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Comment by novalis | Hacker News Reader

As it was done many times in the past, the second can be gamed to prevent the first. It is not about the intentions, it's about the possible outcomes and this is just another reach for fear based censorship. Because you know the system is always gamed and abused when in place.

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You realize this law has nothing to do with web-filtering right ?

What this law means is if a UGC website is used by an individual for the purpose of harassment, the UGC website won't be liable for it as long as they co-operate in allowing the individual responsible to be prosecuted directly.

It essentially gives UGC sites safe-harbour protection whereas before they could have been considered responsible for the content themselves as publishers. The legal responsibility is pushed back onto the individual who created the content, which is exactly how it should be.

... to push action from a site to reveal someone that will be up for legal process. You can word that a lot of ways, but to define harassment through online communication is the sort of overreach needed to make sites do the dirty work with no due process or checks. Just the pathway. To provide a path for easy censorship is another way to put it, but you selectively left that out.

AKA "Give us names and you walk."

Everything can be gamed to suppress free speech. The same logic says we should do away with fraud statutes. You think this is an insightful and important point, but it's really a banal point.

Not everything can be gamed to suppress free speech, in particular statutes, the attempt to do so is predictably forbidden. That may or may not be a piece of banal insightful information.

This legislation is proposed for online communication and that is the target and reach that can be gamed. Blanket statements will not make it any other than what it is. An abusive new piece of language that is open to be used for censorship purposes. As to what I believe is insightful or not, that is up to my devices and I am free to share it or not when and how I choose to, for the time being. Tend to keep it that way.

The problem is the chilling effect. Who determines what "bullying" is? I've seen some heated discussions online that could be mistaken for something that they're not in more than one instance.

I'm personally of the opinion that "online bullying" is a nonsense phenomenon. How do you deal with a bully online? You access the block function of the medium you're using and block the idiot. Done. You never have to deal with them again.

The only banal point is arguing that freedom of speech and privacy are antiquated. I like how you frame OP as a hick because his opinions differ from yours. Is it easy being the smartest guy you know?

I made it because no one else had and I knew I'd get upvoted. Don't think I don't realize it's trite. It's just fodder for the masses.

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