Jan 07 2020 31 mins 1.9k
The potential for real war in 2020 might make the trade disputes of 2019 seem quaint and distant. But cast your mind back, if you can, to three weeks ago, when the fate of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement seemed to rest in part on a semi-obscure passage of the 1996 Communications Decency Act. It says online platforms are not legally liable for what people say or do in the spaces they run. Trillions of dollars in company valuation and the sharing of content as we know it rests on the rule, which would expand to Mexico and Canada under the trade deal. So is it time to revisit Section 230? If you got rid of it, what kind of rules would replace it? And what platforms would even be left? Last summer, we asked Jeff Kosseff, a professor of cybersecurity law at the U.S. Naval Academy and the author of “The 26 Words That Created the Internet.”
