Why Has It Taken Over 30 Years For Law Makers To Finally Wake Up To The Internet?
Finally, it seems, that law makers are catching up with the Internet … but is it too late? This week we heard that Ofcom will now fine Internet Service Providers (ISPs) if they host objectionable content. And where the EARN IT Act in the US aims to clamp down on ISPs:
And so, for over 30 years of the Web’s existence, it has basically run wild and policed itself, but now new laws are coming its way, and the days of self policing are gone [my interview this week: here].
At the core of this freedom is Section 230 and which ruled whether ISPs were just hosters of content and not publishers. The ruling defined that ISPs were not be responsible for the content they hosted, and led to the 26 words that made the Internet:
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.
But the rampant abuse of the Web has led to a bashlash, and now fines are coming the way of…
