I'm working on a paper on how recent and proposed Amendments to the CDA will be applied to create liability for unlawful content published to open blockchains. TL;DR: Courts are going to have a mess of a time imposing liability and victims will be without any real recourse.

Before I start, I am a supporter of a free internet and believe decentralized networks in particular foster liberty. Dictators censor dissent and p2p platforms are vital. Ask protesters in Hong Kong or Iranians how valuable a censorship free network can be.

In the US, the CDA has been important and allowed the internet to develop. But it has also contributed to many of the problems we have because of the internet. I'm not a CDA fundamentalist because I have seen the CDA exploited by big tech to let harmful behavior go unchecked.

Protecting victims of non-concensual porn (including kids) need to and will be better addressed. The DOJ has recommended doing so. But platforms and ISPs will not be strictly liable. There will be a safe harbor after notice of unlawful materials. Take it down, avoid liability.

This works okay for central companies. The internet didn't die after the 2018 FOTSA amendments addressing human trafficking content. But Bitcoin makes take downs impossible. That's good for financial records and political speech, but less than ideal when it comes to child porn.

So even though Bitcoin's primary use is not publication, one can publish images and other material onto Bitcoin's blockchain. I explore these non-financial uses in this article exploring the First Amendment implications of Bitcoin and decentral networks. https://repository.law.miami.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4591&context=umlr

What happens when revenge porn makes its way onto bitcoin's ledger? It can't be taken down, so is Satoshi liable for creating a platform that cannot erase harmful images? He has 10 billion dollars but we don't know who he is so unlikely. If he's gone is there no liability?

Or are the core devs responsible for contributing to an open protocol? Unlikely. Do we try to impose liability on nodes maintaining the blockchain or the specific miner that validates the transaction containing the data? Practically both groups will never be held liable.

One option is to make services that allow arbitrary data to be searched and viewed liable. We could require filters to screen illegal data, which could be seen as analogous to complying with a takedown. But the data will always remain and the victims will have no real recourse.

Regulators are in a hard spot. Protecting non-consensual porn victims is vital, but as we have seen with the EARN-IT act proposed to make end-to-end encryption illegal, the desire can protect can cause lawmakers to consider overbroad regulations unlikely to address the problem.

A goal of regulation is to stop bad behavior. Here, at least as applied to bitcoin's network, I question whether any regulation can be created that stops illegal images from making ti onchain and know there isn't anything they can do to remove them completely.

The question is much easier for centralized networks. But decentralization is not binary. There are quasi-decentralized networks where a group controls enough of the network to censor a transaction but only in a way that forces a fork or damages the network's integrity.

Query how the court deals with a wide range of networks and immutability issues. For a lot of these questions, there is no good answer because for all the good technology develops there are irreparable harms to progress.

Interested in hearing the internet's views on this both in the bitcoin community and out. My own views on the CDA have evolved tremendously over the years, not least because I have been following the work of @ma_franks and @daniellecitron.