Adam Theirer
Theirer: Scarcity no longer a useful rationale for regulating broadcast. Even FCC has said this in 2005 — staff paper, overlooked, but they said it!
Pacifica/seven dirty words; broadcasting “uniquely pervasive” for children..that was the rationale for second-class treatment of broadcast.
So now we've got abundance and policymakers are trying to figure out how to catch up and regulate anyway. Don't make fun of them — they're working on this. Efforts underway to apply old rationales of Pacifica to new technologies under the theory that everything is pervasive and uniquely accessible to children. In a way, that's true, and it is strange to impose sterner rules on broadcast (protecting adults from themselves). At any rate, playbook is to expand old rationales to include new technologies. So many proposals I can't even list them all (go look at cdt.org). It's stunning. New one would require NTIA and DoC to create labeling regime for all new web sites; mandatory XXX zoning; COPA; data retention and age verification…
That's where the real threats are — data retention. It's likely that something on this will come out of Congress, and something on age verification from state AGs. This is grave. We have been relying on courts to hold the line, and they've been doing well (but COPA could go either way).
I'm trying to take big tent approach to this issue, fighting for freedom of expression across all media platforms. Regulation of one platform means ALL will be regulated. So we need to work together. Policy makers are not stupid and they want to reach all of these new platforms. “We either hang together or hang separately.”
Question: What do you mean by data retention?
Theirer: ISPs and site would have to collect data on their customers, like IP address, for at least a year and maybe longer. It's already in place in EU, DOJ is enthusiastic. We don't know what problems this will create. There are agreements to retain for six to nine months or longer (voluntary agreements). Most of these sites will preserve on official request if there's a bad guy. Do we go from preservation to fullblown retention model? Good chance of this.
Age verification: requiring social network sites to authenticate identity of individuals for age. Even though nation has no infrastructure for identity. It won't work, will create false sense of security, but protecting kids is popular. Just debating AGs about this. They honestly believe that social networks are essentially evil. You have a moral panic out there. Adults have no idea and don't understand.
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