Why Is Hollywood Pushing A Totally Bogus Push Poll Trying To Undermine The Internet?
If you've spent time on Facebook lately, you may have come across the following advertisement:
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The ad is from "CreativeFuture", an MPAA front group that pretends to be representing the interests of "artists" but miraculously only seems to promote the extreme viewpoints of the giant Hollywood studios (imagine that). The group is often the go to quote for the copyright extremist position -- and has a history of basically blaming technology for Hollywood's own failures to adapt.
Not surprisingly, then, that it's now running this highly unscientific "survey" with a bunch of ridiculous leading questions, to try to argue that internet companies aren't doing enough and that Congress should destroy the laws that protect the open internet. You can check out the survey yourself, but let's dig into the questions and just how leading and/or silly they are.
It starts off with the following preamble:
In recent months, there has been rapidly growing concern in Washington, in the press, and among members of the public over the lack of responsibility shown by the major internet platforms (including Google and Facebook) toward potentially illegal activity taking place on their services.
From sex trafficking to foreign influence on our elections, from privacy to piracy, it has become increasingly clear that more needs to be done – by the internet platforms themselves, and possibly by the U.S. government – to ensure platform responsibility.
Note the use of "sex trafficking." For the most part, Hollywood has been trying to hide the fact that it's been one of the biggest supporters of SESTA, the fake law that pretends its targeting sex traffickers, but is really targeting the internet. It's kind of rich for an industry that includes Harvey Weinstein, Woody Allen and Roman Polanski among its biggest "names" to be complaining about sex trafficking.
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From here on it, I'll just post the text instead of screenshots, but I'll include the above so you can see what it looks like in case it magically disappears after this post goes Live.
1. There is growing evidence that the major internet platforms are being used for purposes that may violate U.S. laws. Should the major internet platforms take responsibility for these uses of their services?
That's a broad and incredibly leading (and misleading) question. Lots of tools are used to violate US laws. This includes cars and telephones. But we don't call for Ford to take responsibility for the fact that people speed, or for AT&T to take responsibility for the fact that someone phones in a bomb threat. That's not how it works. But, of course, if you don't know any of that and just think "oh, bad stuff is happening, of course someone should take responsibility" gullible people are going to vote "yes." You could just as easily rephrase the question as "Bad people sometimes use the internet too. Should that be the fault of Google and Facebook that they don't magically make bad people good?" Such a question would be equally as meaningful.
2. Recently, the major internet platforms opposed the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act (SESTA) because they want to avoid responsibility or legal liability for such uses of their services. Do you believe that the major internet platforms need to do more to stop sex trafficking on their services?
First of all, this isn't entirely accurate. As we've discussed, the Internet Association and especially Facebook have been supportive of SESTA. And the reason that other (smaller) platforms have opposed SESTA is not because "they want to avoid responsibility or legal liability," but because they know why that's a really dangerous plan that will create lots of problems unrelated to sex trafficking while actually making the problem of sex trafficking worse. As we've discussed at great length -- and which the team at Creative Futures would admit if they had an intellectually honest bone in their bodies -- the problem with SESTA is that it creates a moderator's dilemma. It will lead some sites to stop moderating entirely to avoid the "knowledge" standard in the bill. And it will cause others to censor with wild abandon to try to avoid any and all liability, no matter how ridiculous. Of course, coming from Hollywood -- an industry famous for sending tons of bogus DMCA takedowns -- widespread censorship of legitimate content apparently isn't a big deal. Hollywood should be fighting for the First Amendment, not shitting all over it.
3. The major internet platforms benefit greatly from the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) of 1998 and the Communications Decency Act (CDA) of 1996, two 20-year-old laws that were intended to give the then-fledgling internet the opportunity to grow. Today, the major global internet platforms – companies like Facebook, Google, and Twitter – use these laws to avoid taking responsibility for the content they deliver to consumers or help them find, and from which they make immense profits. Given the tremendous growth of the internet in the last 20 years, do you believe it is time to reconsider the DMCA and the CDA?
Hilarious. Remember, the DMCA was pushed for by Hollywood back in the 1990s. They even went so far as to route around Congress (who refused to give them the DMCA) and get it into a trade agreement in Geneva, forcing Congress to pass the DMCA to "comply with our international obligations." For Hollywood to now whine about the DMCA that they pushed so hard for is hilarious. Separately, the "reason" given in this question about why Congress passed both the DMCA and CDA 230 is not at all accurate. Hollywood engaging in historical revisionism? What a surprise! The reason for both laws was not to let the fledgling internet grow. It was to properly place liability on those actually breaking the law. Yes, growing the internet was cited in the debate for both, but because anyone with common sense could see that falsely putting liability on websites for actions of users would be a disaster for the internet -- whether its in its early days or end-times.
4. Do you believe that services like Facebook, Google, and Twitter should take greater responsibility for the use of their platforms to promote false and misleading news articles?
Does Hollywood really want to call out others for "promoting false and misleading" information? Does no one in Hollywood know anything about Hollywood's own history of propaganda and fake news? Either way, once again, what CreativeFuture is pushing here is misleading and ridiculous. The people creating fake news are responsible for creating fake news. Making a tool that they use "responsible" for it would be like making the guy who built the printing press responsible for fake news propaganda published in newspapers. That's not how it works.
5. Do you believe that services like Facebook, Google, and Twitter should take greater responsibility to ensure that foreign agents cannot use their platforms for political advertising or influence?
Great. Now Hollywood is trying to argue that Google and Facebook should block foreigners from using its platforms. Lovely. As we pointed out when the Mueller indictment of Russian trolls came out, they went to incredible lengths to hide the fact that they were Russian. People looking to abuse the system will always figure out ways around blocks -- and it's not like Google and Facebook and others haven't been pressured already to do more, just in the court of public opinion.
6. Do you believe that services like Facebook, Google, Twitter, and others should take greater responsibility for protecting the privacy of their users?
This one's a layup. Who's actually going to say no to this? Everyone's going to say yes, but no one will discuss the details or what it means. Besides, is Hollywood really positioning itself as the bastion of protecting privacy? The same Hollywood that couldn't even protect Sony Pictures' emails from leaking all over the internet? And the same Hollywood where Harvey Weinstein was famous for running an army of spies to go after critics, and leaking personal information about them to the press? That same Hollywood?
7. Do you believe that services like Google, Facebook and Twitter should take greater responsibility for the use of their platforms to facilitate the illegal distribution of creative copyrighted movies, television shows, music, photography, and books?
What does "greater responsibility" even mean in this context? All of those sites have spent many, many, many millions of dollars to set up systems that go way beyond what the law requires to take down (or block from ever being posted) tons and tons of content. And, of course, to Hollywood, it's never enough. It can never be enough. But rather than get its own house in order, it just wants to blame the internet. Same old song.
8. Has the growing public attention to the failure of giant internet platforms like Facebook, Google, and Twitter to take responsibility for their role in facilitating illegal activities changed your opinion of the companies?
No. But the growing flailing by CreativeFuture and the MPAA has made it clear how desperate they've become.
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I can't wait for CreativeFuture to release the ridiculous "results" of this poll and pretend that it proves anything.
Also, irony of ironies: without CDA 230 it's quite unlikely that this ad or this survey would exist at all. SurveyMonkey relies heavily on CDA 230 to allow anyone to post whatever surveys they want -- without requiring it to be reviewed carefully before it went up. If SurveyMonkey needed each poll to be reviewed by an editor, SurveyMonkey wouldn't exist at all. Similarly, Facebook's ad platform would not be open to all to use, would likely be significantly more expensive and less useful and targeted. But, CreativeFuture doesn't know or doesn't seem to care about any of that, so long as it can push this extremist viewpoint against the Internet.
