Rebecca MacKinnon Quotes

When controversial speech can be taken offline through pressures on private intermediaries without any kind of due process, that is something we need to be concerned about.

4chan is a framework of pictures and text. I've always been extremely hands-off with dictating what gets posted, past general categories and rules. I support providing a place to discuss anything, although I don't agree with everything that's posted.

Anyone who posts illegal content on 4chan is an idiot.

Every time I write a nonfiction book I get sued.

Whether it's Baidu or Chinese versions of YouTube or Sina or Sohu, Chinese Internet sites are getting daily directives from the government telling them what kinds of content they cannot allow on their site and what they need to delete.

The war for the Internet has begun. Hollywood is in control of politics. The government is killing innovation.

You shouldn't restrict peoples' freedom on what they can and cannot do with code.

I don't come down on any simple place as a deletionist or a completionist.

If the U.N. were to be successful in its efforts to control the Internet, countries where human rights records range from questionable to criminal could be put in charge of determining what is and is not allowed to appear online.

I was an online service provider. It's not my job to police what people are uploading. It's the job of the content owners, and the law is very clear. If you create content, and you want to protect your copyrights, you have to do the work.

Protect IP (PIPA) and the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) are a step towards a different kind of Internet. They are a step towards an Internet in which those with money and lawyers and access to power have a greater voice than those who don't.

Categorically to say that all content you don't like receiving is harassment would be such a broad brush it wouldn't leave us much content.

Publish and be sued

Congress created a safe harbor for defamation in 1996 and for copyright in 1998. Both safe harbors were designed to ensure that the Internet would remain a participatory medium of speech.

We recognized from the beginning that we could create profiles for the bands and allow people to use the site any way they wanted to. We didn't stop people from promoting whatever they wanted to promote on MySpace.

What we will do is we'll say, 'Okay, you have your page, and if you're not trying to organize harm against someone, or attacking someone, then you can put up that content on your page, even if people might disagree with it or find it offensive.' But that doesn't mean that we have a responsibility to make it widely distributed in News Feed.

There is a certain belief that so long as something is published in cyberspace there is no need to respect the laws of contempt or libel. This is mistaken.

By becoming the Twitter police we've volunteered to become the thought police: This seems indisputable, even uncontroversial.

Can any sane person say that before something comes on the Net you must screen it? How can there be pre-screening?

The definition of hate speech in some countries is problematic.

Companies like YouTube will continue to be tested on their commitment to the mission that made them such popular and profitable websites - providing an open platform to a wide range of ideas from around the world.

If SOPA were to pass, Imgur would not be able to exist. We survive on user-generated content. It would be impossible for us to police the amount of traffic we get for what is or isn't copyrighted material. It's just not possible.

Reddit is, it's like a tiger. It's great if it's your friend, but it can also eat you alive.

If I could police every other social platform in the world, I would.

I should say here, because some in Washington like to dream up ways to control the Internet, that we don't need to 'control' free speech, we need to control ourselves.