internet myths and a negative review

[rivkat]

Your internet law PSA of the day:

The latest iteration of this recurrent question centers around seizure- and migraine-triggering user icons. Many people have suggested that LJ, by not taking action against such icons, risks legal liability for the harm caused by them. This is modified from a comment I made to mecurtin’s post (which has, by the way, a fair amount of the usual trolling).

I'd agree that LJ should at least ban such icons, and probably users who admit to deliberately using them. However, under section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, LJ is not responsible for user-provided content, except in circumstances not relevant here. The closest litigated analogy is probably lawsuits against MySpace for exposing underage users to sexual predators; MySpace wins those cases, and should. The rules for internet service providers are very protective compared to the rules for offline publishers, and there are pretty good reasons for that, though I think that section 230 is probably too broad and should be modified.

In response, one commenter agreed with me and expressed the opinion that the dividing line between liability and immunity is whether users can post content without prior approval, and that LJ risks its safe harbor by censoring content. (I set aside, as not helpful here, discussion of what it means to “censor.”)

The commenter’s opinion is intuitive, but law is not always intuitive. In the US, the protections are much broader than that. LJ could screen and select content and still be entitled to the protections of 230. The key distinction is whether LJ itself created the unlawful content, or merely allowed it to be posted. Moreover, LJ would not lose any 230 safe harbor by censoring. In fact, 230 was passed in large part with the promise that it would encourage internet service providers to monitor and suppress objectionable content, by promising them that they wouldn't ever be held liable for what was left over. (This was thought to remove the bad incentives created by previous court decisions holding one ISP not liable for defamation by a user, because that ISP didn't ever screen, whereas CompuServe had been held liable for the same thing based on its monitoring of its messageboards for things like profanity.) Take a look at the title of the section: "Protection for private blocking and screening of offensive material." It didn't do what Congress hoped, but that was the intent.

John Scalzi, Old Man’s War: A friend has been encouraging me to read this for a while, and—well, we don’t share core tastes, I’ll say. The protagonist is an old guy who signs up for the Colonial Defense Forces, which only accept old people, for mysterious reasons that become clear about ¼ of the way through the book. Audiobook format was particularly harsh to this book (usually, I think fiction does better as an audiobook than nonfiction) because (a) Scalzi is not an elegant writer, and each “said”—attached to almost every piece of dialogue—hits like a hammer after a while; and (b) the narrator uses a high voice for female characters and for the gay male character, and that really fucking annoys me. I found the protagonist aggravating—he was a crotchety old man who thought he was a hell of a lot funnier than he was, and there are reasons such men have bad reputations, plus he was so super special that even the drill sergeant who hated everyone couldn’t find a reason to hate him. Then his incredible insight lets him do things that no one else could do. I think he’s supposed to be admirably well-balanced, but he just seems like a Marty Stu.

I did not at all like the nearly indigestible blocks of exposition that occupied most of the text; being wrapped in cranky-old-folks banter, however believable that banter, was insufficient. At one point the main character spends, I kid you not, more than five minutes of reading time, which has to be multiple pages, programming his high-tech Palm Pilot. I do not need to know how he set his preferences! Look, I get it—I fetishize lots of stuff. Just not this stuff.

I particularly disliked that nice women characters were routinely trotted out to receive the exposition whenever possible—somehow the men were the physicists and doctors who could explain what everyone else was seeing to the conveniently diverse-skilled group (though if you asked me what the women did, I couldn’t tell you, except for the classics professor). And while Scalzi gestures at the ugliness of colonization, the humans are always better than the aliens in some aspect—intelligence, morality, environmental responsibility (yes, it’s true, we must go offworld to find a species worse than us to its planet).

It’s not that the book is uniformly terrible; that’s why I’ve written this long, aggravated review. The protagonist’s moral crisis when he ends up fighting one-inch-high intelligent aliens is sympathetic and the scene both horrifying and a little bit funny. The characters, especially the grumpy old companions, grew on me after a bit. They did feel like real people trapped in a classic sf novel, with real emotions and real small talk. And yet the parts I don’t like annoy the hell out of me, rather than just being unpleasant.

Comments

[stoplookingup.livejournal.com]

That's very interesting. I worked on the editorial staff of one of Compuserve's content providers in the early 90s -- and we ran some forums there as well. At that point it was generally believed that active moderation meant greater liability, but interestingly the tendency was still to lean toward very heavy moderation. I also worked for Prodigy at a time when it hired an entire staff to read forums 24x7 in search of content that violated the guidelines. We all came from more conventional print and broadcast backgrounds, and we just couldn't conceive of a situation where we'd willingly "publish" the kind of language and images that were flying around online forums -- it was a base-level assumption that we'd never succeed if people saw that stuff on our service. There's no question that in some ways free expression was stifled, but in many ways it was a more pleasant online environment because trolls and nasties were promptly dealt with.

[myownghost.livejournal.com]

i was one of georgia griffith's volunteer moderators in the early '90s on C-serve. the members of the forum would ask me to intervene if something was offensive to them, and i had the power. you're right that it was a pleasant environment because of the moderation.

[frelling-tralk.livejournal.com]

Hopefully this won't come off as unsympathetic, but if there are LJ users who get triggered by animated icons, can they not use disable images? If it's a health risk for them, then that seems the most sensible option?

[cschick.livejournal.com]

If they're using Firefox, they can also simply disable animated gifs (I think there's both a disable option and a cycle once option).

And if one gets really, really annoying when you're on any page and you have them enabled (in FF) hit escape and it'll turn off all animated gifs on the current page.

[cschick.livejournal.com]

Here you go:

http://ffextensionguru.wordpress.com/2007/10/30/tip-pauserestrictdisable-animated-gifs/

Apparently, the esc key turns off animated gifs in both Firefox and IE.

That's how to access the further restriction options in Firefox.

[myownghost.livejournal.com]

i've seen annoyingly flashing icons around, but i didn't realize they were triggering illness in some users. thanks for the link to mecurtin's post, which i'll go take a look at now.

[luthorienne.livejournal.com]

Actually, the part I found appalling was the fact that some people use the flashing icons deliberately, knowing they're triggers. Lord knows, there's a lot of annoying flashing content online, and I kind-of think people who are susceptible to it should be thinking about whether or not they want to surf; but having said that, it's not okay to do it on purpose, apparently hoping to trip someone up. It's like digging a man-trap in your yard and then posting a sign that says, "Come on in and visit".

And thanks to cschick for the tip about the esc key -- I'm not susceptible, but it's still good to be able to disable the flashers.

[teenygozer.livejournal.com]

What she said! (Points upward at luthorienne's post.)

I found the sniggering passive-aggressive bully-boy attitude unconscionable more than anything else, with the posting of the flashing icons with the sole purpose of sending people into epileptic fits and/or migraines, and then the ingenious "well, my-goodness-me, why don't they just disable animated icons?" as a follow-up. I hate trolls and I hate fratboys, and these guys are both. The smug was so thick, you could cut it with a knife.

Posting hyper-animated icons illegal? No. Doesn't make it any less jerky.

[luthorienne.livejournal.com]

And, really, what do they have to be smug about? Any idiot could do this (and clearly, some idiots have). Apparently they have no real accomplishments of which to be proud.

[teenygozer.livejournal.com]

Oops, I meant "ingenuous", not "ingenious"!