Section 230

Daniel Solove proposes an alternative method of reading section 230 stating that operators might be liable for prosecution after being notified of material that violates “somebody’s privacy or defames her.” While I think that this is a good idea to modify the blanket protection of section 230, it bears thinking through a bit further.

In the reading and in lecture, we have seen that many companies file anonymous and eventually frivolous lawsuits, such as the Allegheny lawsuit, in order to obtain subpoenas to uncover the identity of anonymous bloggers and whistleblowers. Given this tendency, I think that modifying section 230 (or modifying the reading of the section) could result in a similar tendency – what would happen if individuals who were disgruntled with any sort of content filed an enormous amount of frivolous requests with ISPs to take the material down? The scope of material posted online that you could construe to violate your privacy could end up being quite large, as long as you could prove that in some tangential way it related to violating your privacy or personal rights.

Taken to its logical conclusion, the easiest thing for ISPs and other content providers, such as Craigslist, Yahoo or AOL, to do in this situation would simply be for them to take down all sorts of so-called “objectionable material” flagged by individuals, because in the off-chance that they did not take down some objectionable material and it turned out that this was a true invasion of privacy, or libelous, or something similar to that, then they would potentially be slapped with both huge fines and also with the viral spreading of news on the Internet among bloggers and other commentators, which in many cases proves to be the worst punishment.

Although we could try to perhaps try to narrowly tailor the law so that one could only interpret it in that one can only object to material that is very narrowly about oneself, maybe we should look at a financial solution? I’m of the opinion that money generally speaks, and perhaps if we state that individuals who file these frivolous claims have to pay their own legal fees and the ISPs’ legal fees if it turns out that the lawsuit is frivolous, this could work? Then again, I don’t really about the legality of this, and I have the feeling that this could swing the pendulum in the opposite direction.