ALBANY, N.Y. — Industry attorney Maxine Lynn is featured in a Motherboard article, published today, highlighting a key component, currently up for debate, of the Communications Decency Act (CDA).
Following recent comments from former Vice President and current presidential candidate, Joe Biden, surrounding Section 230 of the CDA and its application to protect major platforms such as Facebook, journalist Samantha Cole profiled various experts on the issue in an article titled “Online Whiz Kid Joe Biden Thinks We Should Trash a Crucial Law for the Internet.”
In an interview last week for the New York Times, Biden stated, "[t]he idea that [Facebook is] a tech company is that Section 230 should be revoked, immediately should be revoked, number one. For Zuckerberg and other platforms."
Section 230 of the CDA provides, in summary, that a provider of an “interactive computer service” is not to be treated as the publisher or speaker of information shared on the service by a third-party user. This releases websites from certain liabilities for actions of users on the sties.
As explained in the article, “Section 230 is … one reason why platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Reddit and 4chan have flourished — for better or worse, Section 230 has allowed them to amass millions of users without having to take the blame every time one of those users does something illegal.”
For her part, Lynn contributed the following:
"Marginalized communities who already have trouble accessing good and accurate sex education and products would have an even harder time without Section 230[.]"
She continued, "repeal of Section 230 could open the door to even more systemic censorship on what some believe is 'immoral' content... Without a free and open internet, it could leave many people vulnerable to inaccurate, and just plain wrong information, or possibly no information at all, about sex, sexual wellness products and pornography."
Read the full article here.
