What Google has done, is not give people a platform for “free speech” – what Google has done is to take people speech in the form of websites, images, videos, and profited off of them. I fully support YouTube a s platform for public outlet. However, they also are a conduit for the wholesale theft of copyrighted material.

Regardless of what filters and moderation have been implemented, once a copyright piece of music, video, or images are placed on their system, deleting it does not put the genie back in the bottle! Once it is “broadcast” on YouTube, it is the wind. There is zero recourse for anyone who has copyrighted material stolen by a third party and placed on YouTube. This is not “free speech”, this is Google profiting off of speech – it is “stolen speech”. 230 legalized the theft and profiting off of “free speech”. Allowing people to break the law on their platform? How is that any different from SilkRoad?

Aside from YouTube, Google search is even more problematic. They ask no permission, agree to no terms of website service, or require any website owners agreement to take their content, produce their product and broadcast that product to make money on the SERPS (btw: I was the guy who coined the acronym SERP in 2000).

So here we are in 2023 with artists and journalists are getting their knickers in a bunch over AI’s being trained with their content. Welcome to the party boys – you are 25+ years too late.

What this all means to me after 4 decades of tech work, is that the internet is fundamentally broken by policy. Those policies have helped create the biggest group of monopolies since AT&T built on the back of using “free speech” without permission.

“This is the way the internet works – oh my the sky will fall” is not a good enough argument.

230 Must be neutered in order to bring back a free web.

(The comments are mine and given freely, but EricGoldman.org will profit via the Google Ads currently running on this page).