TO invoice summary He said that under current legal precedent, plaintiffs must show that coercion was successful in causing the removal or changes to the content. The bill would allow plaintiffs to sue and obtain financial damages from “any government agency or employee who casts doubt on companies involved in social media, artificial intelligence, or broadcasting.” yet of whether the jaw is successful.”
The bill specifically authorizes financial damages, because under current law, plaintiffs can only obtain injunctive relief that prevents future or ongoing violations, according to the summary. With financial damages, government officials who engage in illegal censorship could be held liable even after leaving office. The bill effectively imposes a limit on financial payments by allowing compensatory damages but not punitive damages.
Convenient “bottlenecks” for censorship
The bill also “requires agencies to send certain communications with social media companies, artificial intelligence companies, and broadcasters to a portal with detailed public summaries and full access to Congress, helping to ensure that secret conversations do not occur,” the summary said.
The proposed portal would help people prove their rights were violated, according to the summary. Without this measure, “plaintiffs may have difficulty demonstrating their disbelief because the government has secretly communicated with the private companies it is coercing. Americans may not even know they were censored by their government,” the summary said.
The text of the bill said that broadcasters, online services and “artificial intelligence systems that enable speech are critical to information access and individual expression and are entitled to independent editorial judgment. Such entities can also serve as convenient cross-points for the government to target censorship of unfavorable speech and information.”
The bill defines broadcasters to include stations licensed by the FCC and national television networks that provide programming to affiliated stations. This means that coercing local stations and national networks would violate the law.
“The term ‘coerce’ means taking harmful, hostile or unfavorable action, implying the possibility of taking such action, or threatening such action,” the bill says. The proposed ban has exceptions for legal investigations, enforcement of federal or state laws, and actions taken under a court order.
