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Are Tech Firms Liable For What Their Users Post? (mercurynews.com)
Thursday Texas police officers arrested the CEO of Backpage.com, a web site allowing escorts to post classified ads, on a felony charge accusing him of pimping. Slashdot reader whoever57 writes:
It is likely that the charges will not stick because of section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, under which publishers are protected from liability for the postings of their users. However, this could just be the first shot in the battle to weaken section 230. This could endanger other sites, such as Craigslist, and ultimately, any site with user-written content.
Backpage calls the prosecution "frivolous," arguing that the site's classified ads for escorts are protected by the First Amendment. But a law professor at the University of Santa Clara suggests prosecutors may argue that the site had been "optimized to facilitate online prostitution ads," establishing some level of complicity.
Backpage calls the prosecution "frivolous," arguing that the site's classified ads for escorts are protected by the First Amendment. But a law professor at the University of Santa Clara suggests prosecutors may argue that the site had been "optimized to facilitate online prostitution ads," establishing some level of complicity.
Pick up the classifieds in any local 'newspaper' in a big city, and see dozens of advertisements for escorts or other 'personal services'. If users posting thinly disguised advertisements for prostitution is enough to get someone thrown in jail, then Bezos should be following the Backpage guy any... minute... now...
Nah, this should be nothing more than another failed attempt by the morals police to punish people for doing things they don't like.
Well they have been going after the Backpage for 10 years, so I guess at this stage they are just throwing it against the wall and hoping for a judge that will let it stick.
Besides considering how complacent they have been with banks and money laundering drug money and tax evasion, it seems that this is just low hanging fruit by comparison.
of people pulling this off?
One has to wonder....
needs recognition ... ???
feels inferior and has to compensate trying to fill this void
stubborn frame of mind
shine before his/her peer group, partner
neural concept how things have to be
this won't be decided as a matter of law, but a matter of feelings.
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They are if they heavily moderate all posts, and sometimes in a politically biased manner, like a lot of social media and news sites these days...
Since when is any company with a website considered a "tech firm"?
90% of the site's revenue came from ads for escorts/prostitutes. Add to that some escorts were minors or victims of human trafficking.
But they rather skirt the law, that do their job get those doing the posting.
You see that involves actual work.
Why work when police state tactics are just as good in court.
This already made the rounds at Ars. The current spat has nothing to do with Section 230. The warrant states that BackPages was complicit in editing ads to hide their illegality befor posting. That makes them complicit. Section 230 won't protect you if you edit the stuff your users post.
Anyway, the formal charges are here. Pimping is defied in teh CA Penal Code as profiting off of someone else's prostitution. I'd like to note that further reading of the Ars thread brings to light that things like Overt Act 9 are not nebulous "some child", but rather, that they have children who are testifying.
tl;dr: this is about section 230. This is about a company taking an active role in prostitution and sex trafficking.
they might want to arrest the phone company executives. after all, phone services, not to mention the yellow pages also facilitate prostitution. after that they can start arresting taxi drivers, and how about the hotel companies. there is no end to the people they can arrest.
If there is a clause in the user agreement that they own all user generated content, then these are their posts and they should be liable.
"Are [publishers] liable for what their users print?" No, unless they knowingly help their users commit a crime. Which Backpage allegedly did.
The charges are based out of California. He was arrested in Texas as he arrived on an international flight.
I was that guy who was entrapped by the cocksucking entrapper.
In the real world, if you have say, a billboard, and someone defaces that billboard, in most places there's a law that gives you so much time to clean it up.
And you can't rent your billboard out to the local drug dealer.
Why would the web be any different?
Was great while it lasted. Welcome fascism.
If the company profits from the user's activity, then yes.
So if some specific 17 year old posts a bunch of illegal offers on your web site, and later agrees to testify in court against you, YOU should be held liable and prosecuted?
There are plenty of more dangerous, more arduous, more humiliating jobs out there - even ones that require touching the bodies and excretions of other people. And most of them are paid much lower than prostitution. I for one am happy that where I live, prostitution is a legal job, involving taxation and social security insurance like every other job.
Secton 230 has no effect on criminal law. If you are facilitating a crime then you are liable.
Backpage are helping people conduct human trafficking and are therefore liable.
actually ... NO ! to say they are is to say goodspeech is a good thing and you get to regulate and dictate what others say and the leaders of the free worlds very constitution would oppose that in a real world
Free speech was meant to be free for all... how can anyone grow up in a nanny state ?
So, basically, the Texas police are giving this guy free advertising for his web site? I'm not clear on what the backpage.com business model is anyway; who pays for free ads?
Elizabeth Nolan Brown gives her (derisive) take on the prosecution of the Backpage CEO, filled with links to further details on the case.
Among the allegations:
and
Nolan-Brown writes about prosecutors using Backpage's cooperation with law enforcement to prevent illegal activity as proof that Backpage is a criminal organization:
If only Slashdot was liable for how stupid their stupidest of headlines sounds. This is not CNN editors, or are you ready to admit that every last Nerd has left the virtual building? FFS, Slashdot is the author of "The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way."
I believe you can get one of those on Backpage :-)
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
I wanted to send a big thank you to the Texas Attorney General, I hadn't heard of this site before.
"Grab them by the pussy" -- President of the United States of America
But clear law is no longer obeyed like abortion the courts are partisan and whatever their side wants is what they get.
At first I thought they did not understand that was tyranny but now I understand tyranny is actually what the courts are about.
And the Attack on Freedom of Speech isn't bothering anyone? OMG save the Children, who will end up in chains at this pace. As a nation was have been spoon fed glysophate laden baby food, while we are certain we should fight about prostitution straw-men.
Perhaps we should arrest, Craigs list and Ebay right now?
There is no reason for prostitution to be illegal in the first place.
This is just another assault by the totalitarian scumbags....
In a criminal prosecution it is not always an intention to get a conviction but an attempt to punish by generating great expenses and inconveniences before the not guilty verdict is issued. This situation would not exist if there was an enforcible economic penalty that must be paid to an individual for any charges for which they are found not guilty. The same tactic oozes over to civil suits. Simply tying up a company for months and calling endless witnesses will generate such huge legal expenses that it is far cheaper to pay to avoid going to trial. In some situations an individual can generate over one million dollars in legal expenses before any hearings take place. And if that individual obviously could never pay if he lost the company must pay as there is no hope of regaining their losses from their lawyers bills and court costs. Imagine working at a company and charging them with sexual harassment and then deposing every single employee and deliveryman that ever entered the property about whether they noticed anything inappropriate in the building. The typing fees for the depositions alone could break many peoples backs.
Why is it that so many Americans are convinced that the merchant who sells a gun is not liable for what the purchaser does with it? (2nd amendment over all! yada yada . . .)
But that these same people keep claiming that the merchant who sells a message is liable for what the purchaser says in it? (1st amendment! but not really. yada yada . . .)
Apparently, they have realized that the pen is mightier than the sword and taken the wrong lesson from it: they have decided that everyone should have weapons and no one should have ideas.
"We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." --The American President (20.1.2009)