New Video Gives ‘Crash Course’ in Dangers of Senate’s EARN IT Act

LOS ANGELES—In July, the Senate Judiciary Committee voted to advance a new law aimed at rolling back online free speech protections to the full Senate. The law, known as the “Eliminating Abuse and Rampant Neglect of Interactive Technology Act” — or EARN IT — would cut the protections currently guaranteed by Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act, and instead force online platforms to “earn” back those free speech guarantees. The companies would “earn” their protections by proving that they adhere to “best practices related to identifying and reporting online child sexual exploitation.” As a result, the proposed law has been met with alarm by the adult industry, with sex workers warning that “this bill could facilitate the conviction of sex workers for crimes unrelated to human trafficking. Surveillance and red flags would not be limited to sexual content that seems violent or abusive,” according to a post by the advocacy group Decriminalize Sex Work.  But the planned legislation, as well as the debate around Section 230 itself, can be complex and confusing. To help out, the site TechDirt this week posted a new video featuring technology attorney Cathy Gellis and Stanford University’s Riana Pfefferkorn — Associate Director of Surveillance and Cybersecurity at Stanford’s Center for Internet and Society — explaining in detail why the EARN IT Act poses a threat to online freedoms. View the video below. “The biggest problem with all the proposals to reform Section 230 is that way too many people don't understand why they are a terrible idea,” wrote Gellis, introducing the video on the TechDirt site. “And the EARN IT bill is one of the worst of the worst, because it does not just break Section 230 but also so much more, yet too many people remain oblivious to the issues.” In addition to offering a primer on the EARN IT Act, and the “terrible and the specific damage it would do to encryption and civil liberties,” the video starts with a “crash course” in Section 230 “and how it does the important work it does in protecting the online ecosystem,” Gellis wrote. Viewers of the video should note that though the image appears to go dark toward the beginning of the video, fast-forwarding to the 3:20 mark continues the video. Photo by Pixabay