MIT’s Tech Review has an article this week which is presented as a news article claiming (questionably) that “the US now hosts more child sexual abuse material (CSAM) online than any other country,” and claiming that unless we pass the EARN IT Act, “the problem will only grow.” The problem is that the article is rife with false or misleading claims that the reporter didn’t apparently fact check.
The biggest problem with the article is that it blames this turn of events on two things: a bunch of “prolific CSAM sites” moving their servers from the Netherlands to the US and then… Section 230.
The second is that internet platforms in the US are protected by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which means they can’t be sued if a user uploads something illegal. While there are exceptions for copyright violations and material related to adult sex work, there is no exception for CSAM.
So, this is the claim that many people make, but a reporter in a respectable publication should not be making it, because it’s just flat out wrong. Incredibly, the reporter points out that there are “exceptions” for copyright violations, but she fails to note that the exception that she names, 230(e)(2), comes after another exception, 230(e)(1), which literally says:
(1) No effect on criminal law
Nothing in this section shall be construed to impair the enforcement of section 223 or 231 of this title, chapter 71 (relating to obscenity) or...
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