You're not shilling, you're just wrong. Its requirement is to be obscene with intent to abuse, threaten, or harass another person which is a strong safeguard most people want. It prevents revenge porn and the like. Not all porn.

Edit: The other provision requires the sender of obscenity to know the recipient is under 18 - this is worth re-evaluating in the light of two consensual teenagers, but is nowhere near the sky-is-falling everyone-goes-to-prison since it's hard to prove you know recipients of an anonymous message board.

Also, while I can't find a definition for obscenity, a later section bars the transmission of it over cable and subscription services. So it would seem that the sort of material that is already being transmitted on Cinemax, HBO, or the Playboy Channel is not what is considered "obscene". I see there are still pornography shops and strip clubs still around, so whatever the definition of "obscene" must be, it must not involve garden variety, hardcore pornography.

> Also, while I can't find a definition for obscenity

not even the supreme court can define obscenity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_know_it_when_I_see_it

Do you believe that "harass" and "abuse" are well defined?

It doesn't bother you that a sizable proportion of mostly harmless messages on Facebook, Twitter, 4chan, etc are suddenly potential felonies? And that they can be used to target innocent individuals by the federal government?

What happens when a legitimate whistleblower becomes a problem, and suddenly an angry twitter rant becomes an excuse for arrest?

Your questions are all assuming you are already correct. This won't be a productive conversation if you keep trying to start from there when I've already pointed out how you were originally wrong. Additionally, anti-cyberbullying laws which deal with this exact scenario we are discussing (obscenity with intention to harass/abuse) already exist in nearly all US States, so no I am not worried about our social consensus at the federal level.

> I've already pointed out how you were originally wrong

I don't see that. The GP accepted your statement, that it requires intent to harass and abuse, and commented on it.

Also, why should the GP accept your analysis? Do you have expertise?

Rereading it, I can now see your view, thanks. I don't know enough about the legal definitions of "harass" and "abuse", but I suspect it comes down to your personal level of confidence of whether government abuses this narrow bit in the first place, and secondly whether the entire public would just let this quietly slip by in the public courts without demanding some sort of self-correction action (judicial, legislative, or executive). I am not a gambling man, but I think my position on both of these chances are both reasonable and the most probable, with high confidence. (Edit to add: a sibling in this tree says it better, to paraphrase: "laws can be challenged and reinterpreted, it is a mistake to assume they do not")

In case it isn't obvious, I'm not a lawyer. No one should accept my analysis, because I'm a stranger on the internet, or a Turing-Test-succeeding imitation of one. Likewise, I'm not going to accept OP's analysis for the same reasons. But I will participate in a discussion that allows readers to explore alternate ideas and viewpoints, chasing an overly-idealistic goal of inspiring each of us into self-driven personal growth. Because that's a virtue worth striving for no matter which side of the argument you are on.

Apparently this was an argument brought up back in 2014 as well[1]. While it focuses more on TV and porn instead of phones and 4chan, in the end the FCC only managed to actually use this power via the nature of the medium (since TV uses spectrum). The only internet that could fall under this is mobile internet, which already doesn't fall under net neutrality (since a lot of carriers have been introducing zero-rating for plans for awhile now without resistance).

[1]https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140623/07052927656/rep-i...

Weren't they re-classified as telecoms so that the FCC would be able to regulate them at all?

People are already aware of this, and furthermore arguments over obscenity standards can be heard on their own merits, as has been the case for many decades already. They're not beyond challenge.

This is not the case. Also there's no net neutrality legislation -- there's an order from the FCC that's been in place since 2015.

And the law you are referring to isn't from the 1930s. It's the 1996 Telecom Act.

Here's what the order said about that section:

We also note that the restrictions on obscene and illicit content in sections 223 and 231(to the extent enforced)1647—as well as the associated limitations on liability—in many cases, do not vary with the classification decisions in this Order, and thus likewise are not encompassed by the forbearance in this Order.1648 To the extent that certain of these provisions would benefit broadband providers and could instead be viewed as provisions that are newly applied to broadband providers by virtue of the classification decisions in this Order, it would better promote broadband deployment, and thus better serve the public interest, if we continue to apply those provisions.1

Footnote -> We note that many of the relevant provisions in these sections stem from the Child Online Protection Act (COPA), which federal courts have enjoined from being enforced. COPA amended the Communications Act by adding sections 230(d) and 231 and amending parts of sections 223(h)(2) and 230(d)–(f). See Child Online Protection Act, Pub. L. No. 105-277, §§ 1401–05, 112 Stat. 2681-736–2681-741 (1998). After COPA reached the Supreme Court twice, a federal court held that COPA is unconstitutional and placed a permanent injunction against its enforcement. The decision was affirmed on appeal, and petition for writ of certiorari has been denied. See ACLU v. Reno, 31 F. Supp.2d 473 (E.D. Pa. 1999) (enjoining the enforcement of the Act), aff’d, 217 F.3d 162 (3rd Cir. 2000), vacated and remanded, Ashcroft v. ACLU, 535 U.S. 564 (2002) (finding that the Act’s reference to contemporary community standards on its own does not render it unconstitutional and the 3rd Circuit must consider additional matters), aff’d, ACLU v. Ashcroft, 322 F.3d 240 (3rd Cir. 2003), aff’d and remanded, Ashcroft v. ACLU, 542 U.S. 656 (2004) (instructing that the district court should update the factual record and take into account current, applicable technologies); ACLU v. Gonzales, 478 F. Supp.2d 775 (E.D. Pa 2007) (entering a permanent injunction against enforcement of the Act after holding that it is facially unconstitutional), aff’d, ACLU v. Mukasey, 534 F.3d 181 (3rd Cir. 2008), cert. denied, 129 S. Ct. 1032 (2009). The Communications Decency Act (CDA) (Pub. L. No. 104-104, §§ 501–02, 110 Stat. 56, 133–36), which amended section 223 of the Communications Act, has also been overturned in part, by the Supreme Court. See Reno v. ACLU, 521 U.S. 844 (1997). However, the constitutionally offensive parts of the CDA were amended by the PROTECT Act, which is still good law. See Prosecutorial Remedies and Tools against the Exploitation of Children Today (PROTECT) Act, Pub. L. No. 108-21, § 603, 117 Stat. 650, 687 (2003)

https://apps.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/FCC-15-24A1.pd...

I've been trying to tell people this for a while - I do believe in net neutrality, but the title II classification is a boondoggle, and those laws need serious rewrite. I'm not seriously concerned about getting arrested for downloading pornography - When was the last time you heard of someone getting arrested for shouting "Fuck!" over the phone? - But I am concerned that those laws were written for Bell Telephone, and survived the breakup and re-integration of the Baby Bells. I don't think they're at all a good fit for how the internet works.

It seems to me the Internet has been tamed, by in large. But it has to do more with the overlord companies swallowing most of it, and then subjecting everyone to their own regulations. Even if you're on the outside, you can't exist without services that require you to play by their rules (or virtues).

Perfect is the enemy of good. At this point, we can't even get them reclassified as title 2. I doubt there's the will power and civility to come up with a whole new set of laws that are reasonable and designed around the public's best interest.

But, I would be happy if my cynicism gets proven wrong.

These laws are dangerous because they are vague enough to give the government a free pass to legally target almost anyone who uses the internet.

It is another means to possibly silence whistleblowers and/or opposition.

Except these laws already apply to every other form of media and they aren't being used to silence whistleblowers or political opposition.

The sky is not falling.

"Every other form of media" is not the same as the media on the internet, where individuals create the media.

More importantly, why would you want the federal government to have such abusable power? The sky may not be falling now, but that is no excuse to do nothing while our freedoms are eroded.

It's not absolute power, as evidenced by the fact that it hasn't been absolute power.

Your whole argument rests on the unspoken and incorrect premise that such laws aren't open to challenge, when in fact they have been challenged and litigated extensively and you're only looking at the statutory side.

This seems to be a common error among hackers who assume that statute = law and don't consider the history of how courts have interpreted and circumscribed statutes over the years. Of course, this is also a structural problem in our legal system which makes it quite difficult to ascertain what the actual operational parameters are without spending a lot of time in a law library or its digital equivalent. Much of what lawyers are paid for is their knowledge of how to trace and apply that history to new fact patterns.

Girls Lean Back Everywhere by Edward de Grazia is widely considered the best single work on the law of obscenity, although it's heavily focused on sexuality and pornography and may seem somewhat dated by today's standards.

Regardless of these specific laws, the fact that one has the "freedom" to spend time and money fighting overreaching laws in court does not make them acceptable.

My point is that you don't have to do so to the extent that you're claiming because other people already have.