收回科技大公司的“免责金牌”

In the early days of the commercial internet, back in the mid 1990s, one of the things that technology platform companies lobbied hard for was the notion that they were like the town square — passive conduits for the actions of others, facilitating a variety of activities and thoughts, but not responsible for any of them. The idea was that the garage entrepreneurs starting message boards and chat rooms, or the nascent search engines, simply did not have the legal or economic bandwidth to monitor or be liable for the actions of users, and that to require them to do so would stymie the development of the internet itself.

回顾上世纪90年代中期，那是商业互联网的早期，提供网络平台服务的科技公司大力游说这样一个概念——它们就像是市镇广场，是被动承载他人行动的通道，为各种活动和思想交流提供便利，但不对其中任何活动负责。这里的理念是，这些从车库起家、创办了留言板、聊天室乃至当时新生的搜索引擎的创业家们，根本没有监测用户行为或者为其负责的法律或者经济“带宽”，而要求他们这么做将会扼杀互联网本身的发展。

How times have changed. Not only can the largest internet companies like Facebook and Google monitor nearly everything we do, they are also policing the net with increasing vigour. Witness the variety of actions taken by Facebook, Google, GoDaddy and PayPal, in the wake of racially charged violence in Charlottesville, to block or ban rightwing hate groups from their platforms.

时代发生了多么巨大的变化。不仅Facebook和谷歌(Google)等各大互联网公司几乎能够监测我们的一举一动，它们还以日益高涨的热情当起了网络警察。看一看夏洛茨维尔(Charlottesville)爆发种族主义暴力事件后Facebook、谷歌、GoDaddy和PayPal的反应吧，这些公司纷纷采取行动，从它们的平台上屏蔽或者禁止右翼仇恨团体。

You can argue that this is laudable, or not, depending on your relative concern about hate speech versus free speech. But there’s a key business issue that has been missed in all the hoopla. It is one that was summarised well by Matthew Prince, the chief executive of Cloudflare, a web-infrastructure company that dropped the rightwing Daily Stormer website as a client, under massive public pressure and against the firm’s own stated policies. “I woke up in a bad mood and decided someone shouldn’t be allowed on the internet,” said Mr Prince following the decision. “No one should have that power.”

取决于你更担心仇恨言论，还是更担心言论自由，你可以说这些行动值得称赞，或不然。事情闹得沸沸扬扬，但有一个关键的商业问题被遗漏了。网络基础设施公司Cloudflare的首席执行官马修•普林斯(Matthew Prince)很好地总结了这一点。在巨大的公众压力下，尽管有违Cloudflare声明的政策，该公司依然赶走了一家客户——右翼网站Daily Stormer。“我某天早上醒来时心情不好，然后决定有人不应该被允许在互联网上发声，”普林斯在做出这一决定之后说，“没人应该有这种权力。”

Powerful tech companies do. Yet they also continue to benefit, in the US at least, from laws that treat them as “special” and allow them to get around all sorts of legal issues that companies in every other kind of business have to grapple with. This amounts to billions of dollars in corporate subsidies to the world’s most powerful industry.

强大的科技公司有这种权力。然而，这些科技公司依然受益于(至少在美国是如此)给予它们“特殊”待遇的法律，后者让它们绕过其他行业的公司都不得不应付的法律问题。这相当于给世界上最强大的行业提供了数十亿美元的企业补贴。

The golden goose is a little-known bit of Federal Trade Commission legislation. Section 230 of the Communications and Decency Act (CDA) was crafted in 1996 to allow tech firms exemption from liability for nearly all kinds of illegal content or actions perpetrated by their users (there are a few small carveouts for things like copyright violations and rare federal criminal prosecutions). In recent years, the tech industry has thrown a tremendous amount of money and effort into ensuring that it maintains section 230 as a “get out of jail free” card.

这些科技公司的法宝就是联邦贸易委员会(Federal Trade Commission)的法规里一个鲜为人知的部分。1996年出台的《通信内容端正法》(CDA)第230条让科技公司对用户的几乎所有非法内容和行为免责(除了类似版权侵犯和极少的联邦刑事检控等少数几个例外)。近年来，科技行业投入大量资金和精力，来确保230条款能继续当它们的“免罪金牌”。

But this law is being challenged by powerful politicians. On August 1, a bipartisan group of senators, led by Democrat Claire McCaskill and Republican Rob Portman, introduced legislation that would create a carve-out in section 230 for tech firms that knowingly facilitate sex trafficking. The impetus for this was the horror of backpage.com, a firm that actively created a platform for online sex trafficking for its own profit.

但强大的政治人士正在挑战这项法律。8月1日，一个由民主党参议员克莱尔•麦卡斯基尔(Claire McCaskill)和共和党参议员罗布•波特曼(Rob Portman)领导的两党参议员小组提交一项法案，拟在230条款里规定一个例外，使蓄意为性贩运提供便利的科技公司无法免责。推动此举的是骇人的backpage.com事件，为了牟利，这家公司积极地为在线性贩运创建了一个平台。

It is a piece of legislation that everyone, it seems, can get behind — except the largest tech companies and their industry lobbying groups . They are concerned that it would open a Pandora’s box of legal issues for them. These groups had the rough copy of the bill for months before its introduction, yet refused to offer edits during its crafting. Keith Smith, a spokesperson in Mr Portman’s office, says: “We did our due diligence, met with the tech community on a bipartisan basis for months and yet they offered no constructive feedback.”

这似乎是一条人人都会支持的立法——但那些最大的科技公司和行业游说组织不在此列。它们担心，此举会打开一个潘多拉魔盒，给它们带来没完没了的法律麻烦。这些组织在法案提交的几个月前就拿到了初稿，然而在法案起草过程中拒绝提供任何修改意见。波特曼办公室的发言人凯文•史密斯(Kevin Smith)表示：“我们履行了自己的尽职义务，连续数月在两党基础上约见科技行业，然而它们没有提供任何建设性反馈。”

The firms say that is because any amendment to 230 is a no-go; they suggested alternatives like tougher criminal laws. Noah Theran, a spokesperson for the Internet Association, a trade group that represents companies such as Google and Facebook, says: “The entire internet industry wants to end human trafficking. But, there are ways to do this without amending a law foundational to legitimate internet services.”

科技公司表示，这是因为对230条款的任何修正都是不可接受的;它们提出了一些替代方案，比如出台更严厉的刑事法。代表谷歌和Facebook等公司的行业组织“互联网协会”(Internet Association)的发言人诺厄•特兰(Noah Theran)说：“整个互联网行业都希望终结人口贩卖。但有很多办法能够做到这一点，而无需修改一项对正当互联网服务具有根本重要意义的法律。”

Still, Big Tech realises the cognitive dissonance involved in censoring online activity while continuing to portray itself as the town square. See, for example, the recent Electronic Frontier Foundation statement fretting about the slippery slope of censorship. The industry simply does not have the ability, or the right, to self-police any longer. In a world where Big Tech has the power not only to fan the flames of hate speech and fake news, but also remove it when and where it likes, it is clear that the internet is a fundamentally different place than it was in 1996 — one that needs fundamentally different rules.

话虽如此，大科技公司意识到了这其中的认知失调：一方面审查网络活动，另一方面继续将自身标榜为“市镇广场”。看看电子前沿基金会(Electronic Frontier Foundation)最近的一份声明吧，其中充满了对审查“滑坡”的焦虑之情。科技行业没有能力，也没有权利继续自我监督。如今，大科技公司不仅具有煽起仇恨言论和假新闻火焰的威力，也同样有能力随时随地清除这些东西，有鉴于此，今天的互联网显然是一个在根本上与1996年不同的世界，它需要在根本上不同的规则。

The conversation about what those rules should look like is heating up. Olivier Sylvain, an associate professor of law at Fordham University, notes that as the business model and power of technology change and grow, so too should the law.

关于应该制定什么样的规则，相关的议论正在升温。福坦莫大学(Fordham University)法学副教授奥利维耶•西尔万(Olivier Sylvain)指出，随着科技行业的商业模式发生改变，威力变得更大，法律也应该做出相应的变化。

“The concept of immunity in 230 as originally conceived is no longer relevant in a world in which the largest tech firms are engineering an environment in which they can extract all kinds of information about users for their own profit,” says Prof Sylvain. He recently proposed that the CDA be recrafted to “shield providers from liability for third-party user online conduct only to the extent such providers operate as true passive conduits”.

“230条款最初设想的免责概念不再适用于当今世界，现在各大科技公司正在营造一种环境，让它们能够以盈利为目的挖掘用户的各种信息，”西尔万教授说。最近他建议修改《通信内容端正法》，以确保“只在提供商的确是被动通道的情况下允许其对第三方用户在线行为免责”。

Regulators and politicians, take note: Big Tech should no longer have its cake and eat it too.

监管机构和政治人士注意了：大科技公司不能再像这样占尽好处。