The Twenty-Six Words That Created the Internet
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Narrated by:
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Douglas R Pratt
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By:
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Jeff Kosseff
About this listen
"No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider."
Did you know that these 26 words are responsible for much of America's multibillion-dollar online industry? What we can and cannot write, say, and do online is based on just one law - a law that protects online services from lawsuits based on user content. Jeff Kosseff exposes the workings of section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which has lived mostly in the shadows since its enshrinement in 1996. Because many segments of American society now exist largely online, Kosseff argues that we need to understand and pay attention to what section 230 really means and how it affects what we like, share, and comment upon every day.
The Twenty-Six Words That Created the Internet tells the story of the institutions that flourished as a result of this powerful statute. It introduces us to those who created the law, those who advocated for it, and those involved in some of the most prominent cases decided under the law. Kosseff assesses the law that has facilitated freedom of online speech, trolling, and much more.
The book is published by Cornell Univesity Press.
"Kosseff has a thorough grasp of his material, and readers will find his exploration of Section 230 balanced, timely, and consistently thought-provoking." (Publishers Weekly)
"Kosseff's excellent and well-researched book should thus be read by anyone interested in online regulation. It is a joy to read." (Orly Lobel, author of You Don't Own Me)
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Could Superman sue if someone exposed his identity as Clark Kent? Is a life sentence for an immortal like Apocalypse "cruel and unusual punishment"? Is X-ray vision a violation of search and seizure laws? Is the Joker legally insane? And who foots the bill when a hero destroys a skyscraper or two while defending Metropolis? Fear not, gentle listener! The answers to these questions and a multitude more are contained inside this audiobook.
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Legal Pedantry Has Never Been This Much Fun
- By Troy on 07-31-14
By: James Daily J.D., and others
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Killing the Deep State
- The Fight to Save President Trump
- By: Jerome R. Corsi PhD
- Narrated by: Dan Crue
- Length: 5 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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Well-funded hard-left extremists, the mainstream media, Obama/Clinton holdovers in the government bureaucracy, and clandestine forces within the US intelligence apparatus have a strategy to ensure that Trump will not serve out his term as the 45th President of the United States. Investigative journalist and conspiracy expert Jerome Corsi goes into shocking detail about how this Deep State, or Shadow Government, secretly wields power in Washington and why it is dangerous.
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Banning the Bestseller: Amazon's Childish Decision
- By JONATHAN KIMBRIEL on 04-05-18
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Big Dirty Money
- The Shocking Injustice and Unseen Cost of White Collar Crime
- By: Jennifer Taub
- Narrated by: Eliza Foss
- Length: 8 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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How ordinary Americans suffer when the rich and powerful use tax doges or break the law to get richer and more powerful - and how we can stop it. There is an elite crime spree happening in America, and the privileged perps are getting away with it. Selling loose cigarettes on a city sidewalk can lead to a choke-hold arrest, and death, if you are not among the top one percent.
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The Loss of Glass-Steagal has led to Cheating
- By Rajiv on 05-23-21
By: Jennifer Taub
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Algorithms of Oppression
- How Search Engines Reinforce Racism
- By: Safiya Umoja Noble
- Narrated by: Shayna Small
- Length: 6 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Run a Google search for “black girls” - what will you find? “Big Booty” and other sexually explicit terms are likely to come up as top search terms. But, if you type in “white girls”, the results are radically different. The suggested porn sites and un-moderated discussions about “why black women are so sassy” or “why black women are so angry” presents a disturbing portrait of black womanhood in modern society. In Algorithms of Oppression, Safiya Umoja Noble challenges the idea that search engines like Google offer an equal playing field for all forms of ideas, identities, and activities.
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Read this book. Tell everyone you know about it.
- By Joshua Daniel-Wariya on 06-06-19
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The Mueller Report
- By: The Washington Post
- Narrated by: Matt Zapotosky, Rosalind S. Helderman, Marc Fisher, and others
- Length: 19 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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Listen to the findings of the Special Counsel’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, complete with accompanying analysis by the Post reporters who’ve covered the story from the beginning. One of the most urgent and important investigations ever conducted, the Mueller inquiry focuses on Donald Trump, his presidential campaign, and Russian interference in the 2016 election, and draws on the testimony of dozens of witnesses and the work of some of the country’s most seasoned prosecutors.
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Report Starts with Chapter 4
- By Ray on 04-21-19
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The Case for Impeachment
- By: Allan J. Lichtman
- Narrated by: Dan Woren
- Length: 6 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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What are the ranges and limitations of presidential authority? What are the standards of truthfulness that a president must uphold? What will it take to impeach Donald J. Trump? Professor Allan J. Lichtman, who has correctly forecasted 30 years of presidential outcomes, answers these questions, and more, in The Case for Impeachment - a deeply convincing argument for impeaching the 45th president of the United States.
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Every American should read this!
- By Daniel Ballard on 04-24-17
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The Hacked World Order
- How Nations Fight, Trade, Maneuver, and Manipulate in the Digital Age
- By: Adam Segal
- Narrated by: Don Hagen
- Length: 10 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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The Internet today connects roughly 2.7 billion people around the world, and booming interest in the "Internet of things" could result in 75 billion devices connected to the web by 2020. The myth of cyberspace as a digital utopia has long been put to rest. Governments are increasingly developing smarter ways of asserting their national authority in cyberspace in an effort to control the flow, organization, and ownership of information.
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Wrong narrator for material
- By Locnar on 02-21-17
By: Adam Segal
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The Russia Hoax
- The Illicit Scheme to Clear Hillary Clinton and Frame Donald Trump
- By: Gregg Jarrett
- Narrated by: Charles Constant, Gregg Jarrett
- Length: 8 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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Fox News legal analyst Gregg Jarrett reveals the real story behind Hillary Clinton’s deep state collaborators in government and exposes their nefarious actions during and after the 2016 election. This audiobook reveals how persons within the FBI and Barack Obama’s Justice Department worked improperly to help elect Hillary Clinton and defeat Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election. When this suspected effort failed, those same people appear to have pursued a contrived investigation of President Trump in an attempt to undo the election results and remove him as president.
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Laughably dumb
- By liverleef on 07-27-18
By: Gregg Jarrett
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How to Read the Constitution - and Why
- By: Kim Wehle
- Narrated by: Kim Wehle
- Length: 9 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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The Constitution is the most significant document in America. But do you fully understand what this valuable document means to you? In How to Read the Constitution - and Why, legal expert and educator Kimberly Wehle spells out in clear, simple, and common-sense terms what is in the Constitution and most importantly, what it means. In compelling terms and including text from the United States Constitution, she describes how the Constitution’s protections are eroding.
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very biased
- By Anonymous User on 01-25-20
By: Kim Wehle
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Freedom for the Thought That We Hate
- A Biography of the First Amendment
- By: Anthony Lewis
- Narrated by: Stow Lovejoy
- Length: 5 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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More than any other people on earth, Americans are free to say and write what they think. The reason for this extraordinary freedom is not a superior culture of tolerance, but just 14 words in our most fundamental legal document: the free expression clauses of the First Amendment to the Constitution.
Anthony Lewis tells us how these rights were created, revealing a story of hard choices, heroic (and some less heroic) judges, and fascinating and eccentric defendants who forced the legal system to come face-to-face with one of America's great founding ideas.
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Freedom of Expression: 163 years of Solitude
- By Dudley H. Williams on 12-21-11
By: Anthony Lewis
What listeners say about The Twenty-Six Words That Created the Internet
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- webtraverser
- 08-17-19
Timely account of speech and the internet today
Very detailed account of the creation of Section 230 in the Communications Decency Act. This is the original “safe harbor “ law that allows internet companies to post third party content with being legally responsible for the content. The biggest companies in the world relay on third party or “user generated “ content that it is very hard to think of what the internet works look like without it.
This very review would probably not exist with it the law.
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- Eric Lisle
- 04-01-21
Educational and Entertaining
The book is well organized, entertaining, and teaches the material in a sophisticated and interesting manner. Would definitely recommend to anyone looking into the history and development of Section 230.
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- Conor
- 11-02-21
Wow. Just wow.
Every now and then you read a book you won't forget for a while. This is one of them.
An anonymous hoaxer created a fake sales page on AOL implying that a Seattle realtor was selling t-shirts and other merchandise mocking the Oklahoma City bomb victims. The realtor’s phone range off the hook for months with people berating him and issuing death threats. The realtor asked AOL to take down the page. AOL ignored him. He sued, and lost.
The mother of an 11-year old found that a stranger had induced her child to act out nude sex scenes with other children, and was selling the videos on AOL. She asked AOL to take down the page. They did not. She sued, and lost.
An actress discovered that a dating site had a bogus web page pretending to be hers, saying she was looking for one night stands and hoping to be dominated, and giving personal details about her home phone, child, etc. She was bombarded by obnoxious calls. She asked the dating site to take down the page. They refused, saying only the (anonymous) owner of the page could change it. She sued, and lost.
An art agent had a dispute with a building contractor working on her house. He wrote to a museum saying she was a relative of Heinrich Himmler (of course she wasn’t) and had many stolen European artworks stolen from Jews hanging on her walls (they were American and painted 50+ years after the war). The museum spread the rumor to a mailing list of ~1000 people. The agent asked the museum to circulate a retraction. They wouldn’t. She sued, she lost.
A housing website hosted advertisements where prospective room-mates could list who they wouldn’t consider, based on race, age, having children, being treated for mental health, etc. They were sued, but after a ten-year battle up and down through appeals courts, the website was held blameless.
In several of these cases, the injured party who lost their court cases had to leave their home and sometimes the state where they lived, to avoid persecution from mobs who read and believed the baloney published about them online.
All these scenarios are enabled by the Section 230 protection afforded to websites, enshrined in the 1996 DCA act. The clause has been in the news recently for political reasons, but the above examples illustrate the extent to which websites can host anything, anything at all, including content that would be completely illegal in a newspaper (housing ads with “No Irish need apply”, anyone?). As long as the website can sufficiently distance themselves from the authors of that content, they have blanket immunity. That distance can be quite short -- the site can pay fees to those authors, they can encourage and solicit content from such authors, but it seems that as long as the author is not actually on payroll, the content is fair game.
The book author is a trial lawyer who makes his living defending tech companies using Section 230. He is an unabashed fan, and lists the above items as *triumphs* of the law, and justifies it all by saying it supported the growth of the internet. He’s amazingly oblivious to how the internet thrives everywhere else, Europe, Canada, Australia, without such blanket immunity for website owners.
An inadvertent eye-opener is that when he describes all the case law for Section 230, he makes a point of naming the president at the time the presiding judge(s) were appointed, at least twenty times. Apparently in his eyes, judges are highly partisan and can be relied upon to carry out the wishes of the party that appointed them. One wonders how much this is an open secret in the rest of the legal profession.
I purchased this book hoping for a philosophical or moral discussion of the issues around freedom of publishing. It’s been quite a different experience, something akin to opening the garbage can and finding it crawling with maggots. If the author is correct, and since he's discussing his job it seems he must, content that would be criminal anywhere else is legal on the web, and a person or people injured by that content have no legal recourse. It’s as if Congress had decided in 1996 that while killing people is wrong, except doing it with a Taser is ok, because a new technology needs to be nurtured. Any lingering sympathy I had for Section 230 is gone -- ironically, the exact opposite of what the author intended.
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- Adventure Boy
- 12-27-19
What a law review should be
This book, while written for a lay audience, will appeal primarily to lawyers and those who work for internet companies that rely on the postings of their users. It is a thorough and clear explanation of the history of Section 230, which dramatically limited the liability of internet companies for posting the words of their users. I especially appreciated the comparison between the pro-business U.S. laws and the pro-consumer European laws, which in part explains why the dominant internet companies in the world developed in the U.S. and not Europe. I am surprised but happy to find such a detailed legal history on Audible.
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- Artman
- 01-19-21
A bit too much
For me, this book deals with na important and complex topic. But I found it annoyingly repetitious. The length could be reduced by a third and make it more readable.
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