A social medium platform provides a slightly fancier interface to a technology that differs little in the legal context from telegraphy or from telex.

Suddenly people, who have little to no understanding of Internet technology, believe a social medium platform no longer has to obey the federal and state law, under which a social medium platform is obligated to operate.

I suppose the WOW! factor is responsible.

[I only care about one political issue — undoing the crime my relatives perpetrated when they planned the logistics of Zionist genocide against Palestinians (including my wife’s family) from Dec 1946 through Dec 1947 — hence Martillo v. Twitter,

1. which is currently before the Court of Appeals for the First Circuit and
2. which explicitly refers to this genocide.

This ongoing genocide

— as this crime is defined

1. in The International Convention for the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (CPPCG) and
2. in 18 U.S. Code § 1091 —

has never ceased.

Otherwise, I focus practically exclusively on Title 35 (patents), Title 47 (telecommunications), and state common carriage law. Because of Google LLC v. Oracle Am., Inc., 140 S. Ct. 2737, 206 L. Ed. 2d 916 (2020), I now concern myself more with Title 17 (copyright) and state copyright law.]

Q&A from TechDirt

Question: Does a notice board accessible to passing members of the public — by being in the entrance of a supermarket for example — offer a common carriage service? If not, how does Twitter differ from that in function, other than by being a service attached to a network that offers public access?

Answer: The described public notice board is a material board to which a member affixes a material message. The material board provides neither message switching nor message common carriage.Twitter provides store-and-forward message switching as well as message common carriage among users. Twitter temporarily stores a message in a backend database system (hosting) while the message is on the way to an end user
by message common carriage.

The question confuses the frontend model (a pure concept or abstract idea*) with a material notice board. The frontend model makes it easier for an end user to interact with Twitter’s system.

In other words, Twitter’s system has no similarity whatsoever to the material notice board and the question shows no comprehension of Internet technology whatsoever.

[Please note that the terminology of this area is somewhat confusing. A software engineer generally uses the Model-View-Controller design pattern to design a web or cloud service. The end user invokes a browser on his end host (a laptop or mobile computing device) to access the service. A single page application is frontend social medium platform software that runs in a web browser to access the service of the social medium platform. A mobile device typically runs a mobile app (provided by the
social medium platform) to access the service, which the social medium platform’s backend provides.]

Note

* Abstract idea in this context has some similarity to the abstract idea exception to patent eligibility.

Judge Oldham’s opinion provides evidence that indicates he understands the history of message common carriage of digital personal literary property as well as the history of associated common carriage law. Yet, Oldham seems out of his depth with respect to the technology of a social medium platform.

Because I had an alumni contract to undermine Summers’ Harvard presidency when Oldham was at the Harvard Law School, I was busy and never met Oldham in person although I read at least one article that he wrote for a Harvard journal.

If I were to meet him today, I would pose the following question of him.

In what speech is a social medium platform engaging (forced or otherwise) as it temporarily stores (hosts) content in a database on a backend server while the social medium platform prepares to deliver the content to an end user’s display by message common carriage?

I helped develop the AT&T Mass Announcement Network Service (MANS), which Dial-A-Porn used.

See “Dial-A-Porn” from Pornography Research Advances and Policy Considerations.

No one ever confused the Dial-A-Porn messages, which AT&T hosted, with AT&T’s own speech.

Hosting, which is a term used today in the context of a blog or in the context pf a social medium platform, was considered then to be temporary storage of customer’s merchandise and property on its way to the destination. Calling such temporary storage hosting does not make it possible for a common carrier to escape its common carriage obligations.

Read the whole discussion of Dial-A-Porn. The FCC eventually fined Dial-A-Porn. No one ever considered fining AT&T because of the Dial-A-Porn messages, which were hosted in the AT&T network via the Network Services Complex (NSC), which was connected to a 4ESS (National Electronic Switching System).

MANS was an extremely lucrative service, which AT&T offered at least until through the early 90s until pornographers realized that the Internet was a much better medium for pornography.

When Judge Oldham tries to argue that the First Amendment does not include a right to censorship, he is not as persuasive as he could be.

Neither a blog host nor a provider of a mass announcement system (e.g, AT&T MANS) has ever considered written or audio narrative,

1. which was available in a hosted blog or
2. which was hosted by a mass announcement system,

to be the speech either of the blog host or of the provider of the mass announcement system until now.

[Is all the content not removed by a social medium platform the speech of the social medium platform?]

This First Amendment claim is purely a pretextual justification for discrimination against some classes of people because white racists or white elitists

1. want to deny non-whites, non-Europeans, or conservatives full use of an open forum, which has been established in a government-supported government-designated public forum, or
2. want to deny non-whites, non-Europeans, or conservatives access to a place of public accommodation for exhibition or for entertainment.

For 40 years I have been writing documents to be filed in the Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit or in the Supreme Court of the United States (i.e, since Judge Oldham was a toddler). I have learned that a lot of Judges and Justices on these two courts really seem to enjoy identifying pretextual efforts to legitimize inequitable or unlawful behavior.