The DC Appeals Court sided with Facebook and founder Mark Zuckerberg Friday in a case over several pages on Facebook, such as “Third Palestinian Intifada,” which called for Muslims to rise up and kill Jews. The ruling was based on the protections given to all Americans using the internet under a section of a 1996 law.

Three years ago, Klayman saw the Facebook page “Third Palestinian Intifada,” of which there were 360,000 members, as well as three similar, smaller pages, and complained to Facebook because the pages called for Muslims to rise up and kill Jews. After receiving a letter from Israel’s Minister for Public Diplomacy as well as from Klayman, Facebook removed the pages, but not fast enough, according to Klayman, who filed suit against Facebook and Zuckerberg. Klayman alleged that the delay of “many days” constituted intentional assulat and negligence.

Mark Zuckerberg

The district court which heard the suit found for Facebook and Zuckerberg on the basis of the Communications Decency Act (CDA) (1996), Section 230. Klayman appealed the decision, and Friday the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit upheld the decision of the district court.

“In enacting the Communications Decency Act,” wrote the court in its decision, “Congress found that the Internet and related computer services ‘represent an extraordinary advance in the availability of educational and informational resources,’ and ‘offer a forum for a true diversity of political discourse, unique opportunities for cultural development, and myriad avenues for

intellectual activity.”

The court concluded that Facebook and Zuckerberg–internet providers under Section 230–could not be held responsible for any content on their site(s), no matter how egregious it may seem to another user. “Facebook is not responsible for the actions, content, information, or data of third parties,” the court found.

“Congress accordingly made it the ‘policy of the United States’ to ‘promote the continued development of the Internet,’” the court continued, “and ‘to preserve the vibrant and competitive free market that presently exists for the Internet and other interactive computer services, unfettered by Federal or State regulation[.]‘”

The Communications Decency Act (CDA) was passed in 1996. It was in part an effort by the US Congress to regulate internet pornography, but in 1997 the US Supreme Court unanimously struck the “community standards” provision of the CDA in Reno v. ACLU because the provisions violated the First Amendment guarantee to freedom of speech.

Another part of the CDA, however, has been strengthened by court decisions over the years. Section 230 protects operators of internet services–such as Facebook–from being construed as publishers. Section 230 protects social media sites, ISPs and users by making them not liable for words posted on their sites by other people (except  regarding federal criminal liability and intellectual property). The section reads, “No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.” Providers are even protected if they fail to take action after receiving notifications that harmful or offensive content exists on their sites.

Section 230 is considered a main protection of free speech online. Last year, after 47 state attorneys general signed a letter to Congress requesting the civil immunity in Section 230 be removed, the ACLU wrote, “Section 230 is directly responsible for the free, messy, uncensored, and often brilliant culture of online speech. By prohibiting most state civil or criminal liability for something somebody else writes or posts, it created the single most important legal protection that exists for websites, bloggers, and other internet users… If Section 230 is stripped of its protections, it wouldn’t take long for the vibrant culture of free speech to disappear from the web.”

CADC

ACLU

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Further strictening of Russian internet law passed the legislature Monday, and is expected to further cool Russian internet expression, while Russian President Vladimir Putin explained the law in terms of “the way its done everywhere” to deal with the CIA-initiated internet, and thanked Edward Snowden for playing his part.

Under the law, commonly refereed to as the “bloggers law” because the owner of any website–referred to as a “blog” in the language of the bill–with a daily following of 3,000 or more, including social media followers such as those on Twitter and Facebook, will be forced to register a real identity and address with the government, and will be responsible for any content posted on the site, including its accuracy. Henceforward, no internet user with a basic amount of social media clout will be anonymous legally in Russia, and will be held to the same standards as mass media outlets, but without the protections granted regular media. The law is expected to have a cooling effect on expression on the internet in Russia.

Recently, two of Russia’s largest blogging services, Yandex and LiveJournal–announced that publicly visible counters would stop below the 3000 number.

The law also requires all online platforms–search engines and social networks–to maintain records of everything posted online for the previous six months. The records must be kept inside Russia. In is not clear in the law whether this provision covers Google, Twitter, Facebook, and other international social media.

The new internet regulations will take force August 1.

The legislature also ruled Monday that as of July 1, common swearing will no longer be allowed in movies, television, theater or music. The four words that were banned are those crudely denoting male and female genitalia, sex and prostitutes.

Russian President Vladimir Putin expressed his views of the internet a few weeks ago on a live national TV broadcast, saying, “You know that it all began initially, when the Internet first appeared, as a special C.I.A. project.” “Special services are still at the center of things,” Putin continued, and thanked American fugitive exile in Russia, whistleblower Edward Snowden, for showing the world the efficiency of NSA data collection.

Putin explained the new law, saying that anyone affecting thousands or more people with their opinions should be considered a media outlet, and said that this was “the way it is done all over the world.”

Comparing the new internet laws to the Chinese model, one prominent critic said, “It is part of the general campaign to shut down the Internet in Russia. They have not been able to control it until now, and they think they should implement the Chinese model. But they don’t understand how it works. The Chinese model also stimulates the development of local platforms, while the Russian laws are killing the local platform.”

China employs a policy of tightening censorship of the internet, and has banned all Western social media, including Google, Facebook, YouTube and twitter.

Sources:

The Wire

Land and Sea Journal

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Another major newspaper believes that the Russian government is paying internet users to spam the comments section under their articles with aggressive, provocative pro-Russian propaganda. UK’s The Guardian newspaper moderators believe this is an orchestrated campaign.

The Guardian moderators, who deal with 40,000 comments per day, and The Guardian users believe the Russian government is paying webizens to troll their papers, using denigrating and abusive terms against other commenters who criticize Russia or Russia’s President Vladimir Putin. The Guardian’s former Moscow correspondent, Luke Harding, is in no doubt about Russia’s internet campaign, calling it “a well-attested phenomenon in Russia.”

The Guardian reported on the problem as early as 2012. “A pro-Kremlin group runs a network of internet trolls, seeks to buy flattering coverage of Vladimir Putin and hatches plans to discredit opposition activists and media, according to private emails allegedly hacked by a group calling itself the Russian arm of Anonymous,” the paper reported.

The Atlantic also reported on the problem, in October 2013. The paper cited a St. Petersberg Times article about a woman who was interviewed for a job in a “comment-mill,” where workers were expected to and distribute politically supportive or discrediting social media posts.

The Atlantic also noted the prevalence of this abuse of social media, reporting that the NGO Freedom House had stated that the practice is widespread in 22 of the 60 countries it examines, led by China, Bahrain and Russia.

Sources:

The Guardian

The Atlantic

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Feb. 1, 2014, an amendment to Russia’s “On Information, Information Technologies and Information Protection” law took effect.  The amendment allows the government to restrict access to websites with content that calls for riots, extremist activities, and participation in mass public events.

The bill is part of a trend in Russian law which began with President Vladimir Putin’s election to a second term in 2012.  The amendment in question allows the government to silence not only national criticism–it does this through other laws, such as its 139-FZ (2012) censorship law–but also criticism anywhere else in the world.  The measure shields Russia from political dissent.

A commonly cited example is Facebook.  During Russia’s 2012 presidential election, Facebook was used to organize protests against Putin.  Using the newly amended bill, the government’s agency responsible for monitoring such threats, Roskomnadzor (an acronym for Federal Service for Supervision in Telecommunications, Information Technology and Mass Communications), can contact Facebook when it finds such material and request Facebook remove the material.  If Facebook does not remove the material, Russia can block the site nationwide.

Roskomnadzor has had some success.  YouTube took videos, but filed a lawsuit in a Russian court to seek a finding that a video was not offensive (a video showing how to make fake cut-wounds).  Facebook removed a suicide-themed user group called “Club Suicid,” but stated that they had removed the video because it violated their terms of use, not because of the Russian legislation.  Facebook does block some content from some nations, such as Holocaust denial from Germany and France and defamation of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk in Turkey.  Twitter removed posts that seemed to be related to drug deals and promoting suicidal thoughts.

The rationale for the bill was terrorism.  Child pornography, suicide encouragement, and drug information are also used to legitimize this category of legislation.  Roskomnadzor began by singling out only distressing material, such as real encouragement of suicide, child pornography and terrorism.  However, on March 13, 2014, several independent news sites were blocked.

Highbeam Business

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The Russian internet censorship bill, officially titled “On Amendments to Federal Law On Protecting Children from Information Harmful to Their Health and the Development and Certain Legislative Acts of the Russian Federation” (139-FZ of 2012-07-28) passed the Russian Duma in 2012.  It passed unanimously with support from all four parties.  441 out of 450 deputies voted to support the bill.  The bill had raced through the Duma, less than a week after the initial June 6 reading of the amendments and its June 11 third reading and passage.

The bill created a registry–or “blacklist.”  The registry was  a “uniform registry of domain names and (or) the universal locators to pages of sites on the Internet and network addresses of sites on the Internet that contain information prohibited to spread in the Russian Federation.”  Any site found to have information that was prohibited would be put on the registry.

The qualifications to be put on the registry were two, broadly.  First, federal executive authorities could decide to register a site if they found the site contained child pornography, almost any information relating to drugs, or almost any information about suicide.  Second, a court decision could place a site on a registry if the site had information found to be prohibited to be spread in Russia.  The federal agency appointed to monitor websites and the courts–which already have authority to ban material that violates Russian legislation–can add items to the blacklist.  Appeals to convictions can only be made within a three-month period.

The bill had originally included “extremist” online content, but the Duma removed this portion in the bill’s third reading.

Upon being found to qualify for registry, the owner of the site is to be notified within days, and must remove all content found to be prohibited within days.  If the hosting provider or the owner of the site fail to restrict access, the site’s network address is added to the government’s registry (even though the same IP can be used for thousands of sites).

Criticism of the bill was voiced this way by the Presidential Council for the Development of Civil Society Institutions and Human Rights:

“The bill is not aimed at combating the causes of illegal content and its distribution on the Internet and will not contribute to the effectiveness of law enforcement and prosecution of criminals, who will be able to migrate resources from illegal content in other domains and IP addresses. At the same time, many bona fide Internet resources with legal content may be affected by the mass blocking, since the system would impose severe restrictions on the basis of subjective criteria and assessments, which will make the Russian jurisdiction extremely unattractive for Internet businesses.”

By Day Blakely Donaldson

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