”Like Godzilla, who arrives and destroys great human...
"Like Godzilla, who arrives and destroys great human accomplishments,” some state and federal bills and laws are threatening the Internet’s future success, said NetChoice in a Thursday release on its annual list of the worst Internet laws. California’s SB 568…
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law, the federal e-commerce sales tax bill and numerous state-level digital descendant bills were on NetChoice’s most-destructive list at http://netchoice.org/iawful. NetChoice said California’s SB 568 law is particularly egregious, saying it violates federal law and the First Amendment. The law, which takes effect January 2015, is intended to make two major changes. First, websites and apps “directed” to minors will have to provide the option to registered minors to delete any publicly posted content. Second, those websites may no longer advertise items that minors legally cannot purchase. All other websites will have to take “reasonable actions in good faith” to avoid presenting ads for these restricted items to known minors. “This makes for a discriminatory law,” the report said. Section 230 of the federal Communications Decency Act protects websites from liability for content or commerce posted by users, according to the report. “Sites we use everyday could not exist without it,” said NetChoice Executive Director Steve DelBianco. By making these sites liable, the state law not only violates federal law, but also “violates the First Amendment by chilling advertisers’ free speech,” the report said. “SB 568 represents a major threat to the use of the Internet and snubs the federal protections that allowed e-commerce to flourish."