Welcome to the Cato Institute. The Vice President here at the Cato Institute. Id like to welcome you to our performed today on an important book, the 26 works that treated the internet by jeff kosseff. General housekeeping notes, we, for the first time, will have our offer and two commentators reflect on this book all about question and answer session. Then about 1 30 p. M. , we shall have much. And more conversation about these issues. Lets go to the subject matter today. Legislatures and regulators work on the greater border in that speech. American, left and right would see platforms treated as the publishers at a user speech. That means subject to all the rules that go for normal publishers. With unknown but perhaps very damaging effects on speech or freedom of speech. Australia sharing content bill, a recent law includes provisions to jail social media executives, uk creating social media regulator with Broad Authority who do not remove harmful content. The justice wanted to go to into tears and bill which would require them to act on report of terrorist content within 60 minutes. As largest 4 of annual rainy revenue. About what that would mean for Large Companies like google and facebook, there Small Companies that might be even more damaging. This intermediary is increasingly seen as a simple solution to a wide variety of dangerous perhaps revealed by but not created by the internet. Regulators have long grappled with the challenge of preventing liable media harassment without suppressing expression and positive democratic externalities. There is however a temptation to treat these questions in a specific controversy over particular features of currently dominant speech platforms. Resolving these problems in social media and the internet itself and that brings us to our book today and our author. The 26 words that created the d discussion and analysis of the struggle over the internet that created the internet and the policies there. Jeff kosseff is a Cyber Security law professor in the u. S. Naval Academy Science department. For judge d smith junior of the u. S. Court of appeals for the ninth circuit. As a finalist for the surprise for National Reporting in the recipient of the georgia board for National Reporting. Jeff, welcome to the Cato Institute. We are eager to hear about your book. Thank you. Just a disclaimer, i am a professor at the naval academy, thank you for coming but i do have to say that everything i say today is only on my behalf and not the naval academy. Now that that disclaimer is out of the way, i tell the story of how we got here with internet relation for user content. It does not start on the internet, you have to think way back to 1956, this book was being sold at a newsstand in l. A. Owned by 72yearold immigrant. This book is called speedier than liked. I say it is not a very good book. I will read the first line, which is pretty much all i am able to read. Lapd vice officer happened to be undercover in mr. Smiths newsstand and he read that and said, this is a team. And he was arrested. He was sentenced to 30 days in jail. He appeals all the way to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court says his conviction has to be overturned, did not have any requirement for state of mind. It didnt matter if he knew this book was. He could go to jail regardless. Thats violating the First Amendment. This First Amendment rule saying the only way you can hold distribute liable is if they know of the content. Also to people softer picketed by others. Its an easy cool until we get to the early 90s. We have services that my students probably dont rememb remember, prodigy America Online. They were too big online services. Very different approaches to how they allowed users to interact. It was like the wild west. They let people post anything, they had no moderators or content policy. They had a lot of policies contracted out to moderators for objectionable content. Both prodigy ended up getting sued for defamation. Prodigy for a bulletin board. The post about daniel, the guy who was played by jonah on wall street. The two results were very different. The judge says the publisher is no different than las smith. They are just a distributor. They are found to be a publisher content. Prodigy took steps to edit user content, had moderation policies, all that made project be a viable. This creates a perverse effect. Online services get more protection under the First Amendment if they dont do anything. So thats where Congress Steps in. In 1995, congress was going through this multi process to pass the telecommunications act. Most of the debate was about how to regulate local phone companies, longdistance companies, its interesting when you look back. There was this thing called internet, it was percolated. They ran a cover story, there was a senator from nebraska, conservative and he was very concerned about his grandchildren. So he passed something called the indications act as an amendment to help content. It basically said a lot of penalties on individuals and companies for transmitting certain types of materials to minors. That would have really a very difficult to send even harmless things like information about diseases. There was no real. Definition. He proposed this, he got to the Senate Version of the act and on the house side, they are really concerned about this. There are technology liberties groups, tech Companies Like prodigy they say we dont want to do this. We are better positioned than the government, then the fcc to determine what is inappropriate for minors. Our customers will vote with their wallets. If we have all of this objectionable material in our services we are not meeting the demands of the parents who are subsiding, they will walk away with their wallets. The solution was what became section 230. Proposed by chris cox, a fairly conservative congressman from orange county. Fairly liberal democrat from portland. They shared an interest in first, helping the Technology Industry to grow. Both districts had a lot of technology presents. They also wanted user empowerment. About us driving what they did. They proposed section 230. No provider or user on Computer Service shall be held publishers deeper of the information provided by other providers. If you dont know what that means, thats okay. Nobody then would have. It was literally no coverage of this in the news as a got attached and signed february 8 by president clinton. Theres a lot of coverage because the other portion of the bill, the Communications Decency act also passed. They both got past. Next year, concern Supreme Court struck down the amendment. All that indecency criminal penalties, but went away because of the Supreme Court said it violated the Supreme Court my minute. You have the act which is buried in this massive, i think it was about 2000 pages of form, 26 words have a few exceptions for intellectual property, federal criminal law, electronic medications but theres not much more. I tell you, having gone through all the newspaper clips, there is really no coverage. They didnt know what to do with it. That changed the next year. This involves America Online. There was a guy living a quiet life, doing photography, selling real estate, living with his parents in seattle, he starts getting a lot of phone calls. First it every halfhour, but its about notable calls a minute. Think mean things to him. He doesnt know why. And he gets reporters calling him. When he finds out what happened, somebody still to this day we dont know who, somebody posted on America Online on one of the user Bulletin Boards comments and advertisement for tshirts mocking the Oklahoma City bombing. This was about six days after the bombing. I wont repeat the exact terms but they were really rude awful jokes. He doesnt know what America Online is. So he calls America Online and they say okay, this is bad, we will take it down. They delayed taking it down. When they do, another post gets put up, multiple posts keep going. Hes writing letters to them, theyre not doing anything about it. It takes weeks for this to get sorted out. He is about to the media, Oklahoma City papers because on top of this, a dj read the ad on the air and read his phone number which was in the ad. Hes getting all of these calls and it eventually stops but he sues America Online. This lawsuit was filed in 1997. This is the first lawsuit after section 230, he came to hold an Online Platform liable for user content. America online hires one of the best media lawyers in town. He knows about this section 230. He makes this clever argument that nobody thought to make before that those 26 words means that America Online is absolutely not responsible for anything its users post. The attorney said thats not the right reading of it. What you need to look at is that its not holding them to be the publisher speaker. Telling them to be the better which means once they get noticed, they will be liable. This goes up first, the District Court provided over the trial that goes up to the court circuit. Nobody really knows how because no court can ever interpret section 230. So goes to a panel by a real stroke of law and up having judge wilkinson used to be a newspaper editor and he writes this opinion that basically says section 230, these 26 words are what they are. What they say that you cant hold these platforms liable at all. We feel for you but this is the choice congress made. We are going to dismiss the case. So that First Federal court lying is basically at least for my research, almost every other federal courts interpretation of to the 30 restaurant. They will all say in so many opinions, we feel really bad for you but thats basically the law of the land. Its not up for interpretation. When i was in the book, i spent a lot of time on both it worked very generous with their time. One thing that impressed me was they both really came to know the nuances of the law and they intended the result. A lot of commentary says this is not what section 230 intended. At least according to them, it was. He also said some interpretation since then have really concerned him. So i asked him whats the most concerning . He immediately responds with the word they sell. This story illustrates section 230. He was an attorney who just moved to carolina, representing art galleries, museums and she needed some work done, a friend asked her to hire a handyman. He does some work on her house, shes not happy with the work at least according to her interpretation, she wanted her to market a script to one of her clients and she didnt want to do it. It wasnt a great situation. He, for whatever reason, sent an email to something called the medium security network. Its dedicated to helping recover that. He writes that he just did some work for her and i think she said she was descended from a nazi, i think it might have been that shes the granddaughter and i saw a lot of fancy artwork on her roles. Sanctification of what that is say, she says i represent art galleries. I never claimed to be a descendent of any nazi. The owner of the lister gets the email sent to him, makes editorial changes and posted both on mine on the website as well as on the lister. Life gets ruined quickly. Shes doing kinds because she represents a lot of at galleries art galleries. She doesnt know why, somebody else or something later. So she sues and what the man circuit does, is a Public Entity procedural but it says that section 230 does protect someone like the Museum Security lister. Even if they make affirmative toys on the users. So i think probably that illustrates the big house sweeping after section 230. I spent a lot of time speaking with her. She has a lot of really insightful thoughts about section 230. She does not agree with it. Then i asked her, do you think this is what caused your heart . She paused for a second and she said no. She said he was in the netherlands. I know we have cspan here so i wont say exactly what she said but she said people are going to be, you can fill in the rest of the words. I think that was pretty insightful. You look at section 230 and we see a lot of debate about what the platforms are doing. I need to be clear, the problems are not doing enough to moderate. Also, theres not a perfect solution. No matter what you do unless you then all your content, some bad content will get in. Thats one side of the equation. The other side is the internet under section 230, i believe, has held up a mirror for society. This is what we look like. There are bad people. They would do bad things. Like claim someone, defame someone and ruin someones life. We have issues like pornography revenge, terrorist recruiting on social media. Sex trafficking online. Thats something that Congress Updated up amending. Harassment of all kinds. Section 230 does allow the platforms to take hands off approach. I would say that is allowed by law but all also not what section 230 was intended for. It is being a contract between congress and the platform thing platforms are better than the federal government regulating content. We want them to take care of this. Based on demand. Ill say, its a much more gated answer about how are they doing . They are doing stuff. Not doing enough and i think if you look at the debate in congress right now, i think section 230 may well be limited. I think a lot of it is based on misinformation. Also a lot of it is based on many years of many tech companies. I will say that i think section 230 is fully repealed, i like to know what the next step would be. I bet theres not really a good answer to that. You can repeal section 230 but as i say in the book, the modern internet the u. S. Is built on section 230. We have almost all of our largest websites visited relying on the content. I dont think they would be able to exist in the current form if we do not have section 230. That may be good or bad to you, depending on your preferences. It would be a radical change and i think we need to have social discussion about how we want the internet to look. When i first proposed the book, called the 26 words that shaped the internet. I changed that as i was researching because i think the 26 words really did create the internet. They created a social structure of the internet that we know today. The internet would look very different and again, if that is something that we want as a society, i think its fine but we need to have an informed discussion about this. Anyone who tells you theres an easy answer to solving this, has not brought about the question because i tell you, theres not an easy answer, there are a lot of equities and tradeoffs. I hope with this book that it will help to inform this discussion as we figure out how to take the internet in the future. [applause] there you go with all that complication. Everyone knows there are no real policy problems, just bad people making bad policy. When could people get the chan chance, theres a real problem there. First commentator, emma. The director of the center for democracy and technologies the expression project which works to promote one policy that supports Internet UsersFree Expression. The project works spans many subjects including human trafficking, online repetition issues, counterterrorism and radicalizing content and online terrorists. Emily was in the legislative the activity of the u. S. Of the eu. Shes responsible for a great part of the world. Fundamental rights of freedom of expression of rights and Liability Protections which is our structure today. The project also works to develop content policy best practices with internet content platforms and advocates for user empowerment tools. Other alternatives to government regulation online speech. She earned a ba in that will turn out later, ill tell you. A ba in its apology at the university of delaware. Welcome, emma. We look forward to your comments. Thank you for that introduction. Thank you for the remarkable book. I thank you call it a biography of section 230. As a person who works in this policy face, its in d. C. For about five years working at center for democracy and technology on intermediary issues, we see a lot of different sides of section 230 over the years. The way it functions in court cases we talk about it being as important as the First Amendment to supporting freedom of expression online. My organization has a deep history with founder jerry, he makes a couple of appearances. He and some of the other folks in the Digital Rights your, they were excited to find senators to work with on creating what these 26 words would be. I dont know that even then buddy had quite the vision of the internet we would have been ten years time let alone the internet we have today. I think that was one thing i really true from his book, discussing kind of the creation of the law that led to it and also how it was interpreted by courts in the first ten years or so after past, there was something of a common eyes asian for what was it that people, governments and companies, lawyers were trying to achieve with section 230. Kind of intimate we are aiming toward. Of the cases of prodigy that showed that the Traditional Law was potentially going to lead to consuming results were operators wh