[ih] there must be a corollary to Godwin's law about Sec 230, was ARPANET pioneer

[John Levine]

>Steven Ehrbar wrote:
>> It's simple enough. You repeal Section 230.
>>
>> Under the court precedents prior to passage of the Communications
>> Decency Act, a system that moderated what users communicated (in the
>> specific court case, Prodigy) was legally liable for what the users
>> communicated, while one that didn't (in the specific court case,
>> CompuServe) wasn't. ...

This is severely oversimplified and basically wrong.

There are three models of distributor liability which we can call
magazine, you're responsible for everything with minor exceptions,
bookstore, you're responsible for what you know about or should
reasonably know about, and Fedex, you're responsible for nothing.
There are court cases for all of these.

Compuserve v. Cubby which was in federal court, used the bookstore model. 
Then Stratton-Oakmont vs. Prodigy, in NY state court, misread Compuserve
and assumed it was either publisher or Fedex so if you do anything
you're a publisher.  This was a mistake, not least because
the bad things said about Stratton-Oakmont turned out to be true.

Section 230 said no, all online services are Fedex.  While this was
reasonable it was also not inevitable.  In the absence of Sec 230,
Compuserve is the precedent (outside of NY at least) and the bookstore
model fits a lot better than either of the other two.  Were 230 to
be repealed, the next few years would be pretty exciting particularly
due to all of the ignorant nonsense about what people imagine 230 to
say, e.g., that somehow without it online providers would be required
to publish everything anyone says which is absurd.

In all likelihood we'd end up with the bookstore model, perhaps with
something like the notice and takedown process that OCILLA (part of
the DMCA) has for copyright violations.  It's far from perfect but
it wouldn't be the end of the world.

On the other hand, most of the 230 "reform" bills introduced in recent
years would be awful, ill-specified carveouts that would only enrich
lawyers.  Look at SOPA/PIPA which was supposed to deter sex trafficking
and in fact had the opposite effect, just as its opponents predicted.

R's,
John