Internet and e-mail policy and practice including Notes on Internet E-mail

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Home 22 Mar 2023 Spam filtering and social media moderation are the same thing Email CDA Section 230 has been called ``The 26 Words that Created the Internet''. While it is obvious how Sec 230 protects the World Wide Web, it is equally important for e-mail. A recent Pennsylvania court case emphasizes this point. Dr. Thomas, a professor at the Univeristy of Pennysylvania forwarded an article about another professor Dr. Monge to an online e-mail discussion list. Dr. Monge claimed the article was defamatory and sued Dr Thomas, the university, and many others. But since neither Dr Thomas, nor the university were the author of the article, under Sec 230 they were quickly dismissed from the case. This is good news for anyone who (like me) runs mailing lists for other people. If we were legally responsible for everything anyone said on a list, the number of lists would be a whole lot smaller. But Sec 230 doesn't just protect mailing lists. It also protect spam filtering, and on the modern Internet, mail without filtering would be unusable. See more ...   posted at: 21:30 :: permanent link to this entry :: 0 comments Stable link is https://jl.ly/Email/sec230spam.html 11 Jan 2023 Who owns the copyright on stuff that an AI writes? Copyright Law We hear that the widely touted ChatGPT can do a respectable job writing high school essays, malware ransom notes, and the like. When it writes a document, who owns the copyright? An acquaintance asked ChatGPT for its advice and unsurprisingly it suggested updating copyright law to give special recognition to material written by AI software. (Tomorrow I plan to ask an herbalist if I should use more herbs.) See more ...   posted at: 23:16 :: permanent link to this entry :: 1 comments Stable link is https://jl.ly/Copyright_Law/notai.html 29 Nov 2022 Portable social media accounts, good idea, not going to happen Internet The usually perceptive Tim Harford has a column in the current Financial Times complaning that since he can move his phone number from one carrier to another, why can't he move his social media account from Twitter to Mastodon. If only it were that simple. See more ...   posted at: 21:46 :: permanent link to this entry :: 0 comments Stable link is https://jl.ly/Internet/notport.html 19 Sep 2022 Why Facebook is not a common carrier Internet The ever-entertaining Fifth Circuit has recently upheld a strange Texas law that forbids most kinds of social media moderation. (Techdirt explains many of the reasons the court is wrong, so I won't try.) This brings us to the trendy question of whether Facebook, Twitter, et al. should be treated as common carriers. See more ...   posted at: 19:55 :: permanent link to this entry :: 1 comments Stable link is https://jl.ly/Internet/common.html 06 Mar 2022 How not to take Russia off the Internet Internet Last week the Ukrainian government sent a letter to ICANN asking them to revoke the “.ru”, “.рф” and “.su” top-level domains. It also said they were asking RIPE, which manages IP addresses in Europe, to revoke Russian IP addresses. Both ICANN and RIPE said no. Other people have explained why it would have been a policy disaster, but beyond that, neither would actually have worked. See more ...   posted at: 22:25 :: permanent link to this entry :: 1 comments Stable link is https://jl.ly/Internet/notru.html

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