09.400 --> 51:14.240]  and allies who have been really vocally working against EARN IT ACT, as they did against SESTA-FOSTA
[51:14.240 --> 51:18.640]  called Hacking and Hustling. And one of the slogans that they use when they are describing
[51:18.640 --> 51:24.260]  both the impact of SESTA-FOSTA and the likely impact of EARN IT, is that it punishes people
[51:24.260 --> 51:29.460]  because we want to punish platforms. Not you and I, we, but you know, the general...
[51:29.460 --> 51:31.360]  We personally, no, we're cool with them. Yeah.
[51:31.680 --> 51:35.920]  Don't punish people because you want to punish platforms. If the idea is somehow that Google
[51:35.920 --> 51:39.740]  or Facebook or whoever is too big for their britches, or they're making too much money,
[51:39.740 --> 51:44.100]  our tax code allows them to make it. Or they're somehow acting above the law, the law permits them
[51:44.100 --> 51:48.520]  to do everything that they're doing. That's what Section 230 does. Then, you know, you pass a bill
[51:48.520 --> 51:56.800]  that ends up making it more dangerous for sex workers to be alive, to exist, to work. And that
[51:56.800 --> 52:04.040]  will make it harder, potentially, to prosecute CSAM traders if this bill passes. I agree with
[52:04.040 --> 52:08.180]  you that there is an ulterior agenda in each of these cases. And one thing that I thought was
[52:08.180 --> 52:13.460]  really problematic, in particular, about the use of the EARN IT bill, as what was clearly just a
[52:13.460 --> 52:19.540]  Trojan horse for trying to ban encryption, or at least strongly discourage it, was that we're
[52:19.540 --> 52:23.580]  talking about such a wide range of services that would be covered when really we're talking about
[52:23.720 --> 52:29.160]  a couple of different things. The thing that makes people angry about the way that the internet kind
[52:29.160 --> 52:33.040]  of sucks is the stuff that's not encrypted. It's the comments that you see on Twitter,
[52:33.040 --> 52:37.900]  it's the comments you see on YouTube, it's why we have emoji-only chat in our Twitch stream this
[52:37.900 --> 52:42.200]  weekend. You know, it's the things that are happening in unencrypted spaces, I think,
[52:42.200 --> 52:46.460]  are largely what motivate people being just kind of sick and tired of what the internet feels like
[52:46.460 --> 52:54.000]  these days. And yet, the thing that is being attacked by efforts to sort of be a backdoor to
[52:54.000 --> 52:59.060]  an encryption backdoor mandate is encrypted private communications. It's private spaces.
[52:59.060 --> 53:05.020]  So it's trying to take this popular anger at something that doesn't have to do with the
[53:05.020 --> 53:09.560]  private communications that we have in one-on-one spaces and sort of misdirect it. Again, this is
[53:09.560 --> 53:15.080]  all a big game of misdirection between the DOJ, which I'm convinced largely wrote both of the
[53:15.080 --> 53:20.040]  bills I'm talking about, especially the second one, to try and push that agenda. And, you know,
[53:20.040 --> 53:25.060]  I do believe overall that, you know, it would be very difficult. We talk in the encryption debate
[53:25.060 --> 53:29.660]  sometimes about finding some sort of middle ground proposal or some sort of compromise.
[53:29.840 --> 53:33.320]  But it seems like the only compromise, the only middle ground is only ever demanded
[53:33.320 --> 53:38.960]  from the people who have the right and now the ability to protect themselves and to exercise
[53:38.960 --> 53:45.600]  their rights. It's never a law enforcement offering to give ground. I'm very dubious. I mean, I've been
[53:45.600 --> 53:50.260]  called an absolutist, but the reason I'm an absolutist is I'm really dubious about that
[53:50.260 --> 53:55.840]  there's a way to have a compromise. I mean, I pulled up, I did this slide about the Digital
[53:55.840 --> 54:01.660]  Millennium Copyright Act, which in theory is a type of conditional safe harbor. If you do X, Y,
[54:01.660 --> 54:07.900]  and Z, okay, then you're not in trouble for your third party content. But it's a mess. It's very
[54:07.900 --> 54:12.000]  difficult to figure out the conditions. It's very difficult to meet them all. It's not necessarily
[54:12.000 --> 54:19.020]  realistic. The point I didn't make for that is how much censorship of lawful speech happens because
[54:19.020 --> 54:25.340]  we've made this, the platform protection so conditional where people send garbage takedown
[54:25.340 --> 54:31.060]  notices that the platforms really have no choice but to take down, even though the copyright claims
[54:31.060 --> 54:35.820]  behind them are garbage, sometimes because they're not even really copyright claims at all. But a
[54:35.820 --> 54:41.980]  platform handling voluminous content with and potentially expensive liability doesn't have the
[54:41.980 --> 54:47.040]  ability to say no to them. I mean, sometimes they do. But it's rare, because it can't happen all
[54:47.040 --> 54:54.780]  that often. It's just not practical. So I don't see how we can, this is kind of an all or nothing
[54:54.780 --> 54:59.980]  thing. And that's why I go back to the, do you want the most good stuff and least bad stuff? I
[54:59.980 --> 55:06.420]  think there's really only one way to achieve it. And that's by aligning the incentives of
[55:06.980 --> 55:13.720]  we have more tools in our regulatory tool belt to regulate, it doesn't have to be penalty based.
[55:13.720 --> 55:19.320]  And somehow I think we're not good at that. I think we don't understand how to regulate effectively by
[55:19.320 --> 55:26.640]  making parties partners, where acting consistent with their own interests happens to get them to
[55:26.640 --> 55:33.200]  do what we want. The reason the internet sprouted and did so well in 20 years is because that's how
[55:33.200 --> 55:38.580]  we regulated because that's how we made it work. And that's how we went from basically no internet
[55:38.580 --> 55:43.660]  to an awesome internet. I mean, it's got wrinkles, but you can connect the whole world, we can
[55:43.660 --> 55:49.560]  connect like an infinite amount of knowledge and ideas and make connections. By and large,
[55:49.560 --> 55:54.500]  it is incredibly awesome. Maybe part of the problem we have is that, you know, if you've
[55:54.500 --> 56:00.560]  got 7 billion people on, you know, connected to each other, some of them suck, some of them are
[56:00.560 --> 56:06.140]  not good people, some of them say terrible things. And when these terrible things happen, we become
[56:06.140 --> 56:11.360]  hyper aware of them, because a we now can be aware of them, because the internet is providing us with
[56:11.360 --> 56:16.720]  that information. And they end up with this outsized effect, like, oh, my gosh, I can't
[56:16.720 --> 56:22.440]  believe what that person did. And we're upset about it. And we look at what existed that allowed the
[56:22.440 --> 56:26.800]  bad thing to happen. Well, that was the internet. And the internet got to exist because of Section
[56:26.800 --> 56:33.440]  230. So therefore, 230 is bad, let's get rid of it. And it's really hard to sort of call time out
[56:33.440 --> 56:37.400]  to reasonable people and say, hang on, maybe that's not the best way to think about it. Although,
[56:37.400 --> 56:41.680]  that's why we're doing presentations like this, to kind of walk people through the thinking,
[56:41.680 --> 56:46.260]  so that they understand that, like, no, this is really important and really valuable.
[56:46.260 --> 56:51.460]  And maybe the things that are going wrong are things that we should target our regulation
[56:51.460 --> 56:57.820]  to. That if we're upset about something, let's carefully define the problem and come up with an
[56:57.820 --> 57:04.080]  appropriate solution that helps, you know, fix the thing that's wrong without just taking away the
[57:04.080 --> 57:07.900]  whole thing that's created the internet, good things and bad things, because now we won't have
[57:07.900 --> 57:12.700]  the internet at all. Right. Human terribleness has been around since well before there was an
[57:12.700 --> 57:18.740]  internet. People have been terrible for as long as they have been people. Nevertheless, I like
[57:18.740 --> 57:24.000]  your point about how we tend to sort of focus on the bad parts without thinking about the vast
[57:24.000 --> 57:29.440]  majority of perfectly fine content. The same is true of encryption. You know, I feel that
[57:30.220 --> 57:36.640]  the focus on the use of encryption to to commit crimes or to hide evidence of crimes gets blown
[57:36.640 --> 57:42.160]  all out of proportion compared to how rare the instance of crime really is when you compare it
[57:42.160 --> 57:48.580]  to the fact that more than one out of seven humans on this planet use WhatsApp. One billion
[57:48.580 --> 57:54.500]  people aren't criminals. Right. So most of the usages, most of the people using encrypted apps,
[57:54.500 --> 57:58.380]  most of the people using encrypted devices, which at this point is basically everybody,
[57:58.380 --> 58:03.740]  just by default, most of that is not for crime. And so we lose sight of placing these things into
[58:03.740 --> 58:10.100]  context and thinking in more big picture about what the cost benefit analysis is of trying to
[58:11.900 --> 58:16.160]  increase surveillance and reduce free speech rights for everybody through bills like this.
[58:16.260 --> 58:20.160]  I want to make sure we get to some of the questions that have been coming in. We have maybe
[58:20.160 --> 58:24.340]  about five or ten minutes left to take questions. I know we've run over a little bit, but it's the
[58:24.340 --> 58:32.000]  end of the day. There's no rules. Well, wait till Congress gets at it. But OK, so I think some of
[58:32.000 --> 58:37.220]  these questions now, some of them are sort of technical to 30 questions. I almost can globally
[58:37.220 --> 58:43.080]  say, yes, 230 totally applies, although, yeah, if we can get to them, we'll be more specific.
[58:44.480 --> 58:48.860]  Actually, the most interesting one is one that I've been putting forth. And since I'm a speaker,
[58:48.860 --> 58:53.180]  I can say that somebody asked a question about 230 and Amazon. One of the things that's starting
[58:53.180 --> 58:58.060]  to happen is some of Internet services have started to look more like actions than speech,
[58:58.060 --> 59:02.880]  because people sell things on Amazon. And is that a different sort of activity?
[59:02.880 --> 59:09.000]  And I've argued in briefs before courts that basically it still boils down to speech,
[59:09.000 --> 59:13.300]  that if you're on Airbnb, what you're really saying is, I have an apartment to rent.
[59:13.340 --> 59:18.460]  That may be the only thing you're really saying on Airbnb, because it's a very hyper-focused
[59:18.460 --> 59:23.560]  platform. But again, that whole slide about 230 is kind of general in its application,
[59:23.560 --> 59:28.900]  and it applies to a whole bunch of things. It can apply to Amazon when you regard that
[59:29.000 --> 59:34.460]  a third-party seller is really a seller saying, I have a thing to sell. And that when we start
[59:34.460 --> 59:41.280]  imposing liability for attacks to the sale, that ripples through and affects every platform that
[59:41.280 --> 59:46.600]  hosts every type of expression, because there's no real contingency of whether 230 applies to
[59:46.920 --> 59:52.240]  a broad-based platform that takes all sorts of speech, or a narrow-focused platform that
[59:52.240 --> 59:57.240]  takes very specific, I'm only selling this kind of thing type of speech. So that's a lot of the
[59:57.240 --> 01:00:03.540]  230 things. On the EARNET side, people are asking, and maybe this is the way to phrase the question,
[01:00:03.540 --> 01:00:09.440]  if EARNET passes, what happens? Does signal go offshore? Does something go offshore? Does the
[01:00:09.440 --> 01:00:15.880]  internet die? I mean, it kind of died. Well, it didn't completely die with FOSTA, except it really
[01:00:15.880 --> 01:00:21.320]  took a very severe hit, and so did an awful lot of the users who used it. Like, that body count of
[01:00:21.320 --> 01:00:27.700]  sex workers is significant and real. So let me ask you, what happens if EARNET passes?
[01:00:27.900 --> 01:00:33.160]  If EARNET passes, I think we will immediately see even more shutdowns of portions of services,
[01:00:33.160 --> 01:00:37.820]  or even maybe entire services, just as we saw immediately the moment SESTA-FOSTA was signed
[01:00:37.820 --> 01:00:43.760]  into law. I think we'll see a lot of litigation, including over this encryption safe harbor that
[01:00:43.760 --> 01:00:51.160]  Senator Leahy tried to insert in. It basically creates kind of a license to litigate,
[01:00:51.160 --> 01:00:55.720]  where because it is narrowing what should be a broad immunity, and which already takes quite
[01:00:55.820 --> 01:00:59.700]  a lot of litigation often to just get to the point of saying, no, Section 230 bars this lawsuit and
[01:00:59.700 --> 01:01:07.120]  kicking it out of court. I think we'll see a lot of litigation over whether a lawsuit is trying to
[01:01:07.120 --> 01:01:12.120]  hold a platform accountable for CSAM on its service on the basis of encryption or some other
[01:01:12.120 --> 01:01:16.080]  thing. If it's encryption, then the lawsuit is barred. If it's some other pretextual reason
[01:01:16.080 --> 01:01:19.720]  that the plaintiff or the state AG can come up with, then it's not going to be barred.
[01:01:19.720 --> 01:01:24.060]  So we'll see platforms drawn into quite a lot of litigation, and that's for the ones that
[01:01:24.060 --> 01:01:30.980]  dare to continue providing any kind of functionality for user-generated content at all. I think we may
[01:01:30.980 --> 01:01:36.100]  see small platforms start to shut down. It's true that Signal has threatened to go offshore
[01:01:36.960 --> 01:01:41.400]  and move to another jurisdiction. This is one of the limitations with this bill.
[01:01:41.400 --> 01:01:47.100]  I don't know how it could possibly purport to touch open source tools. Most of the encrypted
[01:01:47.100 --> 01:01:52.280]  tools out there are either open source or housed overseas outside of U.S. jurisdiction. So these
[01:01:52.280 --> 01:01:57.560]  tools would still be available, and those who want to use encrypted tools for bad acts would
[01:01:57.560 --> 01:02:03.500]  flock to using them. There's another question in the stream about that. But the people who are
[01:02:03.500 --> 01:02:08.800]  just everyday average users probably won't take the time to seek out services that have not been
[01:02:08.800 --> 01:02:14.240]  intentionally weakened in order to try and avoid the specter of liability that EARNET would raise,
[01:02:14.240 --> 01:02:17.900]  in the event that that is in fact what platforms do. I think we'll see a difference between the
[01:02:17.900 --> 01:02:22.500]  response, as you were talking about earlier, between the large well-resourced platforms
[01:02:22.500 --> 01:02:29.340]  that can handle the deep pockets needed to face this kind of litigation and try to make that
[01:02:29.340 --> 01:02:33.460]  calculation that they would rather protect their users and continue keeping these kinds of security
[01:02:33.460 --> 01:02:39.200]  protections in place and just deal with, you know, paying for the stuff that they don't catch.
[01:02:39.260 --> 01:02:44.860]  And we might see smaller services either shutting down or, as mentioned, potentially offshoring.
[01:02:44.860 --> 01:02:49.800]  So we'll see. But all the uncertainty that that opens up is just another reason to, like, keep
[01:02:49.800 --> 01:02:55.300]  fighting against this bill, because everything about the world is uncertain right now. I would
[01:02:55.300 --> 01:03:00.380]  like to know that, like, my ability to just use my phone and use whatever you signal is still certain.
[01:03:00.380 --> 01:03:06.580]  So I think this boils down to that, you know, understand how the law works and the basic
[01:03:06.580 --> 01:03:11.280]  mechanics of it. That's how 230 works. And then definitely understand how the statute
[01:03:11.280 --> 01:03:16.960]  messes with that. I think it boils down to also, like, I asked the question about, like, what is
[01:03:16.960 --> 01:03:21.100]  the political motivation behind some of these things? And to the extent that there's genuine
[01:03:22.020 --> 01:03:26.820]  displeasure with some of the larger internet companies, the point you're making also is that
[01:03:27.520 --> 01:03:31.280]  they'll probably be able to survive. But if one of the things we really want to have, like,
[01:03:31.280 --> 01:03:34.980]  if we don't like Google, we really need a new Google. And this is not going to help us get a
[01:03:34.980 --> 01:03:39.500]  new Google. This is going to help us double down and entrench the Google with everything we don't
[01:03:39.500 --> 01:03:44.840]  like about it doubled down. So it doesn't actually solve any of our problems. And I think the thing
[01:03:44.840 --> 01:03:49.440]  is, like, the internet might limp along, it's pretty great. But I mean, to the extent that
[01:03:49.440 --> 01:03:55.920]  the internet facilitates human speech among 7 billion of us, that's a great thing. And when
[01:03:55.920 --> 01:04:02.580]  we take that away, I think we will miss it greatly. And so I think our final thought is,
[01:04:02.580 --> 01:04:08.460]  we need to be a lot more careful. We can't do legislation based on convenient bumper stickers.
[01:04:08.460 --> 01:04:14.320]  We really have to understand very carefully the dynamics of how law works, how human beings work,
[01:04:14.320 --> 01:04:20.840]  and how we start driving behavior when we start imposing punishments or even just uncertainty
[01:04:21.400 --> 01:04:27.900]  on people who are talking, expressing themselves, or facilitating that expression.
[01:04:27.980 --> 01:04:35.340]  Any other final thoughts? Yeah, I mean, just to say again, like, please take action,
[01:04:35.340 --> 01:04:39.860]  please call your senators, take action against both of these bills. There's a question about
[01:04:39.860 --> 01:04:43.720]  whether this would be bad for the US economy. I think the other bill, the LAED bill is a greater
[01:04:43.720 --> 01:04:47.640]  threat to the economy on the basis of a similar bill having been passed in Australia a couple
[01:04:47.640 --> 01:04:54.400]  of years ago that has really helped to screw up their tech economy sector there. So I think we
[01:04:54.400 --> 01:05:01.400]  would see, yes, a negative impact from the LAED Act, but also from EARNET, because of the lesser
[01:05:01.400 --> 01:05:07.160]  amount of vibrant services that we'd be able to see online. So anyway, I could rant about this all
[01:05:07.160 --> 01:05:13.860]  day. I can rant about 230, my favorite thing. I mean, I want people to understand it. I want,
[01:05:13.860 --> 01:05:17.480]  you know, right now, there's an awful lot of people with an awful lot of agendas saying,
[01:05:17.640 --> 01:05:23.720]  Section 230 bad. And I think the general populace is like, I don't understand. Yeah, that sounds
[01:05:23.720 --> 01:05:29.100]  good to me. I want everybody who's listening to be somebody who says, Aha, maybe that's not good.
[01:05:29.100 --> 01:05:34.520]  Maybe I should really rethink that. And to start, I think if people really understood what is being
[01:05:35.500 --> 01:05:41.640]  threatened by this legislation, they would not be for it. But I, you know, laws is kind of scary
[01:05:41.640 --> 01:05:47.620]  and complex system. And you leave it to other people to do that thinking for you. But I think,
[01:05:47.620 --> 01:05:53.660]  is make it that you can understand the mechanics of how this works, to draw an opinion. And I think
[01:05:53.660 --> 01:05:57.560]  that opinion will be that this is not a good idea. It's just that it's not always intuitive
[01:05:57.560 --> 01:06:02.700]  to understand this dynamic. How does the law work? Why do things respond to it? So hopefully,
[01:06:02.700 --> 01:06:08.840]  we can demystify it. And there's an awful lot of advocates out there, me, Rihanna, EFF, other
[01:06:08.840 --> 01:06:14.560]  organizations who, you know, are happy to sort of answer questions and help sort of make people
[01:06:14.560 --> 01:06:21.980]  understand what's really at stake with any of these bills. So I think that actually brings us
[01:06:21.980 --> 01:06:26.940]  to an end. Thank you so much, Village, for having us. And thank you, Rihanna, for doing this with
[01:06:26.940 --> 01:06:35.320]  me. I think this was great. And hopefully everybody watching thinks so. Great, thank you so very much
[01:06:35.320 --> 01:06:42.420]  to both of you. It was a pleasure to wrap up our very first day with you both. And so thank you,
[01:06:42.420 --> 01:06:50.520]  again, for speaking at the Village. Folks, this is the end of the day for us. We have survived
[01:06:51.120 --> 01:06:56.380]  day one of Virtual Crypto and Privacy Village, which frankly took more years off of my life
[01:06:56.380 --> 01:07:03.960]  than maybe all of 2020. No, I'm just kidding. But I will say, like an influencer, because I've never
[01:07:03.960 --> 01:07:11.480]  really streamed, if you like and subscribe below, we have various different avenues that you can
[01:07:11.480 --> 01:07:18.340]  communicate with us, reach out to us, engage with us. Since we can't be with all of you in person
[01:07:18.340 --> 01:07:25.760]  this year, please feel free to reach out to us on Twitter. For volunteers, I'm reaching out to you
[01:07:26.360 --> 01:07:33.360]  about a happy hour tonight. And to all of our speakers, thank you, thank you so much again.
[01:07:33.360 --> 01:07:38.980]  And if I haven't said this enough, thank you so much to everyone else who makes the Crypto and
[01:07:38.980 --> 01:07:44.140]  Privacy Village possible. There are a ton of folks who spend a lot of time, who have done
[01:07:44.140 --> 01:07:50.160]  so much work for the Crypto and Privacy Village this year to make it happen as we shifted gears
[01:07:50.160 --> 01:07:57.360]  from going live to going virtual. I could list all of their names now, but I'll save that for
[01:07:57.360 --> 01:08:03.340]  another time when I get to host and see you all again. So I'm going to transition and hopefully
[01:08:03.340 --> 01:08:14.640]  not break OBS because I'm doing both. So let's see if we can go to something that is a little more
[01:08:15.940 --> 01:08:19.880]  on five. Thank you, everyone, and I'll see you soon.