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posted by Fnord666 on Tuesday July 07 2020, @09:23PM   Printer-friendly
from the Mister-Potato-Head!-MISTER-POTATO-HEAD!!-Back-doors-are-not-secrets! dept.

You may be distracted by the pandemic but FYI: US Senate panel OK's backdoors-by-the-backdoor EARN IT Act

An amended version of America's controversial proposed EARN IT Act has been unanimously approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee – a key step in its journey to becoming law. This follows a series of changes and compromises that appear to address critics' greatest concerns while introducing fresh problems.

The draft legislation [PDF] is nominally supposed to help rid the web of child sexual abuse material (CSAM) by altering Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which strongly shields websites and apps, like Facebook and Twitter, from liability regardless of whatever their users share on those platforms, plus or minus some caveats. The proposed law rather ignored the fact that Section 230 already doesn't protect internet giants if their netizens upload illegal content, though.

Initial drafts of the law also contained two proposals that raised serious concerns from a broad range of groups and organizations. Firstly, the creation of a new 19-person committee that would be led by the Attorney General and dominated by law enforcement which would create content rules that tech companies would have to follow to retain legal protections. Secondly, and the suggestion that has security folks up in arms, is that those rules could require tech companies to provide Feds-only access to encrypted communications.

The idea is that companies would have to "earn" their legal shield – hence the name of the bill, EARN IT – by following the best practices created by the committee.

Following significant pushback on those points, the Judiciary Committee made changes aimed at gaining the full approval of all its members. In the now-OK'd version of the bill, the commission, called the National Commission on Online Child Sexual Exploitation Prevention, would still create its rules but it would be "voluntary" for online platforms to follow them. Instead, if tech companies did follow the commission's rules, it "would be a defense in any civil suit," said committee chair Lindsay Graham (R-SC).

Concerns over the law being used to force tech companies to introduce encryption backdoors led to an amendment [PDF], put forward by Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT), that stated online platforms won't face civil or criminal liability if they are unable to break end-to-end encryption in their own services.

Taken together, the amendments are intended to attract wide congressional support for the bill, and pave the way to open up Section 230. And in this instance, it worked, with the committee green-lighting the revised version by 22-0 votes on Thursday, allowing it to progress a little further toward the statute books.

However, privacy advocates and tech titans, as well as some lawmakers, remain strongly opposed to the law. For one, the proposed commission will not be made up of elected officials, and will still be able to create rules that do not need congressional approval, putting an extraordinary amount of censorship power into the hands of very few people with limited accountability.


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  • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 08 2020, @04:52AM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 08 2020, @04:52AM (#1018067)

    The current copy protection laws were passed unilaterally by corporations. It was Disney that extended copy protection terms. The one sided penalty structure was passed because corporations lobbied for them. The fact that it's now opt out, and not opt in, was also passed due to Hollywood. Not due to protests by artists and not due to public pressure.

    This is supposed to be a democracy. For IP extremists to support the undemocratic passage of laws shows the character of those that support these extreme laws. and I don't trust the character of those that support undemocratically passed laws to tell me that they are in my best interest. I have absolutely zero reason to and I have zero reason to believe these laws were passed in my best interest or the best interests of artists.

    Not saying IP is completely bad. But it should not be one sided.

    1: Term limits need to be substantially shortened. Retroactively.
    2: The penalty structure needs to be less one sided. Stronger penalties for false takedowns. More reasonable penalties for infringement.
    3: It needs to be opt in and not opt out. The LOC should store a copy so that when it hits the public domain it can be publicly available.
    4: Copy'right' needs to be renamed. It's not a right. A more appropriate name needs to be found.

    Perhaps Soylentnews, Techdirt, the EFF, or Public knowledge should host a petition. They should also list the number of signatures. As the number of signatures increases over the years it will bring more and more awareness of the issue to everyone.

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  • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 08 2020, @06:32AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 08 2020, @06:32AM (#1018089)

    > Copy'right' needs to be renamed. It's not a right. A more appropriate name needs to be found.

    Imaginary monopoly.