this post was submitted on 03 Aug 2024
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Network Neutrality and Digital Inclusion

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This community is broadly about network neutrality. It’s important to note a major component of #netneutrality is access equality and thus #digitalInclusion.

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US federal law becoming inaccessible (Cloudflare!) (www.ecfr.gov)
submitted 3 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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ecfr.gov used to be a decent source for looking up laws. When looking up the anti spam laws, the linked page is littered with links to an access-restricted Cloudflare site (www.govinfo.gov). The important parts of the law are missing from ecfr.gov. It’s common for various states to have this mom-pop shop competency level, but tragic and embarrassing that the US feds lack competency to the point of Cloudflare-dependency.

Often Cornell University publishes federal law and mitigates the embarrassment to some extent. But when looking up the CAN-SPAM law at Cornell, the Cornell law site redirects to another access-restricted Cloudflare site (www.gpo.gov).

There needs to be a fundamental high-level that requires all laws to be accessible to all people, not just people who Cloudflare is willing to give access to.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago (1 children)

There's possibly a real legal case to be had, here. (Serious)

I would pursue it, but I can't check the relevant laws, because Cloud flare doesn't believe I'm human (sarcasm....so far).

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Take a taxi to the public library and get a receipt for that. Look up the laws there. Add the taxi costs to the lawsuit. And when your case is hindered because the law you’re citing is outdated (because it’s from printed library books), then use that to bolster your case.

I’ve actually tried the library. IIRC the courthouse had a small public library just for law about the size of 2 or 3 office cubes. Finding law in hardcopy law books is very difficult for a non-lawyer. I don’t recall if I was looking for statutes or case law but it was a disaster. I could not find anything useful for what I was trying to research. I recall wondering if the relevant bits of law I was even in the library.