
Hollywood's support For SESTA is about filtering the Internet - cft
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20180318/00493539444/hollywoods-behind-the-scenes-support-sesta-is-all-about-filtering-internet.shtml
======
zeth___
The problem now is that it's not only the traditional media companies that
support this, it's google, twitter, facebook and the like.

They are big enough that they can eat the cost of censorship and don't care if
they become worse services, so long as no new services arise to take their
place. And with laws like this in place they never will.

The single biggest hurdle I found to building a distributed search engine was
the various illegal materials all over the world. Be it insults to religion,
hate speech, copyrighted material, child pornography, all need to be copied
onto a local machine to be indexed and categorized. In most countries this
would lead the police to come knocking. Any case will (probably) eventually be
ruled to be legal, but the average user will never be able to deal with the
case since they will probably go bankrupt long before a victory.

Even the people who set out to run a system like tor, knowing full well what
the risks are, as a form of mild civil disobedience eventually fold [0].

[0] [https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/5394ax/the-
operat...](https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/5394ax/the-operators)

~~~
jolmg
> ... copyrighted material...

Isn't the majority (if not the whole) of the web copywrited? It seems like
part of the reason why Google has monopoly over search is because search by
crawling and indexing is fundamentally illegal. It also seems like the reason
they're not prosecuted is because they're so big and useful that no website
owner minds that their site is crawled by Google, even though most of them set
Terms and Conditions in place that forbid crawling, scraping, or otherwise
automated compilation of information from their site. It's a double standard.

~~~
ghaff
Yes, almost everything on the web is copyrighted with the exception of content
from governments that do not copyright content that they create and material
that is out of copyright.

It is unclear that crawling and indexing are a violation of copyright. A
library card catalog does not violate the copyright of the material it
indexes. If you don't want to be indexed, you can just put the appropriate
entry in robots.txt and all the major search engines will comply.

Caches are on shakier ground and archives like the IA are on shakier ground
yet. Pretty much everyone turns a blind eye however because it's useful and
again you can always opt out with robots.txt.

~~~
slededit
The real problem is that a large majority of sites do permissions by bot,
whitelisting only google and possibly bing while excluding all others.

Further if you actually try to crawl a website you'll find yourself blackholed
by a lot of websites pretty quickly.

------
mncharity
> “I’m a guy who doesn’t see anything good having come from the Internet,”
> said Sony Pictures Entertainment chief executive officer Michael Lynton.
> “Period.” (2009)[1]

Later also CEO Sony Entertainment, and COB Snapchat.

> At a breakfast cohosted by the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications
> at Syracuse University and The New Yorker Thursday, Lynton wasn’t just
> trying for a laugh: He complained the Internet has “created this notion that
> anyone can have whatever they want at any given time. It’s as if the stores
> on Madison Avenue were open 24 hours a day. They feel entitled. They say,
> ‘Give it to me now,’ and if you don’t give it to them for free, they’ll
> steal it.”

> Lynton tried out another simile. Referring to the Obama administration’s
> goal to spread broadband access without, he said, regulating piracy, Lynton
> compared it with building highway systems without speed limits or driver’s
> licenses. “We do need rules of the road,”

US society is composed of many little overlapping subcultures. With diverse
views. Often with major groupthink and filter bubbles. And some stable for
decades.

[1] [http://wwd.com/business-news/media/memo-pad-uniqlo-nabs-
deyn...](http://wwd.com/business-news/media/memo-pad-uniqlo-nabs-deyn-bad-
internet-classic-martha-2136751/)

~~~
tehwebguy
This guy sounds like one of the most dangerous people on earth.

~~~
api
He sounds like anyone else whose culture and livelihood is threatened. If/when
the current tech culture is severely undermined by change most people on this
board will sound like that.

------
drawkbox
_Every rock you lift up in looking at where SESTA 's support has come from,
you magically find Hollywood people scurrying quietly around. We've already
noted that much of the initial support for SESTA came from a group whose then
board chair was a top lobbyist for News Corp.. And, as we reported last month,
after a whole bunch of people we spoke to suggested that much of the support
for SESTA was being driven by former top News Corp. lobbyist, Rick Lane, we
noticed that a group of people who went around Capitol Hill telling Congress
to support SESTA publicly thanked their "partner" Rick Lane for showing them
around._

 _In other words, it 's not just Hollywood seeing a bill that gets them what
it wants and suddenly speaking up in favor of it... this is Hollywood helping
to make this bill happen in the first place as part of its ongoing effort to
remake the internet away from being a communications medium for everyone, and
into a broadcast/gatekeeper dominated medium where it gets to act as the
gatekeeper._

Full on attack on the internet and people's right to share content and ideas,
basically an attack on people's 'life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness'.

Tie this in with the Marriott person fired for 'liking' a post on accident, or
on purpose really, that was driven by China not wanting the company to
recognize Tibet, and China's large investments in Hollywood and Hollywood's
appeasement of those aims, and you have a scary situation where internet
content and thoughts could be regulated by people in more authoritarian
regimes around the world.

Hollywood used to spread ideas of liberty, living a good life and democracy,
now we have them actively exploiting side issues for their aim of content
filtering, and we have other countries dictating what free people can do with
the internet, full on attack on freedoms and a strike against progress and the
idea of 'life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness'.

~~~
danharaj
> Hollywood used to spread ideas of liberty and living a good life, now we
> have them actively exploiting side issues for their aim of content
> filtering, and we have other countries dictating what free people can do
> with the internet, full on attack.

Hollywood was never so nice

~~~
drawkbox
Question: without Hollywood movies/tv, do you think the West would be looked
upon and desired to come here as much?

Hollywood can explain tough society situations through a conduit story that
can lessen people's biases when it is a fictional story. It can help
understanding and has been a huge part of the American Dream marketing that
makes people want to come to the US and contribute.

Entertainment and education are two of the things the US attracts people with
besides opportunity. Part of that opportunity is built by Hollywood or at
least the perception of it.

Movies and TV are an escape but also show what it is like to live others lives
or come away enlightened, maybe not so much with the consolidated companies of
today but back in the day for sure.

Take a look at the history of United Artists and Charlie Chaplin influence for
a take on this [1].

[1]
[https://www.theguardian.com/film/2008/feb/23/film](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2008/feb/23/film)

------
zombieprocesses
"this is Hollywood helping to make this bill happen in the first place as part
of its ongoing effort to remake the internet away from being a communications
medium for everyone, and into a broadcast/gatekeeper dominated medium where it
gets to act as the gatekeeper."

Agreed. People have been saying this for years.

It isn't just hollywood. The news media, the political elites, NGOs, etc are
supporting this for the same reason. It's also the reason for the attacks
against social media and the push against net neutrality.

Instead of the internet/social media/search engines/etc being a medium where
people proactively communicate and look for things that interest them. These
corporatists and politicians want the internet to be a medium of broadcast
where they choose what you see and how you communicate.

It's been a going on for years. Look at how google now filters search and how
youtube pushes their content. Look at all the content being removed from
reddit. And soon ISPs will start throttling content they disagree with.

The people with money and power want this so it'll continue to happen. And
they aren't doing it all at once. They are doing it in stages. Each iteration,
there is more censorship. Us mere mortals can't do anything about it. Sadly,
it's happening all over the world now. Europe, Russia, China, etc are all
turning the internet from a medium of open and free communication to a
broadcasting platform.

------
salawat
Well... This is one reason why tech literacy is so critically important. As
long as it's a privileged few in the grand scheme of things who can add things
to the Internet, it makes it that much easier to control.

It's why many countries are so fond of regulating manufacturing. When you
strip access to the means of production from the everyman and lock it behind
regulatory barriers, it's far easier to control what can and can't be done.

Not a pitch for any ideology. Merely an observation.

~~~
bitxbitxbitcoin
Reads well as a pitch for tech literacy, which I wholeheartedly support!

------
psidium
Man, you (Americans) are having the time of your life in regards of Internet
freedom. Net neutrality went down, SESTA, CLOUD...

And you're just about to enter a trade war with China! Talk about a shot in
the foot...

I'm not saying that everywhere else is nice, i.e. Deep Learning is barely
legal for commercial use in Europe with GPDR!

But man, the weather is not nice...

~~~
ShabbosGoy
> I'm not saying that everywhere else is nice, i.e. Deep Learning is barely
> legal for commercial use in Europe with GPDR!

Wasn’t aware of that. What is the reason for it? To protect consumer privacy?

~~~
psidium
GPDR has a clause that requires companies that uses data from the EU to
explain exactly how they used the data and how the algorithm reach the
conclusion it did. Deep Learning is currently a black box where you train it
and it knows what to do, but we can't explain exactly how it did it.

[https://www.kdnuggets.com/2018/03/gdpr-machine-learning-
ille...](https://www.kdnuggets.com/2018/03/gdpr-machine-learning-illegal.html)

edit:typo

~~~
Doxin
That's assuming that the explanation that decision came from a neural network
isn't enough. Same way you wouldn't have to explain the physics of a coin toss
if you'd use that as decision maker.

------
mncharity
Here are _' sex trafficking hollywood'_ (newest) search links for NYT, WaPo,
WSJ, and LA Times.[1]

At present, there's zilch. WSJ focuses on plaintiff attorneys.[2] :) LA Times
seems to only have an editorial[3], which swipes at big tech, but is
surprisingly competent.

I've formed an impression of the big press, NYT et al, in contrast to say
industrial/professional media, that even when they manage to get facts right,
they pervasively manage miss the point. It reminds me of coverage of
unfamiliar foreign cultures, after the local foreign bureau has closed.
Context, and reality check, and insight, and clue, all become unavailable.
Even here, even dealing with their familiar political DC subculture.

[1]
[https://www.nytimes.com/search/sex%20trafficking%20hollywood...](https://www.nytimes.com/search/sex%20trafficking%20hollywood/newest)
[https://www.washingtonpost.com/newssearch/?query=sex%20traff...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/newssearch/?query=sex%20trafficking%20hollywood&sort=Date&datefilter=All%20Since%202005)
[https://www.wsj.com/search/term.html?KEYWORDS=sex%20traffick...](https://www.wsj.com/search/term.html?KEYWORDS=sex%20trafficking%20hollywood)
[http://www.latimes.com/search/?q=sex+trafficking+hollywood](http://www.latimes.com/search/?q=sex+trafficking+hollywood)
[2] [https://www.wsj.com/articles/political-sex-trafficking-
explo...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/political-sex-trafficking-
exploitation-1520035315) [3] [http://www.latimes.com/opinion/editorials/la-ed-
sex-traffick...](http://www.latimes.com/opinion/editorials/la-ed-sex-
trafficking-online-20180306-story.html)

------
jdavis703
All we can hope for is every stockholder of UGC companies like Facebook and
Twitter wind up getting sued under this law. Otherwise this law will be
arbitrarily applied to only select companies.

------
IAmEveryone
This is a rather wild conspiracy theory. Note that the lobbyist in question no
longer works for News Corp. Lobbyists are basically defined as “opinion for
money”, so the reverse should also be true: when you no longer pay them, it’s
unlikely they’ll continue to work for you.

The connection becomes even more tenuous when you realize that News Corp isn’t
actually “Hollywood”. Yes, they used to own 21th Century Fox, but that was
sold last year.

Instead of trying to find some sinister motivation underlying people’s
actions, it may be more useful to actually listen to them. It seems entirely
believable that people privy to the details of human trafficking and sexual
exploitation develop rather strong opinions on the subject. That conviction
may lead them to advocating policies you may disagree with, especially when
they see companies turning a blind eye to obvious underage sex trafficking on
their platforms.

So do engage with their arguments and make a better case. But don’t belittle
their concerns with hamfisted conspiracy theories.

~~~
cornholio
> obvious underage sex trafficking on their platforms.

Where and how does this happen? Do you have data? Can you cite a single
instance of a pedophile ring was using open platforms in an "obvious" fashion
to promote their product - as opposed to darknet/secret forums that don't care
about SESTA? In the unlikely cases where it does happen, how do you think the
majority of sex-service consumers would react to being offered underage sex?

This seems to be a classic example of using a fringe issue - online pedophiles
- to justify a major encroachment against civil liberties. In this case driven
by a puritanical position that in fact wants to declare war against all forms
of prostitution.

With the only practical effect of waging war against the prostitutes
themselves by denying them access to online platforms and pushing them
straight into the hands of organized human trafficking rings. The consumers
will not stop demanding sex services and they will get them somehow.

Here what sexworkers themselves have to say about it:
[http://www.new.swopusa.org/2018/03/02/house-passing-of-
misle...](http://www.new.swopusa.org/2018/03/02/house-passing-of-misleading-
fosta-bill-causes-country-wide-outrage/)

~~~
IAmEveryone
"Backpage" was the name I believe. The was plenty of evidence of their
collaboration, including the rewording of ads to make it less obvious how
young, exactly, the girls on offer were.

Note that even though my comment above received the full ire of HN, I do not
necessarily support this legislation. I just think the article's game of
7-degrees-of-seperation and guilt by association are fundamentally weak
arguments.

