Comment by tVoss42
5 years ago
This is precisely what Trump's executive order targets. Section 230 of the CDA gave websites and social media networks a little wiggle room in the platform vs publisher stance. They could moderate as they see fit without being liable for the content on their sites. Now that's being weakening, or more precisely becoming more well defined by the FCC. There will be strict requirements to be considered a platform, one example of which is needing to have a well defined terms of service and strictly follow that all across the board.
This is incorrect. Section 230 does protect certain entities. It removes liability from certain types of content.
A website that contains both first party and third party content has section 230 protection on the third party content, but none on the first party content. There is no legal basis for the idea of "publisher" as different from "platform". If a website makes a modification to a specific piece of content, they may lose section 230 protections over that particular piece of content, but they retain it on all other 3rd party content.
The FCC cannot change the requirements to gain "platform protection" because there are none, because section 230 applies to content (like a tweet), not entities (like "Twitter").
One thing I've always been curious about - if a site receives third party content, but also is assigned copyright to that submitted content as part of the T&C of submission, does that make it first party content? I would hope not, as I think the assignation of copyright does not imply the immediate ability for the site to review the content of that submission.
I'm not a lawyer, but no. Section 230 has nothing to do with copyright. It only asks if the content was created by a third party. Licensure doesn't change the creator.