Tech, Telecom, Consumer Groups Tell FCC to Reject NTIA Petition

Reject NTIA’s petition for a rulemaking on Communications Decency Act Section 230, tech, telecom and consumers groups told the FCC in comments posted Wednesday before the midnight deadline in RM-11862 (see 2008120050). The petition has no legal basis, the agency doesn’t have jurisdiction, and President Donald Trump is attempting to use the commission for political gain, they said. AT&T called for uniform liability protections.

If the FCC rewrites Section 230, it would exceed the agency’s “proper role” and have “disastrous consequences” for the internet, CTA commented: Reject the petition to protect the agency's independence and the First Amendment. If the FCC weakens Section 230, the “biggest winner would be China, which is spending billions in an all-out campaign to catch and surpass U.S. tech leaders,” said Senior Vice President-Government and Regulatory Affairs Michael Petricone.

Trump is unlawfully attempting to direct the FCC to assert jurisdiction over and rewrite 230, Public Knowledge commented. The portion is of bipartisan concern, but NTIA’s petition “has no legal basis and its policy recommendations are unsound.” So “resist this call” to expand jurisdiction into “regulating the content moderation and editorial choices” of platforms and recognize that NTIA’s arguments are “no better than the petition’s specious and trivial mischaracterizations of the statute itself,” said Legal Director John Bergmayer.

Trump signed an unconstitutional executive order in an effort to use the FCC as a “partisan weapon,” the Center for Democracy & Technology commented. The agency has no authority to clarify 230, and the law’s text doesn’t require agency implementation, it said: Nothing in the CDA allows the FCC to “reimagine” the meaning of the statute.

The proposed rules are “inconsistent with the text and intent of Section 230” and the First Amendment, the Internet Association commented. The petition would “throw out two decades of settled” Section 230 case law that empowers removal of content like “fraud, manipulated media, and promotion of suicide without facing a flood of litigation,” said IA Deputy General Counsel Elizabeth Banker (see 2009010041).

Immunity should be amended to reduce “gross disparities in legal treatment between” online platforms and “similarly situated companies in the traditional economy,” AT&T commented: Platforms “routinely amplify” certain content, often for “financially driven reasons that have nothing to do with the original content-filtering goal of section 230.” Legislators should adopt uniform liability rules, the ISP said.

Congress didn’t intend for 230 to allow FCC regulation of the internet, NetChoice commented with former Rep. Chris Cox, R-Calif. NTIA’s proposed reinterpretations would violate the “plain language of the statute,” and it’s questionable that the desired jurisdiction would hold up in court, NetChoice said.

The petition is an opportunity to “shed transparency on how Big Tech companies operate,” said Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn. “The public’s comments can also help build a record to guide Congress in future reform.”

NTIA’s draft regulation language seeks “content-based regulation that poses grave threats to First Amendment protections,” New America’s Open Technology Institute and Ranking Digital Rights commented. The FCC has never had the role of implementing the section, and it would be wrong to read that into the statute now, OTI said: “By disincentivizing social media platforms from removing harmful content that threatens or negatively impacts marginalized communities, NTIA’s proposal would chill the speech of those who are members of a protected class.”