Books like The Twenty-Six Words That Created the Internet

The Internet has transformed our lives and upended American commerce. As it functions in the Untied States, the Internet is likely the greatest platform for free speech in the history of the world. Websites like Facebook and Twitter have changed, for better or worse, how we interact with each other, and digital marketplaces like Amazon, eBay and Spotify have put a remarkably wide range of products and services at our fingertips. None of this, argues Jeff Kosseff, would have been possible without a 26-word clause that was tucked into the federal Communications Decency Act (CDA) that was signed into law by President Bill Clinton in 1996.Section 230, the 26 words at the heart of Mr. Kosseff’s book, was little noticed when the CDA was passed in 1996. This somewhat obscure clause was overshadowed by the discussion of the full CDA, which was primarily focused on regulating online pornography. It didn’t take long, however, for ecommerce companies to learn and appreciate the significance of the broad immunity that Section 230 gave them against liability claims related to third-party content. Simply stated, without Section 230 the types of third-party content that has become commonplace on Facebook, Twitter, Yelp, and Amazon either wouldn’t exist, or it would be severely restricted. And this third-party content has become the backbone of the modern-day Internet. As Ms. Kosseff observes, most of the top ten websites in the U.S. rely either entirely or significantly on third-party content. Section 230 was the brainchild of two Congressman, one Republican and one Democrat, who were concerned about the potential for a recent court decision to stifle the free-speech potential of the Internet.In the mid-90s, partisanship in Congress had reached the point that Democrats and Republicans refused to sit at the same tables in the Congressional dining hall, but Chris Cox, a House Republican from California and Ron Wyden, a House Democrat from Oregon, were an exception. Cox would go on to head the SEC under President George W. Bush, and Wyden now serves as the senior Senator from Oregon, but it is their role in developing and championing Section 230 that will likely stand as their most significant contribution to U.S. statesmanship. Both men were concerned about a court ruling that had been issued in May of 1995 in a case known as Stratton Oakmont v. Prodigy. In that case, Daniel Porush, the president of the Stratton Oakmont brokerage firm, sued Prodigy, one of the earliest online services, for defamatory information that had been posted about him and Stratton Oakmont by a third-party user on one of Prodigy’s chat forums. Even though Prodigy was little more than a neutral intermediary, they had made marketing claims that they moderated their chat forums. Using this attempt at moderation as its cudgel, the court ruled in favor of Porush and Stratton Oakmont. Cox and Wyden were concerned about the “chilling effect” this ruling could have on the Internet’s ability to become a functional and open forum for free speech. They felt it was good public policy to encourage companies that operated online forums to moderate their user content, but the Stratton Oakmont decision demonstrated that, unless these companies were able to achieve an arbitrary and unreasonable standard of content moderation, they could be punished for their failures, which offered a perverse incentive for companies to take a completely hands-off approach to user content. The CDA was already working its way through Congress, and they saw an opportunity to insert what would become Section 230 into the legislation. Surprisingly, Section 230 was drafted and passed with very little input from the tech industry. Companies like Google and Facebook now have an army of lobbyists roaming the corridors of Congress, but the legislation that enabled their business models and made them the companies they are today became law almost entirely through the work of a group of people who wanted nothing more than to allow the Internet to achieve its latent potential as a robust and open forum for the exchange of ideas. The book is divided into four sections: the creation of Section 230, the rise of Section 230, the gradual erosion of Section 230 and the future of Section 230. The story is mostly told through the court cases that shaped and defined Section 230, and these vignettes make the book seem like a series of interconnected short stories. The author does a good job of making legal principles and issues accessible to a general audience, but he doesn’t have much of a flair for storytelling. The book is informative, but the prose is somewhat dry. Much of this book reads like a law school textbook. The author does an outstanding job of remaining neutral about his topic. He admits that he is a fan and advocate of Section 230, but he fully understands and articulates the problems with Section 230. Many companies have used this law to shield them from negligent and egregious behavior. The victims in these lawsuits frequently suffer real and serious damages. Reputations and livelihoods have been ruined, and, in many cases, it is clear the defendants could have done more to prevent these damages. Yet, the broad immunity of Section 230 effectively gives them a get-out-of-jail-free card, and the author doesn’t pull any punches in his criticism of how Section 230 sometimes allows bad things to happen to innocent people. Ultimately, however, this is a feel-good story. It explains how a bipartisan Congress created legislation that allowed a nascent industry to flourish and provided U.S. citizens with the full benefits of the Internet. Jeff Kosseff has written a well-reasoned, informative book that helps us to appreciate how well our system can work when it functions as it should.