The regulation isn't hard to design. You make operators of servers responsible for all the content they serve. They are forced to implement pre-moderation, or to disallow content from non-trusted sources. The same regulations would apply to websites, proxies, tor nodes etc. The EU is already going down this path to better enforce copyright. China, Russia, the Middle East are already well ahead.

Would the Internet basically lose it's purpose? It would still be able to connect consumers to businesses.

If you took away the USA and its DMCA safe habor, I'm not sure how much of the Internet (as we know it) would be left.

>You make operators of servers responsible for all the content they serve.

>Would the Internet basically lose it's purpose? It would still be able to connect consumers to businesses.

Yeah, it would connect consumers and businesses in the same way that TV connects consumers and businesses. If server operators are responsible for all of the content online then no server owner will allow ANY user-generated content.

>They are forced to implement pre-moderation, or to disallow content from non-trusted sources.

So, upload filters? People don't take kindly to being considered guilty into proven innocent.

>The EU is already going down this path to better enforce copyright.

There's a good reason why the EU has basically no large tech companies. I'm not sure being anti-technology like we are in Europe is a good idea in a world that's spurred on by technology.

Also, P2P would basically break this kind of regulation. To fight against that you eventually need to ban encryption or require backdoors in them. You also need to criminalize encryption that's not state-sanctioned.

That sounds like a hellscape to me.

TOR hidden services can still get around this. It's hard to enforce regulation when you can't locate the server or the operator.

It would also break a huge number of businesses. Something like GitHub could be used to link/host the video, no way you could enforce pre-moderation for all commits/uploads.

TOR hidden services would be unreachable if nobody could run an entry node. Yes, services like GitHub would be affected just as badly as the likes of Facebook. Serious developers (like Microsoft and Google, and even those much smaller) can easily run their own servers though, so would the powers-that-be really care? Cloud computing may also be destroyed.

When I mentioned the DMCA safe harbor, I forgot that it only protects sites from copyright violations. Could a site like Facebook, in theory, be prosecuted for distributing terrorist propaganda when such incidents occur? Or in the case of other data-sharing crimes, like distributing child pornography?

Apparently, such issues aren't really settled. https://www.ericgoldman.org/writings/websiteliabilityalert.h...

Regulations don't have to be perfect to be effective.

It's easy to keep driving your car through an intersection without stopping at a stop sign, and some people get away with it.

Even though stop signs can be circumvented, we're all a lot safer with stop signs than without them.