THE SENATE UNANIMOUSLY passed a bipartisan bill to provide recourse to victims of porn deepfakes — or sexually-explicit, non-consensual images created with artificial intelligence.
The legislation, called the Disrupt Explicit Forged Images and Non-Consensual Edits (DEFIANCE) Act — passed in Congress’ upper chamber on Tuesday. The legislation has been led by Sens. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), as well as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) in the House.
The legislation would amend the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) to allow people to sue those who produce, distribute, or receive the deepfake pornography, if they “knew or recklessly disregarded” the fact that the victim did not consent to those images.
It’s okay, I’m pretty sure they are simply showing that Libertarian ideology is based in a mistrust of politicians — and to a degree, they’re right. I don’t typically promote or discuss the ideology. I just think as I currently watch YouTube videos on the nuances of cybersecurity, that it’s so easy for well-informed professional experts to make far reaching mistakes, that it seems absurd to expect uneducated politicians to create regulations that are simultaneously targeted enough to not cause excess issues while still broad enough to effectively reduce the unwanted behavior.
I still think back to Clinton arguing that regulating the internet was akin to “nailing jello to the wall.”
But the internet is extremely well regulated, thanks to organizations like ICANN & IANA whose entire existence is the result of a U.S. Department of Commerce contract to properly regulate names, addresses, and routing tables. Failure to obey the rules will get your peering agreements terminated, and sever you from the Internet. Failure to cut off rule violators can get you in trouble.
It’s what makes sure ISPs don’t break the Internet doing arbitrary shit, and keeps shady groups from improperly routing internet traffic through their datacenters without consequences.
I think just revisiting the point that politicians aren’t going to be exact when talking about highly technical things like this, and that Clinton very likely meant “The Web” and not “The Internet”.