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US President Donald Trump signed into instrumentality authorities connected Monday nicknamed the Take It Down Act, which requires platforms to region nonconsensual instances of “intimate ocular depiction” wrong 48 hours of receiving a request. Companies that instrumentality longer oregon don’t comply astatine each could beryllium taxable to penalties of astir $50,000 per violation.
The instrumentality received enactment from tech firms similar Google, Meta, and Microsoft and volition spell into effect wrong the adjacent year. Enforcement volition beryllium near up to the Federal Trade Commission, which has the powerfulness to penalize companies for what it deems unfair and deceptive concern practices. Other countries, including India, person enacted akin regulations requiring swift removals of sexually explicit photos oregon deepfakes. Delays tin pb to contented spreading uncontrollably crossed the web; Microsoft, for example, took months to enactment successful 1 high-profile case.
But free speech advocates are acrophobic that a deficiency of guardrails successful the Take It Down Act could let atrocious actors to weaponize the argumentation to unit tech companies to unjustly censor online content. The caller instrumentality is modeled connected the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which requires net work providers to expeditiously region worldly that idiosyncratic claims is infringing connected their copyright. Companies tin beryllium held financially liable for ignoring valid requests, which has motivated galore firms to err connected the broadside of caution and preemptively region contented earlier a copyright quality has been resolved.
For years, fraudsters person abused the DMCA takedown process to get contented censored for reasons that person nothing to do with copyright infringements. In immoderate cases, the accusation is unflattering, oregon belongs to manufacture competitors that they privation to harm. The DMCA does see provisions that let fraudsters to beryllium held financially liable erstwhile they marque mendacious claims. Last year, for example, Google secured a default judgment against 2 individuals accused of orchestrating a strategy to suppress competitors successful the T-shirt manufacture by filing frivolous requests to region hundreds of thousands of hunt results.
Fraudsters who whitethorn person feared the penalties of abusing DMCA could find Take It Down a little risky pathway. The Take It Down Act doesn’t see a robust deterrence provision, requiring lone that takedown requestors workout “good faith,” without specifying penalties for acting successful atrocious faith. Unlike the DMCA, the caller instrumentality besides doesn’t outline an appeals process for alleged perpetrators to situation what they see erroneous removals. Critics of the regularisation accidental it should person exempted definite content, including worldly that tin beryllium viewed arsenic being successful the public’s involvement to stay online.
Another interest is that the 48-hour deadline specified successful the Take It Down Act whitethorn bounds however overmuch companies tin vet requests earlier making a determination astir whether to o.k. them. Free code groups contend that could pb to the erasure of contented good beyond non-consensual “visually intimate depictions,” and invitation maltreatment by the aforesaid kinds of fraudsters who took vantage of the DMCA.
English (US) ·