Monthly Archives: August 2021

"What Does the First Amendment Mean Today?" is a program series examining the text, history, and current state of the First Amendment, created by the Ridgefield Library, the Ridgefield Historical Society, the League of Women Voters of Ridgefield, the Drum Hill Chapter of the DAR and Keeler Tavern Museum & History Center.

The partners have developed four free educational programs exploring the concepts embodied in the First Amendment from both historical and contemporary perspectives.

The series kicks off on Thursday, September 9th at 7:00pm with a lecture by legal scholar and author Akhil Amar, Sterling Professor of Law and Political Science at Yale University, to be held in the Main Program Room at the Ridgefield Library.

On Monday, September 20th at 7:00pm, the Library will offer a book discussion of Jess Walters best-selling novel, The Cold Millions, which looks at free speech and the First Amendment through the lens of historical fiction. The discussion will take place in the Randolph Board Room at the Library.

The third program in the series will be an online lecture by Dr. Gloria Browne-Marshall of John Jay College of Criminal Justice, examining the freedoms of speech and assembly from the Civil Rights era to the social justice protests of today. This program will be presented in Zoom on Sunday, October 3rd at 5:00pm.

What Does the First Amendment Mean Today? will conclude with a panel discussion at the Library on Sunday, October 10th at 5:00pm, moderated by author, journalist and lecturer Todd Brewster, and featuring the following notable panelists: Professor Akhil Amar of Yale; Nadine Strossen, past president of the ACLU; New York Times journalist Mike McIntire; and Ridgefield Library Director Brenda McKinley.

For more information and to register for any of the programs in the series, visit the Events Calendar at ridgefieldlibrary.org

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What Does the First Amendment Mean Today? Ridgefield Library Lecture by Akhil Amar on Sept. 9 - HamletHub

from the update-your-status,-Officer-Asshat dept

I went back to Ohio/but my First Amendment was gone

For those of you just joining us, allow me to catch everyone up. In the wake of protests against police violence and multiple people realizing that online anonymity only extends as far as anyone's personal opsec, an "anonymous" Ohio police officer decided to sue (anonymously!) people for claiming he was some sort of white extremist.

The pseudonymous "M.R." -- who filed a lawsuit in an Ohio court claiming he was "defamed" by people pointing out his questionable posts" -- is a Cincinnati police officer. Thanks to his quotation of social media posts referring to his questionable behavior, it was pretty easy for online, part-time sleuths to link "M.R." ("Michael Ryan") to Officer Ryan Olthaus.

Despite the fact that M.R. had been outed as Officer Ryan Olthaus, a local court allowed "M.R" to pursue his defamation lawsuit anonymously. Not only that, but it granted a temporary injunction forbidding the people M.R. had failed to de-anonymize from saying anything negative about the officer involved in two questionable shootings.

Hello, prior restraint! This order has been appealed and both the really-not-that-anonymous-cop and people on the side of free speech are arguing about the First Amendment. Since it's Officer Ryan "M.R." Olthaus on the early winning side (as appellee), we'll deal with his ridiculous motion [PDF] first. (h/t local lawyer Jeffrey Nye, who is challenging the unconstitutional gag order.)

According to M.R.'s lawyers, no one can appeal a TRO. Not only is it not appealable, but the larger issues show the aggrieved cop is right. To wit, an editorial:

But on deeper level, this case highlights the nefarious attempts of anti-police protestors, who, after maliciously defaming a police officer as a white supremacist on social media during a heightened anti-police climate, seek to circumvent the judicial process under the false guise of First Amendment protections.

Who wrote this, a police union? The perceived antipathy of non-party John Q. Public has zero bearing on this case. This case is between the cop being accused of being a white supremacist and those who accused him of being one. It has fuck all to do with Officer Ryan Olthaus' personal feelings about the mood of the (non-party) nation.

He goes on to call the appeal "improper," forgetting that TROs and other injunctions/restraining orders can almost always be appealed. Why? Because "doxing," I guess.

They make this claim even though the potential harm to the officer and his family from the publication of his personal information, occasioned by the protestors own baseless and malicious social media posts, far outweighs any burden from the limited restriction on doxing him.

Potential harm is indeed a factor when seeking injunctions. It all depends on whether the courts feel the unrealized harms are probable enough to warrant restrictions. And this goes at least doubly for cases where constitutional rights are implicated. Olthaus wants "because I said so." The legal system (at least the one lying beyond the one that granted the stupid order that violated citizens' free speech rights) will make the final declaration. Simply claiming to be the victim of unspecified (and undocumented) harassment isn't enough. This is evidence of nothing, as far as it applies to Officer Olthaus:

Recent FBI data show upticks in police officer killings during years when there have been major incidents of civil unrest across the country.

"FBI data" is not "evidence from the officer's personal experience." While Olthaus claims he's threatened, he provides no evidence of any threats beyond that to his reputation. The arguments made before the court are bad. Just irredeemably bad. For instance:

In a thinly veiled attempt to circumvent the appellate process, Niesen/White advance an outcome determinative argument that the TRO constitutes a prior restraint on constitutionally protected speech and is therefore automatically appealable.

LOL. Buddy, there's nothing "thinly veiled" about it. Multiple First Amendment lawyers agree this restraining order violates the First Amendment. They are not trying to "circumvent the appellate process." They are asking a higher court to weigh in on the Constitutional matter, which is not only normal, but should be expected when a cop claims he can only sue under a pseudonym and sues over statements of opinion that deal with matters of public interest. No one is "disguising" anything. The court granting the TRO was completely fucking wrong.

God forbid anyone dox Ryan Olthaus but the Cincinnati Police Department. That's the argument. This is also the argument: one that ignores Supreme Court precedent in favor of mid-level state opinion:

While prior restraint on speech carries a "heavy presumption against its constitutional validity," New York Times Co. v. United States, 403 U.S. 713, 723, 91 S.Ct. 2140, 2146, 29 L.Ed.2d 822, 830 (1971), not all prior restraints are per se unconstitutional. Connor Group v. Raney, 2nd Dist. Montgomery No. C.A. 26653, 2016-Ohio-2959, 56. The Court must consider the restriction in its context of litigation and in particular the temporary nature of the order, which must be viewed differently from limitations imposed in broader contexts. Id. at 56. While individuals have a right to communicate freely, a temporary restraint on speech is proper in compelling circumstances. Id. at 56.

On one hand, there's a Supreme Court decision that governs hundreds of defamation suits. On the other hand, the one that M.R. likes, the [squints at filing] Montgomery County decision doesn't even say what he thinks it says.

Unsurprisingly, those opposing the prior restraint have to waste far less paper offering their take on the TRO. The one [PDF] offered by the appellants only runs eight pages, once you subtract the table of contents and signature page. It points out the officer is wrong about the law, even while apparently represented by actual lawyers. And it's this complete wrongness that demands immediate review.

M.R.s confusion as to important points of First Amendment law including what kind of speech is protected, what standards apply to public officials in defamation cases, and how far a court may go in restricting speech that has not yet been uttered are precisely the kinds of questions a court can address through appellate review. In fact, M.R.s arguments about harm and the preservation of the status quo demonstrate precisely why an immediate appeal is required: so that the First Amendment interests of all parties can be resolved swiftly, fairly, and with accurate constitutional precision.

It doesn't matter what one Ohio court chose to focus on: it's still unconstitutional.

The trial courts order is a classic prior restraint. It silenced speech on a matter of public concern, and it altered the status quo by requiring Ms. Niesen and Ms. White to silence their ongoing dialogue about a public officials conduct. From the advent of the Supreme Courts prior restraint jurisprudence, immediate appellate review has been required under these circumstances, particularly when courts and not other branches of government impose the orders of restraint. The court of appeals departed from this requirement by hyperfocusing on the title of the order a temporary restraining order, as opposed to a preliminary injunction rather than its impact upon expression. As a result, the court of appeals erred in failing to provide Ms. Neisen and Ms. White the immediate appellate review to which they were constitutionally required.

The same goes for the amici brief [PDF], composed by several First Amendment lawyers and submitted by Jeffrey Nye. It only takes seven pages to rebut the 21 pages the defensive cop submitted. Is a cop more worthy of courtroom protection than the average accused person? Inquiring First Amendment minds what to know:

Nor can this First Amendment right be defeated simply by speculation that publishing a persons name might expose him to some risk of attack in the future. That risk, regrettably, is present whenever someones alleged misconduct is publicly discussed. An article mentioning an accused (or convicted) criminal might lead some people to attack or threaten the criminal. Likewise with an article discussing a business figure who is accused of unfair practices, or, as here, a post discussing a public official who is accused of acting improperly.

The bottom line is this when it applies to a public servant who has already been named publicly elsewhere:

Niesen and White have a First Amendment right to criticize M.R. by name. If their allegations are found to be defamatory at a later trial, M.R. may be entitled to a damages awardbut he is not entitled to a pretrial prior restraint, such as the one the trial court entered.

M.R. is Officer Ryan Olthaus. It doesn't matter what he does now. People already know. But if courts continue to entertain his baseless arguments, the First Amendment is going to suffer collateral damage from this officer's assertion that he should not be subjected to criticism, much less unspecified harassment for his actions. Fuck tha' Police indeed, but especially this guy who thinks the First Amendment should be subservient to his unverified allegations about potential threats to his safety.

When it comes to cases like these, the law shouldn't be impressed when you throw your badge around. In fact, your claim that you're a public servant should work against you. Criticism of government employees -- even when unfair or misguided -- receives the utmost of Constitutional protection. Except in this case where a court decided a cop was more worthy of protection than the people criticizing him and his actions. The lower court is wrong. Hopefully, this will be reversed, no matter how much money the cop (Ryan Olthaus) has to spend to be wrong about First Amendment rights.

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Filed Under: 1st amendment, cincinatti, defamation, free speech, m.r., police, prior restraint, protests, ryan olthaus

See the article here:
Not-So-Anonymous Cop Continues To Argue Courts Should Violate The First Amendment To Protect Him From The Consequences Of His Actions - Techdirt

The mainstream news industry has been in sharp decline since the 1990s, owing to a series of financial and cultural changes brought by the rise of the internet. Amid the closing or shrinking of newspapers, magazines, and other legacy news outlets, Americans have increasingly turned to social media and heavily partisan websites and cable networks as their main sources of news and information, which has led to a proliferation of disinformation and misinformation and fueled polarization.

Given the vital role a free and responsible press plays in American democracy and the unique protections the Constitution provides for it under the First Amendment, is it time for the government to get involved? Is it governments place to do so? And how could that happen without infringing on that freedom?

In a new book, Saving the News: Why the Constitution Calls for Government Action to Preserve Freedom of Speech (Oxford University Press, 2021), Martha Minow, 300th Anniversary University Professor at Harvard Law School, says the First Amendment not only does not preclude the federal government from protecting a free press in jeopardy, it requires that it do so. Minow spoke with the Gazette about some of the ways to potentially clean up social media and bankroll local news, and why arguing on Twitter isnt a First Amendment right.

GAZETTE: There seems to be broad misunderstanding about what speech is protected by the First Amendment and what is not. Underlying cancel culture and complaints about deplatforming is a belief that people should not be penalized for saying things online that others find objectionable or that are inaccurate or even false because of their right to freely express themselves. Can you clarify how the First Amendment applies and doesnt apply to social media platforms, like Twitter or Facebook, and online generally?

MINOW: I wrote a book to examine the challenges and decline of the news industry during a time of exploding misinformation and disinformation, a global pandemic, and great challenges to democracies in the United States and elsewhere. Certainly, one big dimension of this context is [what] some people are calling [an] infodemic: the flood of information that is enabled by the Internet, and particularly social media. But it is not just social media. Its conventional media, particularly cable news, but also some broadcast news.

Most of the sources of communications are private, and private communications are not governed by the First Amendment. Private companies are entitled to edit, elevate, suppress, remove [speech], whether its in broadcast, cable, or on a social media platform. Indeed, private companies have First Amendment freedoms against any government intervention. We in America are very fond of rights, and rights maybe are what hold us together more certainly than shared traditions, shared identities. And one of the ways thats really evolved is how we talk about rights as if its a cultural phenomenon or its part of our identities. But that kind of informal conversation about I have First Amendment freedom may be a metaphor on a social media platform, but it is not a legal right. We sign terms-of-service agreements with platform companies. Theyre the ones that control what is communicated and whats not. Thats much less edited than broadcast or cable or print media. So, were living in an unprecedented time of lowered barriers to communicating to mass audiences almost anybody can have access to a mass audience. But thats all enabled by private providers and the private providers are not restricted by the First Amendment in what they remove or amplify.

GAZETTE: What are a few of the measures that could effectively hold tech firms to account for what is published and shared on their platforms?

MINOW: When it comes to holding the platform companies responsible for conveying, amplifying, even escalating hateful communications, misinformation, [and] disinformation, there are some techniques, but we have to be careful because if the government is involved, then the First Amendment is front and center. The techniques include eliminating or reducing the immunity currently granted under the [1996] Communications Decency Act, which has a section, Section 230, that treats platform companies differently from any other media and specifically immunizes them from liabilities that apply to all these other entities. They include liabilities for fraud, for defamation, for violating contract terms. [But] even Section 230 does not immunize the platforms from criminal responsibility or from violations of intellectual property rights. So, one very direct step to hold companies responsible would be to either eliminate this immunity or make it conditional. I actually prefer that alternative.

Companies adopt and should adhere to standards of moderation, content moderation rules. They can develop their own, but the idea would be theyd have to announce standards; theyd have to report on them; and theyd have to have processes to act on anyone calling them out for violating their own standards. Thats pretty direct, and it would put them on the same par as all the other media entities that exist in the country.

Another possibility would be to take intellectual property seriously and make the platforms pay when they take or steal or promote information from other news sources. They dont put the revenues that they gain, particularly from advertising, back into investment in news. Its not a punishment; its simply the idea of holding them responsible like [the] grown-up companies that they are.

You know, the fact of the matter is, the big disinformation source is as much broadcast and cable [television as it is online] and on those, there is a basis for government regulation. The FCC could take that seriously and withhold licenses, remove them, terminate them, for companies that are misleading people, that are labeling as news something thats entirely opinion. Cable is largely a monopoly. Local communities grant franchises to cable companies; local communities could hold them more responsible. I dont look forward to a day, I hope we never see it, that the government, at any level, is deciding the content. But when there is scarce opportunity to amplify communications given to private companies, its only fair that they should have standards that they then deliver on [by] providing some quality control of what they amplify. There is no right to have your message sent to everybody in the world anywhere. What there is, is a right to be free from government restrictions on your speech. So, one very specific suggestion that I have is that when we deal with digital communications, there could be a delay, and there could be speed bumps. Before people can spread messages to large numbers of people, there could be a delay, they could even use artificial intelligence to monitor it before it can be spread beyond a handful of people.

GAZETTE: The era of self-policing hasnt worked very well so far, but you say there are things companies can and should be doing right now to act more responsibly and to help support the news. What are a few of those?

MINOW: I agree with you that self-regulation has not worked. Its striking to me that Mark Zuckerberg has said, in effect, We need help. We cant do it alone. And so, I think this is a problem thats bigger than any one company, and it does require government action. The government can act by enforcing, or strengthening and then enforcing, consumer protection rules, including rules about the uses of our data. The government can act by limiting the immunity granted to internet platforms and condition it on the development of codes of conduct that are then enforced. And the government can act by making rules that require sharing the information about the algorithms and their uses with a watchdog, whether academic or nonprofit organizations. We need to improve the entire ecosystem in which information circulates.

GAZETTE: Local news has been a vital part of that ecosystem. Government can support local news without necessarily wading into a First Amendment quagmire, you argue. What are some ways that could be accomplished?

MINOW: Local news is more trusted by people. Theres less polarization in local communities; theres more accountability. But with its decline, which is massive, theres a loss of accountability journalism in local communities and a loss of this ecosystem. And so, one thing to consider is to tax the big platforms and to cordon off the revenues that are generated and plow them back into supporting local news and public media and nonprofit media. Theres a Local Journalism Sustainability Act introduced in the Senate [in July], and it parallels a bipartisan [bill] in the House that uses tax deductions and tax credits to strengthen local news. One of the interesting ideas there is to give a tax break to local companies that buy ads in local news. Another is to relieve payroll taxes for nonprofits and for-profit local news if they hire more journalists. And finally, a dimension that I think is interesting but has its tricky elements, is to allow [tax] deductions for individuals who either subscribe to local news or make gifts to local news. Thats great in the sense that theres no government involvement. But its problematic in that we already know that they are disguises for disinformation, for foreign governments to pretend that they are nonprofit organizations in this country and to hijack whats otherwise a good idea. So that needs some work.

GAZETTE: So, not a government-funded news service, like Voice of America, but financial assistance for individual news organizations so they can continue working independently and ideally, thrive?

MINOW: That is whats being proposed, and it certainly poses many fewer worries. It is really to strengthen this ecosystem of public and private, multiple, diverse, news sources. [These are] especially needed in the local context where we have news deserts thousands of communities that have no local news. When Michael Brown was killed in Ferguson, Missouri, and the Department of Justice undertook a massive investigation exposing the way that the legal system relied on fines and fees on the backs of poor people, one of the things that emerged was there was no local news. Bad things happen where no one is watching.

Interview has been edited for clarity and length.

See the rest here:
Martha Minow looks at ways government can stop disinformation - Harvard Gazette

A man convicted after sending upward of a million Facebook messages to a Denver musician was not using free speech protected by the First Amendment, and was instead making threats, the Court of Appeals decided on Thursday in rejecting a constitutional challenge to Colorados stalking law.

In upholding the conviction of Billy Raymond Counterman, a three-judge panel for the Court of Appeals applied recent state Supreme Court guidance for interpreting threats in the age of social media, as well as a basic recognition that perpetrators are able to easily target their victims online.

Recent widely reported cases of online harassment and stalking of public figures particularly of women involve internet users who are strangers to the victims granted previously unavailable access to their targets through social media, wrote Judge Craig R. Welling in the panels July 22 opinion.

Beginning in 2014 when Counterman first sent a Facebook friend request to singer-songwriter Coles Whalen, she received messages from him that she deemed weird and creepy. She did not respond to any of them, and blocked Counterman on multiple occasions.

Over the next two years, she grew fearful of Counterman and was worried about being hurt or killed after the messages kept coming.

I miss you, only a couple physical sightings, youve been a picker upper for me more times than I can count, one of them read. Another asked Whalen ominously: "Was that you in the white Jeep?

Whalen was too frightened to book shows because it meant we had to post online where we would be and at what time, said one of Whalens friends and bandmates, according to Westword. Coles became afraid to talk to people; she was anxious, unhappy, and constantly checking in with security.

Police arrested Counterman in May 2016 and a jury subsequently convicted him of stalking. He received a sentence of four-and-a-half years in prison.

Counterman appealed his conviction, asserting the stalking law was used to punish his free speech. Under Colorado law, stalking can occur when a person repeatedly contacts, surveils or communicates with an individual in such a way that a reasonable person would feel serious emotional distress.

At issue was whether his messages to Whalen, which reportedly numbered over one million, constituted a true threat not shielded by the First Amendment.

Mr. Counterman did not intend to make a threat or didnt have knowledge that the communication would be perceived as a threat, public defender Mackenzie Shields argued to the appellate judges. She added that Counterman's messages were "overwhelmingly mild."

In June 2020, the Colorado Supreme Court revised its standard for what constitutes threatening speech. The Court outlined specific factors to consider like the medium, the relationship between the people involved and the reaction of the recipient but emphasized that context also matters.

In determining whether a statement is a true threat, a reviewing court must examine the words used, but it must also consider the context in which the statement was made, wrote Justice Monica M. Mrquez in the courts opinion.

Although Counterman went to trial before the Courts decision, the trial court judge in his case evaluated the Facebook messages along those lines. For example, Counterman wrote on one occasion that Staying in cyber life is going to kill you. Come out for coffee. You have my number.

Then-Arapahoe County District Court Judge F. Stephen Collins observed that a reader could interpret the message in a couple different ways. I mean, one, its it could be just expressing a concern to someone, but it also could be interpreted, given the totality of the circumstances, as an implied threat that if she stays in cyber life, shes going to get killed. And I find that troublesome.

Afederally-funded study in 2009noted that the intent of stalking laws is to protect victims from behaviors that are not criminal in isolation, but add up to unlawful abuse. Data from a 2006 survey found 20 out of 1,000 women had been victims of stalking, compared to seven out of 1,000 men.

The U.S. Supreme Court has established that true threats, meaning statements where someone communicates a serious intent to commit violence, do not have First Amendment protection. However, in 2015 a majority of the justices reversed a man's conviction because prosecutors had not proven he knowingly threatened his wife with his online posts.

Attorneys Lyrissa Barnett Lidsky and Linda Riedemann Norbut have written about about how easy it is for outsiders to misconstrue statements, even violent ones, as true threats on social media. They advocate for the ability of alleged perpetrators to cite the context of the communications in their defense.

In evaluating the circumstances of Counterman's communications, the appellate judges noted his messages were completely uninvited, given that Whalen never responded. Some of them implied that he wanted to see her dead, or that he felt an entitlement to interact with her. Counterman also sent Whalen messages privately, indicating that his remarks were only intended for her.

"Here, there are details that heighten the credibility of Countermans threats. The references to surveilling [Whalen] particularly to seeing her with her partner or friend and the white Jeep indicate that Counterman may have had a familiarity with [Whalen] gained from secretly watching her," wrote Welling in the appellate panel's opinion. "These details add to the threat implied in Countermans messages."

The court also rejected the remaining claims in Counterman's appeal. The case is People v. Counterman.

View post:
Appeals court finds man's online threats to Denver musician not protected by First Amendment - coloradopolitics.com

White River Valley Electric Cooperative will be holding their annual election of board members, as well as proposing three new amendments.

The election will be online for the second year in a row, and will be held from Monday, Aug. 23 to Friday, September 3. The results of the election will be announced on Saturday, Sept. 11 at the annual meeting at 9 a.m.

All members of White River Valley Electric Cooperative are allowed to and encouraged to vote. To vote visit whiteriver.org, where you will be prompted to enter your member account number and unique pin number, provided from a paper bill received in the mail.

On the website, the option to request a paper ballot to be mailed to your home or business will be available. To request a paper ballot on the phone, call 877-978-3246.

All information about the election, the board members being voted on, and what the amendments are is available at the website as well.

The election is held by the Association of Missouri Electric Cooperatives, based out of Jefferson City.

All of that goes directly to them, they host the website, they tally all the votes, they send out pre-addressed, pre-stamped, watermarked ballots that member request, and deliver the election results live and certified at our annual meeting, Manager of Communications and Member Engagement for White River Valley Electric Cooperative Cassie Cunningham said. No one knows (the results) aside from the third party holding the election. We dont even know what the results of those are until the meeting that day.

The meeting will be livestreamed at whiterivermeeting.com.

Last year was the first year White River Valley Electric Cooperative held an online election, due to COVID-19.

We actually had a waiver from the governor to conduct business as safely as possible, but you couldnt really meet in person. So we were able to implement temporarily online voting last year, Cunningham said. Before all of COVID even came to play, we were planning to submit to the membership for a vote option to implement online elections anyway. So that was a bylaw proposed and did pass last year.

Moving forward, our members will have the convenience to vote at the meeting if we are having an in person meeting, if we are online they will be able to mail in ballots, whichever fits most convenient for an individuals lifestyle.

Economic Development and Key Accounts Specialist Devin Fisher said the cooperative thinks its important for everyone to know what they are voting for.

Being governed by a board, they make decisions and so whenever it comes to amendments, we just want to make sure everyone knows what theyre voting for, why it is important, and how it is going to affect you, Fisher said.

The biggest thing is that what makes the cooperative different is that we are member owned, so instead of just paying a bill for your electricity, you actually have a say in our business operations as a member. So its important and a responsibility to vote, Cunningham said. Were trying to move forward and make things more engaging and convenient for the membership, so everybody can have a voice and an opportunity to participate. Were just trying to modify and improve our governance practices to accommodate everyone.

Members will vote on filing three board seats: Taney County District B Representative, Christian County District C Representative, and Douglas County District D Representative.

Douglas County is the only board seat that is running unopposed, but will still appear on the ballot.

There will also be three amendments to the bylaws proposed.

The first amendment will ask:

If you are in favor of utilizing membership votes and removing the in person requirement for establishing a forum at the annual meeting of members.

A yes vote on this means it allows for your electronic or mail in ballot to count towards a forum, so that your participation is important in cooperative matters, Fisher said. Prior to, your vote did not count unless you were at the meeting; this allows you to be able to vote online and not have to be at the meeting.

The second amendment will ask:

If you are in favor of allowing the cooperative the flexibility to hold virtual, annual meetings, at a date and time set by the board with proper notice and the ability to adjust the order of the business for virtual meetings.

Adjusting the order does not mean changing anything about the meeting, that simply means that any new business would actually move to the front of the meeting, so that nobody gives up on the meeting to discuss it at the end, Fisher said. That puts you first, and all other business last. It just promotes another format, to put your concerns first and then moves everything to the end.

The third amendment will ask:

If you are in favor of clarifying the board of directors qualifications and elections.

For the committee it was very important they take a look at this bylaw, because right now anybody can run for a seat on the board. We are simply stating that sometimes we need to promote transparency among all of our members and look at our cost savings, Fisher said. We would just like for representation to be clarified.

For more information visit whiteriver.org.

As election results become available, check out bransontrilakesnews.com.

See the original post:
White River Valley Electric to hold annual election - Branson Tri-Lakes news

Internet social-media platforms are granted broad safe harbor protections against legal liability for any content users post on their platforms. Those protections, spelled out in Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act (CDA), were written a quarter century ago during a long-gone age of nave technological optimism and primitive technological capabilities. So much has changed since the turn of the century that those protections are now desperately out of date. Its time to rethink and revise those protections and for all leaders whose companies rely on internet platforms to understand how their businesses might be affected.

Social-media platforms provide undeniable social benefits. They gave democratic voice to oppressed people during the Arab Spring and a platform for the # MeToo and #BlackLivesMatter movements. They helped raise $115 million for ALS with the Ice Bucket Challenge, and they helped identify and coordinate rescue for victims of Hurricane Harvey.

But weve also learned just how much social devastation these platforms can cause, and that has forced us to confront previously unimaginable questions about accountability. To what degree should Facebook be held accountable for the Capitol riots, much of the planning for which occurred on its platform? To what degree should Twitter be held accountable enabling terrorist recruiting? How much responsibility should Backpage and Pornhub bear for facilitating the sexual exploitation of children? What about other social-media platforms that have profited from the illicit sale of pharmaceuticals, assault weapons, and endangered wildlife? Section 230 just didnt anticipate such questions.

Section 230 has two key subsections that govern user-generated posts. The first, Section 230(c)(1), protects platforms from legal liability relating to harmful content posted on their sites by third parties. The second, Section 230(c)(2), allows platforms to police their sites for harmful content, but it doesnt require that they remove anything, and it protects them from liability if they choose not to.

These provisions are good except for the parts that are bad.

The good stuff is pretty obvious. Because social-media platforms generate social benefits, we want to keep them in business, but thats hard to imagine if they are instantly and irreversibly liable for anything and everything posted by third parties on their sites. Section 230(c)(1) was put in place to address this concern.

Section 230(c)(2), for its part, was put in place in response to a 1995 court ruling declaring that platforms who policed any user generated content on their sites should be considered publishers of and therefore legally liable for all of the user-generated content posted to their site. Congress rightly believed that ruling would make platforms unwilling to police their sites for socially harmful content, so it passed 230(c)(2) to encourage them to do so.

At the time, this seemed a reasonable approach. But the problem is that these two subsections are actually in conflict. When you grant platforms complete legal immunity for the content that their users post, you also reduce their incentives to proactively remove content causing social harm. Back in 1996, that didnt seem to matter much: Even if social media platforms had minimal legal incentives to police their platform from harmful content, it seemed logical that they would do so out of economic self-interest, to protect their valuable brands.

Lets just say weve learned a lot since 1996.

One thing weve learned is that we significantly underestimated the cost and scope of harm that posts on social-media can cause. Weve also learned that platforms dont have strong enough incentives to protect their brands by policing their platforms. Indeed, weve discovered that providing socially harmful content can be economically valuable to platform owners while posing relatively little economic harm to their public image or brand name.

Today there is a growing consensus that we need to update Section 230. Facebooks Mark Zuckerberg even told Congress that it may make sense for there to be liability for some of the content, and that Facebook would benefit from clearer guidance from elected officials. Elected officials, on both sides of the aisle, seem to agree: As a candidate, Joe Biden told the New York Times that Section 230 should be revoked, immediately, and Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) has said, Section 230 as it exists today has got to give. In an interview with NPR, the former Congressmen Christopher Cox (R-CA), a co-author of Section 230, has called for rewriting Section 230, because the original purpose of this law was to help clean up the Internet, not to facilitate people doing bad things.

How might Section 230 be rewritten? Legal scholars have put forward a variety of proposals, almost all of which adopt a carrot-and-stick approach, by tying a platforms safe-harbor protections to its use of reasonable content-moderation policies. A representative example appeared in 2017, in a Fordham Law Review article by Danielle Citron and Benjamin Wittes, who argued that Section 230 should be revised with the following (highlighted) changes: No provider or user of an interactive computer service that takes reasonable steps to address known unlawful uses of its services that create serious harm to others shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider in any action arising out of the publication of content provided by that information content provider.

This argument, which Mark Zuckerberg himself echoed in testimony he gave to Congress in 2021, is tied to the common law standard of duty of care, which the American Affairs Journal has described as follows:

Ordinarily, businesses have a common law duty to take reasonable steps to not cause harm to their customers, as well as to take reasonable steps to prevent harm to their customers. That duty also creates an affirmative obligation in certain circumstances for a business to prevent one party using the businesss services from harming another party. Thus, platforms could potentially be held culpable under common law if they unreasonably created an unsafe environment, as well as if they unreasonably failed to prevent one user from harming another user or the public.

The courts have recently begun to adopt this line of thinking. In a June 25, 2021 decision, for example, the Texas Supreme Court ruled that Facebook is not shielded by Section 230 for sex-trafficking recruitment that occurs on its platform. We do not understand Section 230 to create a lawless no-mans-land on the Internet, the court wrote. Holding internet platforms accountable for the words or actions of their users is one thing, and the federal precedent uniformly dictates that Section 230 does not allow it. Holding internet platforms accountable for their own misdeeds is quite another thing. This is particularly the case for human trafficking.

The duty-of-care standard is a good one, and the courts are moving toward it by holding social media platforms responsible for how their sites are designed and implemented. Following any reasonable duty-of-care standard, Facebook should have known it needed to take stronger steps against user-generated content advocating the violent overthrow of the government. Likewise, Pornhub should have known that sexually explicit videos tagged as 14yo had no place on its site.

Not everybody believes in the need for reform. Some defenders of Section 230 argue that as currently written it enables innovation, because startups and other small businesses might not have sufficient resources to protect their sites with the same level of care that, say, Google can. But the duty-of-care standard would address this concern, because what is considered reasonable protection for a billion-dollar corporation will naturally be very different from what is considered reasonable for a small startup. Another critique of Section 230 reform is that it will stifle free speech. But thats simply not true: All of the duty-of-care proposals on the table today address content that is not protected by the First Amendment. There are no First Amendment protections for speech that induces harm (yelling fire in a crowded theater), encourages illegal activity (advocating for the violent overthrow of the government), or that propagates certain types of obscenity (child sex-abuse material).

Technology firms should embrace this change. As social and commercial interaction increasingly move online, social-media platforms low incentives to curb harm are reducing public trust, making it harder for society to benefit from these services, and harder for legitimate online businesses to profit from providing them.

Most legitimate platforms have little to fear from a restoration of the duty of care. Much of the risk stems from user-generated content, and many online businesses host little if any such content. Most online businesses also act responsibly, and so long as they exercise a reasonable duty of care, they are unlikely to face a risk of litigation. And, as noted above, the reasonable steps they would be expected to take would be proportionate to their services known risks and resources.

What good actors have to gain is a clearer delineation between their services and those of bad actors. A duty of care standard will only hold accountable those who fail to meet the duty. By contrast, broader regulatory intervention could limit the discretion of, and impose costs on, all businesses, whether they act responsibly or not. The odds of imposing such broad regulation increase the longer harms from bad actors persist. Section 230 must change.

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It's Time to Update Section 230 - Harvard Business Review