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September 26, 2018 09:25 pm PDT

Want the platforms to police bad speech and fake news? The copyright wars want a word with you.

There are lots of calls for the platforms to police the bad speech on their platform -- disinformation and fake news; hate speech and harassment, extremist content and so on -- and while that would represent a major shift in how Big Tech relates to the materials generated and shared by its users, it's not without precedent.

For more than 20 years, online platforms have had a legal duty to police their users' copyright enforcements, responding to unproved accusations of copyright infringements by (usually) removing materials, generally without a moment's thought.

Everybody hates this: users, copyright holders, the platforms themselves. Now, maybe it doesn't have to be this way, but if we're going to ask the platforms to expand their policing duties without turning into (more of) a shitshow, it's worth considering the lessons we've learned from decades of copyright enforcement.

EFF's Legal Director Corynne McSherry offers five lessons to keep in mind:

1. (Lots of) mistakes will be made: copyright takedowns result in the removal of tons of legitimate content.

2. Robots won't help: automated filtering tools like Content ID have been a disaster, and policing copyright with algorithms is a lot easier than policing "bad speech."

3. These systems need to be transparent and have due process. A system that allows for automated instant censorship and slow, manual review of censorship gives a huge advantage to people who want to abuse the system.

4. Punish abuse. The ability to censor other peoples' speech is no joke. If you're careless or malicious in your takedown requests, you should pay a consequence: maybe a fine, maybe being barred form using the takedown system. Read the rest


Original Link: http://feeds.boingboing.net/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/Dcy2cTl75Yg/doomed-to-repeat-it.html

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