Introduction and (perhaps) completion.

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Éibhear Ó hAnluain 2019-09-20 07:00:24 +01:00
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I will also address some additional concerns I believe are relevant
to this analysis.
** Summary
1. /Self-hosting/ is where an individual, a small group or a small
business manages their own online service, rather than making
use of a third-party service. There are self-hosting
alternatives to all of the major services that would be under
consideration for your analysis. In recent years, legislation
enacted out of Europe and around the world that seeks to control
expression online seems to regard only the large organisations,
and can severely inhibit innocent self-hosting activities by
applying additional burdens on the service operators.
2. Legislation and regulations that allow for user-posted material
to be taken offline are often abused. A regime that punishes a
service operator for leaving alleged infringing or illegal
material up but that doesn't sanction the operator for taking
down innocent material will result in significant infringement
of internet users' speech rights with no consequences for the
service operator or those alleging infringement or illegality.
3. /Content Moderation/ is the process whereby service operators
decide whether material can stay on the service or not. It is
very hard to do right, and is impossible to do it at
scale. Assertions that service operators are "doing nothing" are
wrong on the face of it and ignores the challenges involved.
4. It is the behaviour of users, and the decisions of users that
results in bullying, harassment and harmful material
online. Very few services, and none of the large services,
encourage or want their system to be used for this purpose.
5. Requiring that material be taken offline without regard for the
consequences of doing so can be dangerous. In particular, if a
crime has been committed, it may necessary to preserve a posting
in order to allow for it to be presented as evidence in court.
6. Encryption is not something that should be interfered with by
legislation. There is a wide body of expertise and experience
showing this to be the case. Interfering with encryption
services will only have no effect on those who want to use
encryption for illegal activities but will have a devastating
impact on innocent people.
I make the following recommendations in this submission:
1. Laws that seek to control online materials should take into
consideration that ability of all legal, innocent services to
implement required measures. Overly burdensome rules will result
in the loss of many valuable services while cementing the market
positions of the services that have the financial resources to
implement the rules.
2. Laws that seek to control online materials should punish
severely attempts to abuse them to stifle free expression and
remove innocent material.
3. While /self-regulation/ has a bad reputation, it is imperative
for legislators to examine in detail how services are dealing
with harmful and abusive material and to consider the challenges
involved.
4. Laws should target user behaviour more than seek to punish third
parties.
5. To protect free expression includes ensuring that material that
is considered illegal is made available to those who investigate
human rights abuses.
* Self-hosting
** Self-hosting
For the purposes of this submission, /self-hosting/ is where an
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service that they provide, including ensuring that it is kept
running and updates are applied appropriately, and so on.
A list of services that can be self-hosted, and the software
packages that can be used for those services is available at
https://github.com/Kickball/awesome-selfhosted.
This submission is primarily concerned about self-hosting as a
hobby and self-hosting engaged in by charity, non-governmental or
community organisations. However, self-hosting for commercial

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