On Jan 23, 2009, at 12:22 PM, PauAmma wrote: > On Fri, 23 Jan 2009, doingsoso wrote: > >> LOL, never mind. The Supreme Court killed the COPA law Wednesday. >> YAY! My >> only worry was protecting the journaling sites, and individual >> journal >> owners, from harassment. Though it may not have sounded that way, >> sorry if I >> didn't make myself clear enough :/ > > You're thinking of COPA (Child Online Protection Act, 47 USC 231). > COPPA > (Children Online Privacy Protection Act, 15 USC 6501-6506) is a > different > law, and is still in force.
Which is as good a place as any for me to give a basic overview of some of the legislation we have to be aware of, so everyone can be familiar with some of the Internet legislation that site owners need to follow and why! (If you don't care about that kind of thing, you can safely stop reading now.) There are a bunch of laws that an online service provider (OSP) such as Dreamwidth has to follow, and a couple of others that are very murky -- either they haven't been tested yet in court, or they have and the outcome was uncertain. There are also a number of judicial decisions that could possibly apply to a service such as Dreamwidth that we also have to keep in mind. Let's go on a (very) brief tour of Internet legislation: (Note for those of you who're familiar with this sort of thing that may be reading along: I'm simplifying in a lot of cases. Note to *everybody*: some of what I'm saying can be disputed, depending on whom you listen to. Also, I'm not a lawyer, I just sometimes play one on the internets.) For all of this, three very good resources for further understanding: http://chillingeffects.org/ http://www.eff.org/ http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/ The three *really* big pieces of legislation that an OSP has to keep in mind: 1). Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (CDA). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Section_230_of_the_Communications_Decency_Act http://w2.eff.org/bloggers/lg/faq-230.php The majority of the CDA itself was struck down as unconstitutional, as it placed over-broad restriction on speech. This provision remains, however, as 47 USC 230, and it says, in very (very) broad and simplified terms, that no OSP can be treated as the publisher of material posted by one of its users for purposes of determination of liability. What that means is, very (very) broadly, if someone posts something illegal to Dreamwidth, Dreamwidth isn't liable for it (unless the "illegal" has to do with federal criminal law, intellectual property law, or communications privacy law) unless we do something that makes us the co-publisher of that information (such as, in some cases, editing the material ourselves, or providing certain restricted options, etc). There have been a few court cases that have helped to define or refine the definitions there (the most notable, and the one that makes everyone I know nervous, is "Fair Housing Council of San Fernando Valley v. Roommate.com", which held that by allowing a user to specify a forbidden and discriminatory housing preference in a drop-down menu selection, Roommate.com became co-publisher of that discriminatory and illegal material), but on the whole, Section 230 immunity is a very important concept to keep in mind as we go through the rest of this. 2). The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Millennium_Copyright_Act http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Online_Copyright_Infringement_Liability_Limitation_Act The DCMA is such a can of worms that it would take an entire separate email message to get into it (and, in fact, I did briefly cover an OSP's responsibility under the law in a mailing list message two days ago). In essence, the DMCA (and, specifically, the portion known as OCILLA, which covers an OSP's responsibilities when it comes to copyright infringement) says that as long as the OSP follows the process set forth in law, it can't be held liable for acts of copyright infringement on its service. 3). COPPA (Children's Online Privacy Protection Act) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children%27s_Online_Privacy_Protection_Act As the message that kicked all of this off indicates, COPPA is different than COPA (the Child Online Protection Act, which was enjoined from enforcement as soon as it was passed and which, as of January 21, is dead in the water as the Supreme Court has declined to hear the appeal). COPPA specifically addresses the gathering of information from, and the marketing of goods and/or services to, children under 13, and sets forth the provisions that an OSP must follow whenever it's interacting with a child under the age of 13. In order to avoid tripping the provisions of COPPA, Dreamwidth simply won't allow signups from children under the age of 13, and if we become aware that someone is under 13, we will prevent them from using the site. This is the major reason why you have to provide your date of birth when you register with various online sites. (Yes, we know that there's cases where someone might legitimately want to *display* a birthdate that has them under 13, while they themselves are over 13. This is why we'll make it very clear that the signup birthdate should be YOUR ACTUAL BIRTHDATE, and you can set the displayed birthdate later.) Now, there are many pieces of legislation that will (or would if they were passed) apply to Dreamwidth -- are people interested in hearing about them? I don't want to bore people if nobody cares, but I figure that having this information out there can't hurt :) --D -- Denise Paolucci [email protected] Dreamwidth Studios: Open Source, open expression, open operations. Coming soon! _______________________________________________ dw-discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.dwscoalition.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dw-discuss
