The number people can’t stop talking about
If two is company then 300 is a crowd
It's a big week of tech policy releases at the CGO. We have four working papers on Section 230 and a new Research in Focus paper on the app store marketplace.
The 26 words that created the internet
230, as in Section 230, may be the most talked about number in the coming months. Not only is the Supreme Court hearing a case—Gonzalez v. Google—related to Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act, but our latest research bonanza covers the law from many angles.
What is Section 230 in 23 words? Known as the 26 words that created the internet, Section 230 provides internet platforms with immunity from the potential liability of content generated by a third party.
Our latest research
In Section 230: A Retrospective, Former Representative Christopher Cox, coauthor of the original Section 230 statute, looks back at how the law came to be, how it actually works, and how it can be improved. A must read!
In Assuming Good Faith Online, Eric Goldman suggests that internet companies can still navigate the dilemma of balancing good-faith and bad-faith activity–so long as regulators don’t lock down all expression on these platforms.
In Disrupting the Narrative: Diving Deeper into Section 230 Political Discourse, Koustubh “K.J.” Bagchi, Elizabeth Banker, and Ife Ogunleye explain the narrative around Section 230 reform and how Section 230 actually helps tech companies fight misinformation and abuse.
In The Decentralized Web and the Future of Section 230 Andrea O’Sullivan argues that Section 230 has become a red herring in the debate over free speech online and that decentralizing technologies will ultimately maximize user control.
Two’s company, three hundred’s a crowd
Jessica Melugin, Director of the Center for Technology and Innovation at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, wrote a brief overview of the app store marketplace and the implications for current policy proposals to regulate that market. The main point? There's a lot more to the issue than just Apple and Google. It's a paper that provides a very important yet under-researched aspect of the app store competition debate.
What I am reading
With the partisan balance of the 118th Congress almost decided, our team is looking at what that means for tech policy. Will Rinehart spoke with Politico about what China, interest rates, and Congress mean for investments in technology and abundance.