US House Passes Bill To Penalize Websites For Sex Trafficking (trust.org)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Thomson Reuters Foundation News: The U.S. House of Representatives on Tuesday overwhelmingly passed legislation to make it easier to penalize operators of websites that facilitate online sex trafficking, chipping away at a bedrock legal shield for the technology industry. The bill's passage marks one of the most concrete actions in recent years from the U.S. Congress to tighten regulation of internet firms, which have drawn heavy scrutiny from lawmakers in both parties over the past year due to an array of concerns regarding the size and influence of their platforms. The House passed the measure 388-25. It still needs to pass the U.S. Senate, where similar legislation has already gained substantial support, and then be signed by President Donald Trump before it can become law.

Several major internet companies, including Alphabet Inc's Google and Facebook Inc, had been reluctant to support any congressional effort to dent what is known as Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, a decades-old law that protects them from liability for the activities of their users. But facing political pressure, the internet industry slowly warmed to a proposal that gained traction in the Senate last year, and eventually endorsed it after it gained sizable bipartisan support. The legislation is a result of years of law-enforcement lobbying for a crackdown on the online classified site backpage.com, which is used for sex advertising. It would make it easier for states and sex-trafficking victims to sue social media networks, advertisers and others that fail to keep exploitative material off their platforms.

Comments

Gee, that's too bad

[fustakrakich]

I guess the 1st Amendment will never have the same appeal as the 2nd

Re:Gee, that's too bad

[Hal_Porter]

Sex trafficking is not a 1st Amendment issue. Backpage was using the CDA to shield itself from being prosecuted for running a underage prostitution ring.

https://www.washingtonpost.com...

The Senate bill, and a similar one in the House, were inspired by the numerous court victories won by Backpage.com, an online classified ads site that hosts massive advertising for prostitution, including an unknown percentage of children being trafficked by adult pimps. Backpage has successfully cited the Communications Decency Act, which protects websites from liability for posts by third parties, to evade both criminal prosecution and civil lawsuits. As attorney general of California, Harris launched a criminal case against Backpage for prostitution, and it was thrown out by a judge who cited the Communications Decency Act.

The Senate's subcommittee on investigations sparked congressional action when it found that Backpage was editing ads to remove references to underage prostitutes, but allowing the ads to remain online. Then, in July, The Washington Post revealed that Backpage was actively soliciting ads from prostitutes on other websites, and creating new ads for those prostitutes so that they could post on Backpage with just one click.

Some members of Congress called for the Justice Department to investigate Backpage for seemingly creating illegal content, not just hosting it. And some opponents of the new bill cited The Post story as evidence that Backpage could be prosecuted under the existing law, with no need to amend the law and possibly open up unforeseen areas of civil and criminal liability.

After the bill was introduced, tech lobbyists worked Capitol Hill trying to drum up opposition. Google issued a statement saying the proposed bill "would be a disaster" and "would actually hinder the fight against sex trafficking." The bill amends both the Decency Act and a federal sex-trafficking statute.

But members of the tech community worked with Senate Commerce Committee staff to tweak the language of the bill, which is scheduled for markup Wednesday. One of the keys was the definition of "participation in a venture" in the anti-sex-trafficking statute, which courts have found did not include Internet sites hosting illegal content. The proposed bill originally defined participation as "knowing conduct, by an individual or entity, by any means, that assists, supports or facilitates a violation" of sex trafficking laws.

Internet companies thought the phrase "by any means" had the potential to be broadly interpreted when analyzing a website's actions. The newly amended bill changes the definition of participation to simply "knowingly assisting, supporting, or facilitating a violation" of sex trafficking laws, Senate staff members said.

The changes to the bill also amend the standard by which state prosecutors can seek to charge or sue websites, requiring them to meet the federal standard, including the new definition above, rather than those established by state law, which can vary widely.

Michael Beckerman, president of the Internet Association, which counts Google, Twitter and Microsoft among its members, said in a statement that "Important changes made to SESTA will grant victims the ability to secure the justice they deserve, allow internet platforms to continue their work combating human trafficking, and protect good actors in the ecosystem."

Beckerman said the association was looking "forward to working with the House and Senate as SESTA moves through the legislative process to ensure that our members are able to continue their work to fight exploitation."

Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) and other members of the Commerce Committee welcomed the endorsement from the Internet Association. "I'm pleased we've reached an agreement," Portman said in a statement. "We've reached

Re:Gee, that's too bad

[Anonymous Coward]

On the contrary, the 2nd has always been the unwanted stepchild of the Bill of Rights. Even the ACLU finds new and creative ways to interpret plain English language to avoid supporting it.

But if you start inconveniencing large, unaccountable tech companies, suddenly they're all constitutional scholars.

Re:Gee, that's too bad

[nctritech]

Was Backpage actually running an underage prostitution ring or were third parties running underage prostitution rings and using Backpage as a place to post ads? The rhetoric around "sex trafficking" is full of logical fallacies, anecdotal evidence, and opinions-as-facts appeal-to-emotion presentations by law enforcement officials and politicians. It is difficult to trust that what is presented is actually truthful, especially when the facts run counter to the prevailing narrative.

https://reason.com/blog/2017/0...

Partial quote: "Both law enforcement and nonprofits such as the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) routinely use sites like Backpage to search for teenagers reported missing. The cross-country nature of the site allows authorities to track potential victims who may move around a lot, and provides tangible evidence for prosecutors to use against their exploiters. Police also use Backpage extensively when conducting sting operations ostensibly targeting the recovery of minors. Backpage itself has, at least historically, reported suspicious ads (such as those featuring pictures of people who look underage) to NCMEC or local law enforcement."

I'm not saying that Backpage is a company run by angels, but I am definitely saying that there's so much propaganda and lies by omission out there about the Backpage prostitution situation that facts are hard to come by without scooping through truckloads of bullshit and ignoring the moralistic crusaders screaming in your ears that they're right. In any case, the people posting underage prostitution ads are the ones committing the heinous act and going after Backpage won't do a damn thing but shovel a bunch more of the prostitution ad volume onto Tor and I2P. Driving the information further underground and further from the legal reach of law enforcement will only make matters worse.

Re:Gee, that's too bad

[Hal_Porter]

Was Backpage actually running an underage prostitution ring or were third parties running underage prostitution rings and using Backpage as a place to post ads?

https://www.washingtonpost.com...

A contractor for the controversial classifieds website Backpage.com has been aggressively soliciting and creating sex-related ads, despite Backpage's repeated insistence that it had no role in the content of ads posted on its site, according to a trove of newly discovered documents.

The documents show that Backpage hired a company in the Philippines to lure advertisers -- and customers seeking sex -- from sites run by its competitors. The spreadsheets, emails, audio files and employee manuals were revealed in an unrelated legal dispute and provided to The Washington Post.

Workers in the Philippine call center scoured the Internet for newly listed sex ads, then contacted the people who posted them and offered a free ad on Backpage.com, the documents show. The contractor's workers even created each new ad so it could be activated with one click.

Workers also created phony sex ads, offering to "Let a young babe show you the way" or "Little angel seeks daddy," adding photos of barely clad women and explicit sex patter, the documents show. The workers posted the ads on competitors' websites. Then, when a potential customer expressed interest, an email directed that person to Backpage.com, where they would find authentic ads, spreadsheets used to track the process show.

They were certainly making aggressive moves to break into the underage prostitute ad market. And when people complained they said it was 'third party content' and used the CDA as a shield

For years, Backpage executives have adamantly denied claims made by members of Congress, state attorneys general, law enforcement and sex-abuse victims that the site has facilitated prostitution and child sex trafficking. Backpage argues it is a passive carrier of "third-party content" and has no control of sex-related ads posted by pimps, prostitutes and even organized trafficking rings. The company contends it removes clearly illegal ads and refers violators to the police.

The discovery could be a turning point in the years-long campaign by anti-human trafficking groups, and Congress, to persuade Backpage to stop hosting prostitution ads, which many teenage girls have claimed were used to sell them for sexual exploitation. Lawsuits and criminal prosecutions of Backpage in the United States have nearly all failed because Backpage cites in its defense the federal Communications Decency Act, which grants immunity to websites that merely host or screen content posted by others.

Re: Gee, that's too bad

[Anonymous Coward]

Should start by beating to shit n1gger pimps. Fucking n1gger rapists are the biggest customers.

Re:Gee, that's too bad

[nctritech]

Nothing you quoted in that reply says anything about "running an underage prostitution ring" so that claim remains unfounded. The only uses of the word "underage" are in your own text and the text you quoted from my question. Referencing youth is not the same thing as "underage." If you don't believe me, see the search results for yourself and start clicking those "report" buttons.

Re:Gee, that's too bad

[Antique Geekmeister]

Those are very good points. We should expect to see many "think of the children" demands. tied to any such laws.

Re:Gee, that's too bad

[Hal_Porter]

Nothing you quoted in that reply says anything about "running an underage prostitution ring" so that claim remains unfounded.

Ok how about "they made aggressive moves to break into the underage prostitute ad market". Are happy with that wording?

As far as the underage thing consider

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

According to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC), the majority of child sex trafficking cases referred to NCMEC involve ads on Backpage. Backpage says that it blocks about a million ads per month, mostly suspected of child sex trafficking or prostitution. Of those, they report around 400 ads a month to NCMEC which in turn notify law enforcement. Content submitted to Backpage is surveyed by an automated scan for terms related to prostitution. At least one member of a team of over 100 people also oversees each entry before it is posted.

Backpage has had continued issues with credit card processors, who were under pressure from law enforcement to cease working with companies that allegedly allow or encourage illegal prostitution. In 2015 Backpage lost all credit card processing agreements, leaving Bitcoin as the remaining option for paid ads.

In an amicus curiae brief, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children says the efforts of Backpage are inadequate and their reporting lacked in several areas. They say Backpage does not report all ads that have been flagged as being underage, does not report when someone tries to advertise children under 18 years of age, and does not respond to requests of parents to have ads of their trafficked children removed. They also say Backpage "encourage[s] dissemination of child sex trafficking content on its website". They say Backpage is much slower in removing ads that advertise children than ads placed by authorities aimed at trapping traffickers, guides traffickers in creating false pages for underage children, instructs traffickers and buyers on how to pay anonymously, and makes it easier to make adult posts than other posts. They said "To all intents and purposes, Backpage has instituted no effective procedures to prevent child sex trafficking ads from being created on its site." They say that they do not use obvious techniques to identify traffickers, such as using the same phone number, email address or credit card of a known trafficker, or reusing the same picture of known victim of human trafficking.

They were clearly turning a blind eye to people advertising underage prostitutes, rather like Pirate Bay did to people posting torrents that violate copyright.

Re:Gee, that's too bad

[Hal_Porter]

But if you start inconveniencing large, unaccountable tech companies, suddenly they're all constitutional scholars.

Right now the media is full of crying kiddies demanding the 2nd Amendment be abolished. And then you see when someone suggests that Section 230 of the CDA should not be a shield against prosecution for running ads for under age or trafficked prostitutes then the tone changes completely and the comment section is full of people sonorously worrying that it's the end of the 1st Amendment.

Re:Gee, that's too bad

[Antique Geekmeister]

If you look at the site: they turn a blind eye to prostitution hosted at www.backpage.com. Picking and choosing which prostitutes are under-age, lying about their age, or are undercover police is a burden for any website which would be a legal nightmare to undertake. There are many others that have carefully turned a blind eye to such traffic: Craigslist used to do so, and withdrew from the business after a notable murder of a prostitute found on craigslist. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... for more details.

Re:Gee, that's too bad

[Anonymous Coward]

kill yourself, authoritarian scum

Re:Gee, that's too bad

[nctritech]

I see nothing to substantiate that claim either. Trying to get market share for prostitution ads is not the same thing as trying to get market share for underage prostitution ads. Also, look at the thing you quoted: a team of "over 100 people" have to review each entry before it's posted for a website that receives so many posts that "about a million ads per month" are blocked. Scrutinizing ad wording is a subjective task and they've got a staff in the hundreds on a website that's receiving posts in the millions per month. None of what's in that Wikipedia article quote is a surprise with that kind of context. They remove fake law enforcement ads faster than they remove ads advertising "children?" (Note: teenagers are not children as in "pedophilia" so there's already some seriously loaded wording by describing underage post-pubescent adolescents this way.) Why is this a surprising thing to anyone? The poster for "jailbait" prostitutes only needs to convey "I'm REALLY young, yo" in a coded way and as one code-word is grey-listed a hundred more euphemisms can be created to replace them, whereas the law enforcement official making shit up will be using up-to-date well-known code words that are on the list of phrases that raise red flags. If Backpage is using data analysis akin to spam email scoring to assist in moderation and they don't know who is and isn't law enforcement, doesn't it make perfect sense that LE posts get red-flagged sooner?

As for TPB, they don't turn a blind eye to torrents that violate copyright. TPB outright doesn't give a damn about copyright. That's kind of their schtick.

Re:Gee, that's too bad

[Anonymous Coward]

So forcing this into the dark webs and further underground is going to help them find trafficked children. Got it.

Re:Gee, that's too bad

[Hal_Porter]

Note: teenagers are not children as in "pedophilia" so there's already some seriously loaded wording by describing underage post-pubescent adolescents this way.

Someone quibbling about the distinction between ephebophiles and pedophilia seems to be inevitable in these sorts of discussions.

I wonder why...

Re:Gee, that's too bad

[nctritech]

Probably because "children" implies something very different from "teens" and is an implicit logical fallacy of appeal to emotion. Hmm, I wonder why someone would want to have a discussion where the facts are clearly stated instead of implied...how odd...wait, no, that's how rational discussion works.

Re:Gee, that's too bad

[Noishkel]

Well, I guess the #MeToo movement stops when the OP can't get any under age nookie.

And trying to poke fun at the 2nd Amendment too while you're at it. Classy.

Re:Gee, that's too bad

[Anonymous Coward]

dat ad hominem attack doe, mang

Re:Gee, that's too bad

[Anonymous Coward]

Ya don't need to be one of them Rhodes Scholars to comprehend the meaning of "no law". In fact, it's probably a hindrance.

Re:Gee, that's too bad

[Hal_Porter]

I think it's because you want to blur the lines so that your paraphilia seems to be less obviously exploitative and wrong with a view to legalising it.

Look at what you've done in this thread. Backpage was aggressively soliciting business from people who run ads for child prostitutes and you quibbled that that wasn't the same as 'running a child prostitution ring'.

Now you're making the standard pedo apologist quibble that 'ephebophiles are not the same as pedophiles'. Presumably because ephebophiles want to fuck slightly older but still underage age children compared to pedophiles.

All of your comments seem to be ackchyually type quibbles designed to blur line between people who have sex with adults and people who have sex with minors.

Having sex with anyone under the age of consent is wrong and illegal. It doesn't matter whether they're 1 year under the AOC or 5 years. And running ads for child prostitutes is wrong and should be illegal. Even sites like the Pirate Bay and 4chan don't allow child porn. The idea that you should be able to run ads for child prostitutes and then claim CDA Section 230 'safe harbour' protection is bonkers. And it's even more bonkers to say that any attempt to stop this being possible is an assault on the 1st Amendment - there's no prior restraint here.

It's also worth pointing out that the bill in question which removed CDA Section 230 protections from people running enabling sex trafficking ads had broad bipartisan support. And it happened explicitly because Backpage was enabling sex trafficking and even child sex trafficking.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

The Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act (SESTA) is a United States bill introduced by Senator Rob Portman. It seeks to clarify the country's sex trafficking law to make it illegal to knowingly assist, facilitate, or support sex trafficking, and amend the Section 230 safe harbors of the Communications Decency Act (which make online services immune from civil liability for the actions of their users) to exclude enforcement of federal or state sex trafficking laws from its immunity. Portman had previously led an investigation into the online classifieds service Backpage (which had been accused of facilitating child sex trafficking), and argued that Section 230 was protecting its "unscrupulous business practices" and was not designed to provide immunity to websites that facilitate sex trafficking.

SESTA has received bipartisan support from U.S. senators, the Internet Association, as well as companies such as 21st Century Fox and Oracle, who supported the bill's goal to encourage proactive action against illegal sex trafficking. SESTA has been incorporated into the House version of the bill and is now known as the FOSTA-SESTA package.

On February 27, 2018, the SESTA-FOSTA package was passed in the House of Representatives with a vote of 388-25.

Re:Gee, that's too bad

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok how about "they made aggressive moves to break into the underage prostitute ad market". Are happy with that wording?

Only if, you know, you offered any sort of proof they were doing that. Hell, to the fact that it's claimed they were scrubbing underage ads, from the US Senate report in a footnote:

'Ferrer also personally supervised multiple “deep cleans” of
previously published Backpage ads to scrub them of suspect words. At his direction, words
indicative of underage prostitution and other crimes were stripped out from all ads. See App.
000754; App. 000213. On February 4, 2011, for example, Ferrer directed DesertNet to go through
“all adult and personal ads and remove” words including “innocent, tight, fresh” and “schoolgirl,
school girl, highschool, high school, cheerleader.” Id.; see also App. 000145; App. 000195. 138 App. 000156. Ferrer initially debated whether to “ban or strip out” the word “lolita.” Padilla’s
December 1, 2010 email and accompanying Strip Term From Ad spreadsheet confirms that
Backpage did, in fact, strip the term from ads. See App. 000157.'

This just in: people looking for sex lie about their age and even go as far as invoking underage references to describe their appearance. However, also reported:

'Backpage Employee B further stated that she deleted
“Banned terms” from ads before their publication.208 A long list of words referring
to prostitution and youth comprised Backpage’s “banned terms” list from 2010
through 2012.209 Backpage Employee B further explained that, beyond the banned
terms list, moderators used their judgment to delete other terms that in “context”
“show[] any sort of prostitution.”210 “[I]f there’s, you know, money signs, stuff like
that, I would delete it,” she explained, and then the ad would post.211 She testified
that even a phrase as literal and explicit as “‘sex for money’” “would be deleted” by
moderators before posting the ad,212 elaborating that “[a]s long as [the terms in an
ad were] not anything underage, if it had anything of illegal activity, we could
remove it.”213 Backpage Employee B repeatedly stated that she entirely deleted ads
that she believed were for an underage person,214 but she also stated that she would
not know if a word had been removed by the Strip Term From Ad filter before it
reached her screen.215
Later in her deposition, Backpage Employee B sought to “clarify” her
testimony on several points. Specifically, she stated that while she edited out words
suggestive of prostitution, her practice was to remove an entire ad “[i]f anything [in
the ad] was like blatantly, like, ‘I’m going to have sex for money’” or “‘I am a
prostitute, I am going to have sex with [sic] money.’”216 She stated that this was her
personal approach to moderation but she could not speak for other moderators.217 '

IE, they banned underage and prostitution ads, but when it became clear that their word list wasn't good enough, they went through and scrubbed ads more. They also auto-scrub out words. Even if they're keeping ads in that are gray area, the actions go against the act of encouraging underage or prostitution. This isn't "turning a blind eye to people advertising underage prostitutes".
It's "we want to offer this service for people to hook up" and no amount of trying to censor content is going to prevent people from coming up various ways to beat the filters.

In an amicus curiae brief, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children says the efforts of Backpage are inadequate and their reporting lacked in several areas. They say Backpage does not report all ads that have been flagged as being un

Re: Gee, that's too bad

[Anonymous Coward]

Generally the kind of people get really worked up about pedophilia, are themselves pedophiles. The rest of us just don't care very much because it's both unsavory and vanishingly rare.

Re:Gee, that's too bad

[Anonymous Coward]

All the downmodding! You can tell when the NRA comes to town! Sure hope this crap gets nipped in the bud this time around. Otherwise it's just another rerun

Re:Gee, that's too bad

[Hal_Porter]

What about this?

https://www.washingtonpost.com...

A contractor for the controversial classifieds website Backpage.com has been aggressively soliciting and creating sex-related ads, despite Backpage's repeated insistence that it had no role in the content of ads posted on its site, according to a trove of newly discovered documents.

The documents show that Backpage hired a company in the Philippines to lure advertisers -- and customers seeking sex -- from sites run by its competitors. The spreadsheets, emails, audio files and employee manuals were revealed in an unrelated legal dispute and provided to The Washington Post.

Workers in the Philippine call center scoured the Internet for newly listed sex ads, then contacted the people who posted them and offered a free ad on Backpage.com, the documents show. The contractor's workers even created each new ad so it could be activated with one click.

Workers also created phony sex ads, offering to "Let a young babe show you the way" or "Little angel seeks daddy," adding photos of barely clad women and explicit sex patter, the documents show. The workers posted the ads on competitors' websites. Then, when a potential customer expressed interest, an email directed that person to Backpage.com, where they would find authentic ads, spreadsheets used to track the process show.

If they really were making a good faith effort to remove ads but didn't have enough people that would be one thing. Actively soliciting ads is quite another.

Now you'll say 'well soliciting sex ads isn't illegal'. However what they're accused of is worse than that

An investigation by a Senate subcommittee revealed earlier this year found that Backpage was editing ads to remove language indicating underage girls were available, rather than removing the ads. "Backpage has been righteously indignant throughout our investigation," said Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), a subcommittee member, "about how we were infringing on their constitutional rights, because they were a mere passthrough." She noted, however, that Backpage was not only changing ads but also was also guiding posters in how to conceal their true intentions.

"But that's nothing compared to this" new information, McCaskill said after The Post described the data. "This is about as far from passive as you can get. This is soliciting. This is, really, trickery. .â.â. So I hope this opens the floodgates of liability for Backpage. Nobody deserves it more."

And it's not just online sex ads either - Backpage executives were accused of pimping and money laundering and involvement in the prostitution and death of a minor -

"This is the commercialization of this crime against children," said Yiota Souras, the center's general counsel. "And it's what businesses do -- they grow internationally; they have marketing plans to beat the competition and offer incentives to get more clients; they seek legal protections for their business interests. This is a traditional business model, but here the transaction too often is selling children for sex online."

In January, Backpage's top officials appeared before the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. Chief executive Carl Ferrer, co-founders Michael Lacey and James Larkin and general counsel McDougall all invoked their Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate themselves and declined to answer any questions.

Ferrer, Lacey and Larkin are facing criminal charges in California for pimping and money laundering, though a court there threw out similar pimping charges last year. And among eight civil suits filed against Backpage this year is a wrongful-death action in Chicago by the mother of 16-year-old

Re:Gee, that's too bad

[Anonymous Coward]

> Having sex with anyone under the age of consent is wrong and illegal. It doesn't matter whether they're 1 year under the AOC or 5 years.

And to extrapolate, it also doesn't matter whether they're 1 hour, 1 minute, 1 second, 1 millisecond, ..., 1 zeptosecond, ...

OTOH, to someone who blithely conflates "wrong" with "illegal", maybe you actually believe this.

Re:Gee, that's too bad

[h33t l4x0r]

Right now the media is full of crying kiddies demanding the 2nd Amendment be abolished.

Sounds like you're the one crying. The 2nd amendment is already limited (no guns on planes), just like the 1st and all the rest. For the record, nobody wants to take your guns away, they just want their kids to be safe when they go to school.

Re: Gee, that's too bad

[Anonymous Coward]

didn't this sort of things go out with the Puritans? governments should not be in the business of legislating morailty.

Re:Gee, that's too bad

[Hal_Porter]

Having sex with anyone under the age of consent is wrong and illegal. It doesn't matter whether they're 1 year under the AOC or 5 years.

And to extrapolate, it also doesn't matter whether they're 1 hour, 1 minute, 1 second, 1 millisecond, ..., 1 zeptosecond, ...

OTOH, to someone who blithely conflates "wrong" with "illegal", maybe you actually believe this.

How about you just away from the kids?

Re:Gee, that's too bad

[aussie_a]

Are you saying it's morally ok to have sex with a 16 year old when your on holidays in Alabama but not ok when your on holidays in Colorado?

Your appeal to authority makes no logical sense on this issue.

Re:Gee, that's too bad

[iamhassi]

Maybe if they just legalized prostitution nationwide we wouldn't have to worry about underage prostitution anymore because it could be regulated better? Ever notice whenever we ban something people still do it and seem to want it more? Not saying throw out all laws, but they tried to make alcohol illegal nearly 100 years ago and look how that turned out? Just saying if consenting adults want to have sex and get paid for it why does the govt have to get involved?

Re:Gee, that's too bad

[SuricouRaven]

Because in many jurisdictions there is no legal distinction between the teenager who has sex with their girlfriend* just one year younger than themselves and the thirty-year-old who rapes a toddler. This is something of an injustice.

*Funnily enough it's less likely to prosecute the other way around.

Re:Gee, that's too bad

[iamhassi]

Having sex with anyone under the age of consent is wrong and illegal.

Who decides what's "wrong"? What happens when the abritrary age chosen as "age of consent" is wrong? Because the age of concent in America, 18, is one of the highest in the world. Most of the world uses 14-16 as the age of consent. So who's right and who's wrong? Is the world wrong? Or is America wrong?

Re:Gee, that's too bad

[Hal_Porter]

Maybe if they just legalized prostitution nationwide we wouldn't have to worry about underage prostitution anymore because it could be regulated better?

Selling/buying sex in private isn't illegal in the UK, and the UK hasn't solved the underage prostitution problem. Or the sex trafficking problem.

In fact UK regulations are pretty sensible and the UK still had chronic problems with those.

Re:Gee, that's too bad

[iamhassi]

Are you saying it's morally ok to have sex with a 16 year old when your on holidays in Alabama but not ok when your on holidays in Colorado?

Your appeal to authority makes no logical sense on this issue.

Or Italy or most of Europe where it's 14. And what if they are legally 18 but still child sized? Like 4'8", 80 lbs? Isn't it just as bad as a pedophile?

Re:Gee, that's too bad

[Hal_Porter]

How about you just don't have sex with anyone under 18? Then you won't need to memorize complicated variations in the age of consent. And you won't need to memorize the fiddly spelling of words like 'ephebophile' and 'paedophile' too.

Also it's probably a bad idea to start a website whose whole business model is advertising underage hookers and them claim Section 230 of the CDA protects you.

Re:Gee, that's too bad

[Anonymous Coward]

If they really were making a good faith effort to remove ads but didn't have enough people that would be one thing. Actively soliciting ads is quite another.

Sex ads. Not prostitution ads. And again, all the references are "little angel" and "young babe" which is precisely the same language used by tons of 18+ porn and just 18+ people in general.

Now you'll say 'well soliciting sex ads isn't illegal'. However what they're accused of is worse than that

No doubt. They also didn't say they weren't soliciting sex ads. They said they weren't responsible for the content of the ads--ie, they weren't guiding the language to use to attract views. One could argue they were lying because they WERE removing content from ads because it was too gray area.

Further the excerpt "Backpage was not only changing ads but also was also guiding posters in how to conceal their true intentions", it sounds like there's a conflation of what other posters were doing and what Backpage employees were doing. Such guides were being posted, remove, and undoubtedly being posted on other sites. Seriously, you can google for such things, so while they should be removing such guides from their own sides, it's obvious such guides exist regardless. Unless they've got evidence employees were posting these guides, though... It doesn't sound it, though, from skimming the Senate report.

And it's not just online sex ads either - Backpage executives were accused of pimping and money laundering and involvement in the prostitution and death of a minor -

So you charge them, arrest them, and try them. If guilty, they go to jail. You're now attacking Backpage by attacking its executive for non-work stuff? Or worse, conflating stuff that happened on Facebook?

Ferrer, Lacey and Larkin are facing criminal charges in California for pimping and money laundering, though a court there threw out similar pimping charges last year. And among eight civil suits filed against Backpage this year is a wrongful-death action in Chicago by the mother of 16-year-old Desiree Robinson, who was slain in December after repeatedly being sold for sex on Backpage.

"I'm in a situation where I'm being pimped," Desiree wrote on Facebook days before her death. "He won't let me leave."

So, imply Backpage is supporting prostitution, then go after Backpage executives for pimping? Or are there more substantial, direct proof? And seriously, is the money laundering because they presume illegal pimping being "washed" by going into Backpage ledgers? Fuck if I know. Sounds pretty dicey at best.

It's like The Silk Road. The Silk Road started off being hippies selling each other pot for bitcoin but it ended up with Dread Pirate Roberts making millions selling heroin and trying to pay for assassinations.

Sorry, but that's a bullshit comparison. Take Craigslist as a better example. Simple fact is that regardless of how you try to regulate it, if you have an adult section prostitutes and pimps will use it to sell sex. That will drive revenue, so you'll be flush with cash. Silk Road was, fundamentally, about committing the crime of buying/selling drugs. Nothing about the venture is ever safe precisely because it's all illegal. But "personals" and "sex" aren't inherently illegal.

You want to argue that Backpage took up the space Craigslist used to take because they really cracked down hard, fine--although people still use Craigslist for that. You want to argue that Backpage skirted more towards the gray area because they're a lot more liberal in their support of sex ads, fine. You want to argue this is a recipe for prostitution, no matter the regulation, fine. You can even argue that this inherently leads to pimping, human sex trafficking, and child sex trafficking.

But everything about what Backp

Re:Gee, that's too bad

[ColdSam]

So lying for a good cause is okay? You might be right, most people aren't really paying enough attention to spot your lies and those who call you on your BS are quickly labeled as pedophiles. Nice angle.

Re:Gee, that's too bad

[ShanghaiBill]

Because the age of concent in America, 18, is one of the highest in the world.

The age of consent in America varies by state. The most common state AOC in America is 16.

Re:Gee, that's too bad

[Hal_Porter]

I don't think I am wrong or lying. I've been reading up on Backpage and found things like this

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/0...

And this

https://www.portman.senate.gov...

So you've got a company whose whole business model was ads for underage hookers. And they used CDA S 230 against anyone who impeded that model

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

* Backpage.com v. McKenna, et al., CASE NO. C12-954-RSM
* Backpage.com LLC v Cooper, Case #: 12-cv-00654[SS1]
* Backpage.com LLC v Hoffman et al., Civil Action No. 13-cv-03952 (DMC) (JAD)

The court upheld immunity for Backpage in contesting a state of Washington law (SB6251) that would have made providers of third-party content online liable for any crimes related to a minor in Washington State. The states of Tennessee and New Jersey later passed similar legislation. Backpage argued that the laws violated Section 230, the Commerce Clause of the United States Constitution, and the First and Fifth Amendments. In all three cases the courts granted Backpage permanent injunctive relief and awarded them attorney's fees.

Backpage.com v. Dart., CASE NO. 15-3047

The court ruled in favor of Backpage after Sheriff Tom Dart of Cook County IL, a frequent critic of Backpage and its adult postings section, sent a letter on his official stationary to Visa and MasterCard demanding that these firms "immediately cease and desist..." allowing the use of their credit cards to purchase ads on Backpage. Within two days both companies withdrew their services from Backpage. Backpage filed a lawsuit asking for a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction against Dart granting Backpage relief and return to the status quo prior to Dart sending the letter. Backpage alleged that Dart's actions were unconstitutional violating the First and Fourteenth amendments to the US Constitution as well as Section 230 of the CDA. Backpage asked for Dart to retract his "cease and desist" letters. After initially being denied the injunctive relief by a lower court, the Seventh Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals reversed that decision and directed that a permanent injunction be issued enjoining Dart and his office from taking any actions "...to coerce or threaten credit card companies...with sanctions intended to ban credit card or other financial services from being provided to Backpage.com." The court cited section 230 as part of its decision.

At which point Congress passed SESTA which stops people doing that.

And this thread is full people criticizing the notion of the age of consent, pointing out that pedophile != ephebophile and so on.

Re:Gee, that's too bad

[Hal_Porter]

So you charge them, arrest them, and try them. If guilty, they go to jail.

Multiple jurisdictions passed laws that criminalized them and when people did that they hid behind CDA S 230. And they won.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

* Backpage.com v. McKenna, et al., CASE NO. C12-954-RSM
* Backpage.com LLC v Cooper, Case #: 12-cv-00654[SS1]
* Backpage.com LLC v Hoffman et al., Civil Action No. 13-cv-03952 (DMC) (JAD)

The court upheld immunity for Backpage in contesting a state of Washington law (SB6251) that would have made providers of third-party content online liable for any crimes related to a minor in Washington State. The states of Tennessee and New Jersey later passed similar legislation. Backpage argued that the laws violated Section 230, the Commerce Clause of the United States Constitution, and the First and Fifth Amendments. In all three cases the courts granted Backpage permanent injunctive relief and awarded them attorney's fees.

Backpage.com v. Dart., CASE NO. 15-3047

The court ruled in favor of Backpage after Sheriff Tom Dart of Cook County IL, a frequent critic of Backpage and its adult postings section, sent a letter on his official stationary to Visa and MasterCard demanding that these firms "immediately cease and desist..." allowing the use of their credit cards to purchase ads on Backpage. Within two days both companies withdrew their services from Backpage. Backpage filed a lawsuit asking for a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction against Dart granting Backpage relief and return to the status quo prior to Dart sending the letter. Backpage alleged that Dart's actions were unconstitutional violating the First and Fourteenth amendments to the US Constitution as well as Section 230 of the CDA. Backpage asked for Dart to retract his "cease and desist" letters. After initially being denied the injunctive relief by a lower court, the Seventh Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals reversed that decision and directed that a permanent injunction be issued enjoining Dart and his office from taking any actions "...to coerce or threaten credit card companies...with sanctions intended to ban credit card or other financial services from being provided to Backpage.com." The court cited section 230 as part of its decision.

Re:Gee, that's too bad

[ShanghaiBill]

Selling/buying sex in private isn't illegal in the UK, and the UK hasn't solved the underage prostitution problem. Or the sex trafficking problem.

They haven't solved it completely, but they mostly do better than America. The goal of reform is improvement, not perfection. Countries that have liberalized sex laws tend to see less commercial sex related violence, disease, and coercion.

Prudes hate to hear it, but people actually do better when left to decide for themselves what to do with their penises and vaginas, without excessive government regulation.

Re:Gee, that's too bad

[ColdSam]

More lying. Jody Bruchon has refuted your distortions and outright lies several times, yet you keep on going. None of the links you cite support your claims.

You are positively Trump-like in your ability to shrug off the truth.

Re:Gee, that's too bad

[ShanghaiBill]

For the record, nobody wants to take your guns away

For the record, plenty of people think guns should be completely banned.

Re:Gee, that's too bad

[Hal_Porter]

They haven't solved it completely, but they mostly do better than America.

1400 girls in Rotherham would probably disagree

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Plus of course the UK has just passed the Modern Slavery Act because sex trafficking is such a problem

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

And then there's this inquiry which keeps losing its chairperson and is frankly unlikely to ever report anything. The reason for that is most likely that some very powerful people would be implicated either in abuse or a cover up and they don't want that to happen.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

I.e. it's almost like the UK has serious problem with the authorities covering up sex trafficking/sex slavery or something.

Re:Gee, that's too bad

[Anonymous Coward]

How about you just stay away from trying to define proper public policy? Considering that you cannot find a better reply than "ad hominem"?

I hope your 21 year old + X day son meets up with a really sexy (and very, very good at forging ID) 18 year old - X day daughter of someone like you, but worse.

I wonder what your opinion will change to, then. (I don't have much hopes that you can actually answer this question accurately, but anyway...)

Re:Gee, that's too bad

[h33t l4x0r]

It's not true. A shotgun to protect your home? Almost nobody has a problem with that. Just like almost nobody has a problem with reasonable background checks. The agitators who want to create partisan divide make it seem a huge partisan issue when it's not.

Re:Gee, that's too bad

[Anonymous Coward]

Illegal, yes. Wrong, that's more subjective. What's wrong is having sexual relations with someone that is unable to clearly decide for themselves or who feels pressured by an authority figure. There are 17 year-olds that are far more mature and capable of consent than some 25 year-olds. The issue is you can't make a law based on one's maturity, nor 5 years after the fact, try to assess it if statutory rape is later claimed. The best we can do legally is set an age by which we can say the law of averages likely says it's wrong if the person is under. Laws need to be definitive to be enforceable. We as a civil society agree to abide by the laws.

Re:Gee, that's too bad

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh yeh, old Hal is pretty fucked in the head, one of a series of authoritarian right wing sockuppets.

Re:Gee, that's too bad

[Anonymous Coward]

Multiple jurisdictions passed laws that criminalized them and when people did that they hid behind CDA S 230. And they won.

The court upheld immunity for Backpage in contesting a state of Washington law (SB6251) that would have made providers of third-party content online liable for any crimes related to a minor in Washington State. The states of Tennessee and New Jersey later passed similar legislation. Backpage argued that the laws violated Section 230, the Commerce Clause of the United States Constitution, and the First and Fifth Amendments. In all three cases the courts granted Backpage permanent injunctive relief and awarded them attorney's fees.

Ie, multiple States made bat-shit insane laws that held Backpage liable for stuff OTHER people were doing, and they consistently won? So, we have actual justice and that's "[hiding] behind behind CDA S 230"? Do you think the makers of guns should be liable for school shootings? Do you think McDonalds should be liable for kidnappings if one happens to occur in their restaurant? Would you at some level agree that as long as some degree of reasonable effort is made to stop such actions from generally happening, we don't hold the makers of tools or owners of locations responsible when they happen anyways? If not, might I suggest we arrest Washington State's legislature (among others) because murders (among other crimes) still happen in Washington State?

Honestly, you're really only further entrenching the point of the insanity and "Sheriff Tom Dart of Cook County IL, a frequent critic of Backpage and its adult postings section" only highlights the point that critics are pulling bullshit moves. Tom Dart claims Backpage and Craigslist erotic section are a cesspool of prostituion? Well, he went after Craigslist for similar and "sought compensation for his police department's expenditures on Craigslist-related prostitution and punitive damages. He also requested an injunction requiring Craigslist to desist the complained-of conduct." Seriously? He literally sued a service that helps him find tons of pimps and prostitutes and criminally prosecute them because its causing him to spend a lot of money doing his job.

Next up, go after Facebook because idiots admit their crimes on Facebook posts.

Btw, CDA Section 230C:

'(c) Protection for “Good Samaritan” blocking and screening of offensive material
(1) Treatment of publisher or speaker
No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.

(2) Civil liability
No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be held liable on account of—
(A) any action voluntarily taken in good faith to restrict access to or availability of material that the provider or user considers to be obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected; or
(B) any action taken to enable or make available to information content providers or others the technical means to restrict access to material described in paragraph (1).'

Golly, it's almost like the law was written so people could run forums and filter content wouldn't be fucked over because good faith effort was taken to block some content wouldn't be used to sue them effectively if they weren't 100% effective at blocking the stuff they wanted to block. The only other option would be to filter nothing because no effort at filtering is every going to be 100% effective and just about any lawsuit that won would be crippling to just about any company, even Facebook or Google. The only real argument you can make is that choosing to allow some lewd or lascivious by intention would remove the liability, but then that argument degenerates because most internet filters aren't designed to 100% filter out the whole list of "objection

Re:Gee, that's too bad

[Anonymous Coward]

How on Earth did we ever prosecute people for doing anything without spying on Internet activity and trying to legally force third parties into becoming police agents?

This will end badly. This law will be abused, and not unintentionally. The Patriot Act hasn't been successful even in the slightest in prosecuting terrorists. It has been used to prosecute all kinds of garden variety things like drug "crimes". Did they mention that when it was being railroaded through--I mean, debated? If you proposed an amendment to that law today to prohibit the powers granted in it from being used in anything except terrorist investigations do you think law enforcement would be silent, or would they be howling and using their fake rallying cry of how we don't want to protect cops, whatever that means?

The best question I've ever seen on Slashdot was from the person who asked of sex trafficking ads if they were actual underage prostitution rings or federal agents creating fake ones just to prosecute people? With the corrupt government we've had for a long time now, we may never know--but we do know that the only FBI busts for things like terrorist bomb plots happen when the FBI themselves set some patsy up in a sting operation. So what do you think this is going to lead to?

Re: Gee, that's too bad

[Type44Q]

They were certainly making aggressive moves to break into the underage prostitute ad market

You're quick to quote Bezos' CIA disinfo rag but I don't suppose it occurred to you that the "underage prostitute ad market" that Backpage wanted so badly to "break into" doesn't fucking exist?? "Ad market..." (rofl)

Re: Gee, that's too bad

[Type44Q]

For the record, nobody wants to take your guns away

You, sir, are a liar or a moron; I suspect the latter...

Re:Gee, that's too bad

[Hal_Porter]

I think a better way to look at is to look at this case

http://www.miamiherald.com/lat...

When a 13-year-old runaway threatened to leave a Miami pimp, police say, he forced her to a Liberty City flea market tattoo shop to ink his street name, "Suave," on her eyelids.

The vicious twist to a human trafficking case surfaced this month when Miami police arrested Roman Thomas III, 26, who was already on probation after serving four years in state prison for having sex with a minor.

Thomas was wearing a state corrections GPS monitor when Miami police arrested him on March 18.

The girl, dubbed "Sparkle," was pimped through the classified advertising website Backpage.com, police say. Thomas and a woman plied the girl with liquor, marijuana and the drug Molly as she had sex with men at the Miami Shores Motel.

https://www.nbcmiami.com/news/...

Now suppose it was a newspaper? I think they'd refuse to run the ad. And if a newspaper run ads like this they would not be protected by safe harbor protections.

I don't see why a website should be allowed to run ads like this, profit from them, and then claim those protections.

And if you look at the law you find it only applies to sex trafficking.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

The Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act (SESTA) is a United States bill introduced by Senator Rob Portman. It seeks to clarify the country's sex trafficking law to make it illegal to knowingly assist, facilitate, or support sex trafficking, and amend the Section 230 safe harbors of the Communications Decency Act (which make online services immune from civil liability for the actions of their users) to exclude enforcement of federal or state sex trafficking laws from its immunity. Portman had previously led an investigation into the online classifieds service Backpage (which had been accused of facilitating child sex trafficking), and argued that Section 230 was protecting its "unscrupulous business practices" and was not designed to provide immunity to websites that facilitate sex trafficking.

I.e. it's not 'the end of the internet', or anything like it. It's basically an 'anti Backpage law' that adds an exemption for sex trafficking.

And look at this

https://www.dallasnews.com/new...

For many of us, gift cards are presents for hard-to-please family members who want to pick out their own gadgets at Best Buy.

For pimps and prostitutes, gift cards have become a currency to pay for sex ads on Backpage.com, anti-prostitution activists say.

Dallas-based Backpage, a classified-ad site similar to Craigslist, is the leading online marketplace for sex, according to government investigators and federal prosecutors who have been struggling for years to shut it down. The U.S. Justice Department says more than half of sex-trafficking victims are under 18.

Credit card companies stopped doing business with the website two years ago. People could still buy Backpage ads, but it became more difficult: They had to mail in checks or use complicated digital currencies like bitcoin.

But now, Backpage has begun accepting gift cards from major retailers, The Dallas Morning News has confirmed. That means a pimp could walk into any local grocery store and pick up a convenient, untraceable way to pay the site to post ads selling women, critics say.

So more than half the victims were under 18. That's not a failure of moderation, that's a business model. Them hiding behind safe harbor protections was bogus from the start.

Re: Gee, that's too bad

[Hal_Porter]

https://www.dallasnews.com/new...

For many of us, gift cards are presents for hard-to-please family members who want to pick out their own gadgets at Best Buy.

For pimps and prostitutes, gift cards have become a currency to pay for sex ads on Backpage.com, anti-prostitution activists say.

Dallas-based Backpage, a classified-ad site similar to Craigslist, is the leading online marketplace for sex, according to government investigators and federal prosecutors who have been struggling for years to shut it down. The U.S. Justice Department says more than half of sex-trafficking victims are under 18.

Credit card companies stopped doing business with the website two years ago. People could still buy Backpage ads, but it became more difficult: They had to mail in checks or use complicated digital currencies like bitcoin.

But now, Backpage has begun accepting gift cards from major retailers, The Dallas Morning News has confirmed. That means a pimp could walk into any local grocery store and pick up a convenient, untraceable way to pay the site to post ads selling women, critics say.

So more than half the victims were under 18. That's not a failure of moderation, that's a business model. And Backpage made a fortune - around $45 million dollars.

https://www.azcentral.com/stor...

The criminal case brought by the California Attorney General's Office against Backpage was two-fold.

One set of charges accused the website's operators of profiting from sex trafficking and setting up elaborate schemes that allowed the site to take in money from illegal prostitution transactions. That part of the case stayed intact on Wednesday.

The other part accused the website of acting as a virtual pimp. Those charges were tossed out because the judge ruled that the website did not have a hand in actually writing the ads that sold the services; it merely hosted the ads.

The judge said the allegations of financial crimes are not subject to protection by the Communications Decency Act or the First Amendment.

"Indeed, the money laundering charges based on bank and wire fraud on their face, are not based on publication of third party speech at all," the ruling says. "Rather, they are based on the purported illegality of Defendants financial operations."

From August 2013 through October 2016, according to the prosecutors, the website raked in more than $45 million in illegal transactions.

Backpage, according to the indictment, was told by American Express that it would not long process payments because of the website's "overtly sexual content and questionable practices."

Backpage then created, according to prosecutors, a string of companies that could shield the fact the money was involved with Backpage.

According to prosecutors, Ferrer, the Backpage CEO, told employees to remove the name Backpage from descriptions that would show up on transactions. He told another employee, according to the indictment, to tell a credit card company that one of the companies had no relation to Backpage; instead, it helped truck drivers find jobs.

The dismissed counts of pimping suggested that the Backpage executives received prostitution earnings from 12 individuals from California who advertised on the website. According to the indictment, six of those people were under the age of 18.

Once again you see that half of the prostitutes were under age. And Backpage's vast earnings came from them. And the executives got off the pimping charges because of the CDA. Only the money laundering charges stuck.

Re:Gee, that's too bad

[Cederic]

as it happens, yeah, I do.

It's illegal because society deems it to be wrong. Sure, it's an arbitrary cut off but it's very clearly stated and extremely easy to remember.

Being attracted to a woman capable of bearing a child is biologically programmed. Choosing whether to fuck her is a conscious choice.

Re:Gee, that's too bad

[Cederic]

a company whose whole business model was ads for underage hookers

That's just hyperbole.

At which point Congress passed SESTA which stops people doing that.

Unfortunately it stops a lot of other things too. It's a shitty law, badly written, ill thought out and should not have been fucking passed.

See https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/... as a simple example.

Target sex traffickers and people fucking children but do so in a proportionate and sensible way. SESTA is not the answer.

Re:Gee, that's too bad

[AmiMoJo]

Morally the issue is if that person can really consent. So age isn't as important as their mental state/capacity.

I'd feel worse if I thought that person hadn't been given proper sex education, for example. Or if they had some kind of mental illness / disability. Age isn't really relevant, even if they are over what the local age of consent is that doesn't affect the moral factors.

Re:Gee, that's too bad

[Anonymous Coward]

For fun try reading some of the UK "punting" forums. It's quite eye-opening how many scams there are out there, and how shitty the whole thing is. I wouldn't use the UK a model for handling the issue well.

Re:Gee, that's too bad

[Anonymous Coward]

No, what happened is you made poor arguments, got soundly called out on them, and then resorted to accusing your opponent of being a Horrible Person. Not unlike trying to argue with idpol zealots about basically anything.

Re:Gee, that's too bad

[Anne Thwacks]

A shotgun to protect your home? Almost nobody in America has a problem with that

FTFY

(Most of the rest of the world disagrees).

Re:Gee, that's too bad

[Anonymous Coward]

Most of the rest of the world disagrees.

That's the problem the USA won't face: US police don't provide home defense. In fact, armed police arriving at your home is likely to end with you being shot, regardless of your law abidance. The recent militarization of police only exacerbates this void in protecting the populace. In short, Americans are required to take the law into their own hands which, of course, makes it more difficult for the police to do their job and thus everyone is a 'bad guy', including kill-first, protect-later police officers.

Re:Gee, that's too bad

[Bearhouse]

Careful; the age of consent in most places in Europe is 14-16 if you are that age too; if you're older, (typically older than 20) then it pops up to 18...(and quite right too).

Re:Gee, that's too bad

[nctritech]

It's not "hiding behind" the law. If someone is protected by the law, they're acting within the bounds of the law which is what we all should be doing. You are saying that they have committed no crime when you say they're "hiding behind" the law; you're also saying that you don't want what they're doing to be legal which is an ENTIRELY separate issue from what the statutes currently say and whether or not the law as written at the time of alleged offense was violated.

They won because they were not violating the law. What's the problem with not violating the law and having a court find that you didn't violate the law and that vigilante actions taken by public law enforcement officials when you weren't violating the law were not okay? That's what the courts are for. The cops can't try to shut your business down "by any means necessary" just because they dislike your business, all while operating your business lawfully. That's the kind of shit that you'd expect in Soviet Russia, not in the United States.

Re: Gee, that's too bad

[Anonymous Coward]

The age of the prostitutes in the ads doesn't matter by itself; what matters is whether or not Backpage knew about the age of the prostitutes in the ads. You cannot hold someone responsible for the actions of others in general and you definitely can't hold someone responsible for not acting on information they don't have. The staff at Backpage is very small relative to message volume and since the coded terminology for "underage" constantly changes to work around terms that have been flagged by the automated system, it all becomes a game of cat-and-mouse where the posters are a swarm of mice and Backpage staff is 100-200 cats with some automated mousetraps trying to catch them all. If you have the skills to build a better mousetrap to solve problems like this, I think Google wants to give you a lot of money.

The Backpage fiasco reeks of public officials that don't like what Backpage does trying to throw everything they can conjure up at the legal wall and taking whatever they can get to stick.

Re:Gee, that's too bad

[MBGMorden]

Gotcha. So except for the shotgun . . . you're looking to take the rest away.

It's the equivalent of banning private communications on the internet and television but still claiming that you're fine in regards to the first amendment because you're leaving them newspapers.

Re:Gee, that's too bad

[iamhassi]

Careful; the age of consent in most places in Europe is 14-16 if you are that age too; if you're older, (typically older than 20) then it pops up to 18...(and quite right too).

Not true, 14-16 no matter what the age is of the other person. For example, Italy is 14, and could be as low as 13 if the other person is less than 3 years older. It's 16 if the other person has some sort of authority over the 16 year old which must make high school very interesting https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik...

Re:Gee, that's too bad

[LynnwoodRooster]

That "gun free" zone thing around schools works really well, doesn't it?

Re:Gee, that's too bad

[Anonymous Coward]

Each state has individual consent ages but the fed uses 18 as the age of consent when crossing state and country lines. Which creates interesting situations where the AOC might be 16 in your home state and 15 in the state you go to, but because you crossed state lines it's 18. If you go to a country where the AOC is 14 for the purpose of soliciting a prostitute it's 18.

Re:Gee, that's too bad

[Hal_Porter]

If people are running a prostitution ring where half of the prostitutes are underage and they use the CDA to avoid getting prosectued, it's not that surprising that the Congress would eventually do something to change that. Which is that SESTA is.

Re:Gee, that's too bad

[nctritech]

Except Backpage is not running a prostitution ring. You said they were but you have provided nothing to substantiate that claim. You even refute your own claim with your own citations in that post; the charges of pimping where dismissed, so the legal system has already tossed out that claim completely.

Re:Gee, that's too bad

[ShanghaiBill]

A shotgun to protect your home? Almost nobody has a problem with that.

You need to get out of your bubble. Plenty of people have a problem with that. After the Florida shooting, gun control has been discussed frequently where I work, and I estimate that 20-30% of those who have expressed an opinion believe that all private ownership of guns should be banned.

This may not be a totally representative sample, but it is certainly far beyond "almost nobody".

Just like almost nobody has a problem with reasonable background checks.

Wow. Double bubble. You really need to talk to people. PLENTY of people are vehemently opposed to any further gun control measures. Obama ran into a brick wall of opposition when he failed to extend background checks to gun shows after Sandy Hook. You really think that would have happened if "almost nobody" had a problem with it?

Re:Gee, that's too bad

[Hal_Porter]

You even refute your own claim with your own citations in that post; the charges of pimping where dismissed, so the legal system has already tossed out that claim completely.

Bullshit

https://www.azcentral.com/stor...

The criminal case brought by the California Attorney General's Office against Backpage was two-fold.

One set of charges accused the website's operators of profiting from sex trafficking and setting up elaborate schemes that allowed the site to take in money from illegal prostitution transactions. That part of the case stayed intact on Wednesday.

The other part accused the website of acting as a virtual pimp. Those charges were tossed out because the judge ruled that the website did not have a hand in actually writing the ads that sold the services; it merely hosted the ads.

The judge said the allegations of financial crimes are not subject to protection by the Communications Decency Act or the First Amendment.

I.e. there were two sets of charges. Financial ones and virtual pimping. The virtual pimping ones were tossed because of the CDA and First Amendment but the financial ones were not.

I.e. with SESTA in place they would not have been able to use the CDA as a shield. Which meants they would have been prosecuted for both sets of charges. Without SESTA in place they could only be prosecuted for the financial crimes.

I.e. the CDA blocked them from being prosecuted for the virtual pimping.

Re:Gee, that's too bad

[Dread_ed]

You don't get it. *SEX* is wrong. It's a dirty, nasty, hideous thing that must be eradicated from the earth before it kills us all. /puritan

Re:Gee, that's too bad

[nctritech]

There is no such thing as "virtual pimping." Either you're pimping or you're not. They weren't pimping, or if they were it was not illegal to do so. The allegations even went in front of a judge and the judge said that they didn't violate the law. People not breaking the law is a good thing. I don't see why you have such a big problem with lawful conduct.

Re:Gee, that's too bad

[Anonymous Coward]

If you feel trafficking undocumented sex workers is your constitutional right, perhaps you should swing by the gun shop and grab an AR-15 before they're all gun grabbed by the Democrats.

Re:Gee, that's too bad

[Hal_Porter]

So you concede that they successfully used the CDA to get off one of the two sets of charges?

Re:Gee, that's too bad

[nctritech]

I didn't "concede" anything. You presented a situation where people were charged with a crime and a judge said they were not in violation of the law. There is nothing to "concede." The facts are plain: the law was not violated.

You have still failed to substantiate your original claims many, many posts back. This part of the discussion is an attempt to distract from that so you don't have to provide proof that those claims are truthful and not just something you made up.

Re:Gee, that's too bad

[Anonymous Coward]

If you travel across state lines to get to Alabama, it's not okay. State-based laws of consent only count if both individuals are residents of the same state. Otherwise, it's a federal issue.

Re:Gee, that's too bad

[Anonymous Coward]

Legally 18 is all that matters. Laws against child porn and prostitution exist to protect children from abusive situations from which they are unprepared to protect themselves. The law does not exist to legislate which sexual desires are appropriate, despite supporters coming from minority of the population that would like to do so.

Re:Gee, that's too bad

[Anonymous Coward]

The Craigslist hooker ads just moved to the "Casual Encounters" section.

Re:Gee, that's too bad

[nctritech]

This is all a red herring to avoid substantiating your claims of "Backpage running an underage prostitution ring" but I'm going to thoroughly stomp it down anyway.

You cited the definition of ephebophilia so you know that referring to teens below the statutory age of unlimited sexual consent in some jurisdictions as "children" to imply that any desire to have sex with them is "sex with children" is dishonest. You have no other way to win this argument than to fire off ad hominem attacks and appeals to your own personal morality. You know that the paraphilia discussion is a giant red herring because the post you responded to was calling you out for trying to insert "underage" into the discussion without substantiation. You still haven't substantiated any of those claims.

You still have not supported your assertion that "[Backpage was] running a[n] underage prostitution ring" nor your curiously revised version "[Backpage] made aggressive moves to break into the underage prostitute ad market" (emphasis mine) so you're pushing really hard to play the "b-b-b-but if I call you a pedo apologist and swing my moral nuts in the air I can automatically win!" card instead. We're not talking about the difference between paraphilias (red herring) and we're not talking about the political support for bill in question (appeal to popularity and appeal to authority); we're talking about your assertions regarding Backpage and underage prostitution and how you have posted a lot of junk that has nothing to do with supporting those statements.

Plus, you keep trying to push for older teens to be regarded as equivalent to five-year-olds. These model twins are 16 years old, one year beyond the age of consent in Denmark where they are from and above the age of consent in the U.K. as well as several U.S. states. You are asserting that they are "children." Psychology and the law both say otherwise. It doesn't matter how many times you say the phrase "pedo apologist," it won't make you any less incorrect. Don't like it? Petition to have the laws changed to raise the legal age of sexual consent in those jurisdictions.

Don't like the models as an example? Fine. Here's Angelina Jolie at age 16, modeling underwear, published on a major U.K. website. The age of unlimited sexual consent in many parts of the world floats around 16 while the United States (where Backpage is operated) has a lot of states with a minimum age of 18, meaning they're illegal in those states but 100% legal in other states and several European countries. These older teenagers are within the age of consent in huge chunks of the modern Western world, are capable of bearing children, have developed secondary sex characteristics, have strong sexual drives, are already expected to take "correct" actions that will put them on career paths and shape their entire futures, yet you're attempting to liken them to five-year-olds.

I wonder how hard your panties will twist over [super NSFW] tiny and petite (but adult and legal) porn stars that are petite enough to have the Feds go after viewers for "child pornography" even though the photos are watermarked with an 18 USC 2257 compliant company's name and the photographed model is in their early 20s.

Support your original assertions with some facts or toss off. You've been given several opportunities and chosen not to substantiate your arguments thus far. I'm not letting you worm your way out of substantiating your original claims no matter what you try to use as

Re:Gee, that's too bad

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes yes, we all know you don't believe in free speech rights. That's where the 2nd Amendment comes in, to protect those free speech rights. Trafficking is trafficking, advertising isn't. Try to learn the difference between the speech and the act, or you can just go to hell. There is nothing to argue. Nobody needs your censorship bullshit.

Re:Gee, that's too bad

[Hal_Porter]

You're a liar and a pedo apologist.

Re: Gee, that's too bad

[Anonymous Coward]

You're a fucking idiot with no proof for what you say. Why should anyone listen to you?

Re:Gee, that's too bad

[ColdSam]

Ouch. Hal is clearly an idiot with an agenda. His name is an anagram for "Harlot Rep", so I think he has some unresolved sexual issues.

It is clear that Backpage knowingly facilitated prostitution by seeking out advertisers and helping them with their ads. It's likely that they turned a blind eye to underage prostitution, but it's unclear if they didn't want to do the job of policing for legal or moral reasons or if they just wanted the extra revenue.

BTW, while the age of consent is lower in much of the world, in most of those places the age of consent for prostitution is significantly higher, usually 18, I believe. This is a reasonable compromise between the reality of sexual relations and protection of adolescents. This has nothing to do with the issue here, just wanted to clarify.

Re:Gee, that's too bad

[Anonymous Coward]

Slow down there cowboy. Nobody is suggesting you gun down school children in order to preserve free speech. Try not to get too offended by the US constitution, which you clearly hate.

Re: Gee, that's too bad

[Anonymous Coward]

Better hope you don't ever see the inside of a prison, nonce

http://abcnews.go.com/US/priso...

Prison Is 'Living Hell' for Pedophiles

In prison, fellow inmates derisively call pedophiles "chesters," "tree jumpers" and "short eyes."

Prison can be a menacing place for child molesters like the former Roman Catholic priest John Geoghan, who was killed in his cell Saturday -- or for other alleged pedophile priests working their way through the criminal justice system.

"If you take out a sex offender like this former priest in Massachusetts, maybe the person who took him out thought he'd make a name of himself," said Margot Bach, a spokeswoman for California Department of Corrections. "Taking [a pedophile] out would gain [the killer] a lot more respect among the other inmates."

In fact, Goeghan's accused killer, Joseph Druce, "looked upon Father Geoghan as a prize," and plotted his killing for a month, John Conte, district attorney for Worcester County, Mass., told reporters Monday.

Though prison officials in some Northeastern states question the idea of an automatic social hierarchy among prisoners based solely upon their offenses, most agree that if there is one, child molesters and informants -- derided as "snitches" -- occupy the lowest rungs.

Re:Gee, that's too bad

[Anonymous Coward]

You do realize that the modern slavery act is about actual human trafficking and slaves? Prostitution was never part of the original draft, was added and removed as an amendment as per the linked article.

Re: Gee, that's too bad

[Anonymous Coward]

You're conflating two issues. Sex-trafficking victims and prostitutes. Not every prostitute is a sex-trafficking victim.

Re:Gee, that's too bad

[Anonymous Coward]

Your using emotional bull shit to attack this rational logical individual. It's not at all clear that Backpage is operating any kind of child prostitution ring. That would be an absolute insane position for them to take from a business perspective and is highly unlikely and frankly unbelievable. It's lying moralist scumbags like yourself that have come out to try and convince congress that we need more bull shit laws like this that undermine the first amendment and the protections it provides. If you want to actually stop child abuse you should be taking advantage of such advertising to locate those who are targeting those using violence, threat of violence, and force on others rather than shutting down the platform for which many utilize to legitimately exchange money for sex. If there is even a single sex worker whose not being forced into it on Backpage then Backpage is a completely legitimate platform. Freedom is more important than safety. Period. Those who would forgo freedom for the sake of a little bit of safety deserve neither safety nor freedom. And age should have nothing to do with it. It's not somehow more justified for someone to hurt an elderly or middle age person who is retarded than a child. Both are morally wrong. Sex is something we almost all do [excluding maybe you]. There is nothing immoral about it. To suggest otherwise is irrational. Forcing someone to do something they don't want to do- like pay taxes- or have sex with another- now that is immoral. But it has nothing to do with the sex part. It's the force part that is immoral.

Re: Gee, that's too bad

[Anonymous Coward]

LOL. Moralists are so funny and retarded.

Re:Gee, that's too bad

[Anonymous Coward]

Nobody is suggesting you gun down school children in order to preserve free speech.

Nobody except you. Nobody else, much less I, ever even inferred such bullshit. Ah, but you need your strawman to divert attention, right? The 1st Amendment is absolute, without weasel words or exceptions, Says right there, "no law". Without enumerated exceptions, you cannot infer any. All the judges that have, should be fired.

And fuck the damn moderators for shilling for censorship! You are dirty, filthy rats!

Re:Gee, that's too bad

[Anonymous Coward]

For the record, nobody wants to take your guns away, they just want their kids to be safe when they go to school.

I thought the school was a gun-free zone. What's that? Criminals don't follow laws? Oh No!!!

Re:Gee, that's too bad

[Hal_Porter]

You mean this?

In November 2014 Fiona Mactaggart MP added an amendment to the bill concerning prostitution, aimed at criminalising the purchase of sex. In the bill's debate in the House House of Commons, John McDonnell MP argued against the amendment. He highlighted the lack of evidence for any correlation between the Swedish sex purchase ban and a reduction in numbers of sex workers or their clients, and cited findings "that not only do such measures not work, they actually cause harm". McDonnell quoted Reverend Andrew Dotchin, a founding member of the Safety First Coalition: "I strongly oppose clauses on prostitution in the Modern Slavery Bill, which would make the purchase of sex illegal. Criminalising clients does not stop prostitution, nor does it stop the criminalisation of women. It drives prostitution further underground, making it more dangerous and stigmatising for women." The amendment was subsequently dropped.

The Modern Slavery Act is aimed at stopping people being trafficked - some of whom end up forced to work as sex workers.

It doesn't criminalise buying or selling sex, and nor should it. It's the people being forced to work in the sex industry who are the problem.

Re:Gee, that's too bad

[RockDoctor]

I take it that all the first amendment supporters got shot by the second amendment supporters.

Diaspora?

[EETech1]

Diaspora might finally get some users!

How sex saved the social network!

It's funny...

[SumDog]

..how you can impose platform censorship under the name of preventing sex trafficking. Let's ignore all the rich and/or shitheads that get away with fucking kids and teens without consequence (politicians, the Catholic church, people in Hollywood, etc.) and look at what Craigslist and Backpage provide: prostitution. Is there illegal trafficking? Quite possibly, but there is also prostitution which is legal in the UK, Australia, NZ, much of Europe and a couple of counties in Nevada.

How about just legalizing prostitution, taxing/regulating it, and then go after actual sex traffickers and pedos, without compromising freedom of speech or making it much more difficult for smaller players to enter the walled gardens of content hosting, media distribution and social networks.

Re:It's funny...

[Hal_Porter]

Prostitution isn't really legal in the UK. Selling sex in private isn't a criminal offense but street walking, kerb crawling, and paying for sex if the prostitute is under age or has been subject to "exploitative conduct" (force, threats or deception) or is underage is illegal

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Given that people don't tend to choose prostitution as a career probably the majority of them have been subject to force, threats or deception. So the majority of prostitution in the UK is illegal.

Sure there might be a few Belle De Jour type call girls who are doing it voluntarily and aren't breaking the law but you're kidding yourself if you think most prostitution is like this.

Re:It's funny...

[nctritech]

Yes, people choose prostitution as a career and many do so independently and enjoy doing it. Read up on the subject. https://www.washingtonpost.com... and the many posts at https://bebopper76.wordpress.c... and https://www.theguardian.com/co... and http://www.slate.com/articles/... are good places to start on your journey to not blindly buying into the prevailing narrative of bullshit.

Re:It's funny...

[Hal_Porter]

Read up on this

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Re:It's funny...

[nctritech]

Irrelevant. You cannot conflate adult prostitution and child prostitution. The post I replied to said nothing of child prostitution other than a passing mention of "underage" as one of the criteria used by the UK to consider prostitution to be illegal. We are exclusively discussing adult prostitution in this thread.

Re:It's funny...

[gweihir]

Actual numbers from places were prostitution is legal says basically all prostitutes are doing it of their own choices with exceptions so rare that they do not really matter. Of course, were it is illegal, the politicos and the police use any kind of lie to justify this illegality (which cannot really be justified) and there the myth that a large parts of prostitutes are forced into it comes from. It is not true, unless you count economic incentives, like, you know, people working jobs for the same reason.

Re:It's funny...

[Hal_Porter]

Actually the Rochdale pedo ring had the first prosecutions for sex trafficking in the UK

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

The British government continued its proactive law enforcement efforts to combat trafficking. The UK prohibits all forms of trafficking through the Sexual Offences Act 2003, the Criminal Justice (Scotland) Act 2003 and the Asylum and Immigration (Treatment of Claimants, etc.) Act 2004. These prescribe penalties of a maximum of 14 years' imprisonment, although the specific punishments prescribed for sex trafficking are less severe than those prescribed for rape. The Modern Slavery Act 2015 which became law in March 2015 consolidated existing offences relating to trafficking and slavery.

In 2007, the UK government launched Pentameter II, a large-scale operation aimed at rescuing victims, disrupting trafficking networks, developing intelligence, and raising public awareness. A study conducted by the government in 2007 identified a minimum of 330 individual cases of children trafficked into the UK and, the same year, the government reported prosecutions involving at least 52 suspected trafficking offenders. Although the government reported 75 ongoing prosecutions during the previous reporting period, it convicted only ten trafficking offenders in 2007, a significant decrease from 28 convictions obtained in 2006. Sentences imposed on convicted trafficking offenders in 2007 ranged from 20 months' to 10 years' imprisonment, with an average sentence of four years. In one case in 2008 in the U.K., girls were trafficked for forced prostitution and a man was sentenced to 10 years in prison In January 2008, police arrested 25 members of Romanian organized crime organizations using Romanian children, including a baby less than a year old, as pickpockets and in begging schemes. The Rochdale sex trafficking gang, a group of predominantly British Pakistani paedophiles that preyed on under-age girls in Rochdale, were the first people in Britain to be convicted of sex trafficking, on 8 May 2012

The fact that the Modern Slavery Act was passed as recently as 2015 is pretty clear evidence that sex trafficking is seen as an issue in the UK.

Re:It's funny...

[Z34107]

Even if you found its goals laudable, SESTA is not a particularly good piece of legislation. Techdirt hates it because it's intentionally vague--what, exactly, constitutes "knowing conduct by an individual or entity, by any means, that assists, supports, or facilitates a violation"? We know what violates current law, that is, what constitutes "general knowledge" versus "specific knowledge" versus "red flag knowledge" under the DMCA--but knowing what the law actually is means you can comply with it, and that's exactly the flaw this new bill seeks to address.

Lest you think I'm overly cynical (I am), it's worth mentioning that the Department of Justice also hates the bill, also because it's too vague. (Sensing a theme?) While Techdirt's worried that the "knowing conduct" non-definition of "participation in a venture" could be mean anything and everything, the DoJ's worried about the exact opposite--that courts, having been given absolutely no guidance by the bill, could just as easily decide that "knowing conduct" means something highly specific, "effectively creating additional elements that prosecutors must prove at trial." That the trafficking bill's intentional, catch-all vagueness could make it harder for the DoJ to jail traffickers, in other words.

The DoJ is additionally worried that the bill will send you to jail, retroactively, for past "ventures", even if those "ventures" were legal at the time, and again without caring to get too specific on what actually counts as a "venture." If you're reading along, they list that issue under the heading "CONSTITUTIONAL CONCERN", which you'll find capitalized, bolded, and underlined in the original.

In other words, it's a shit bill. If prosecutors were really interested in stopping child trafficking, they would prosecute the traffickers--if allegations are to be believed, you'll find a list of just those people, conveniently enough, on Backpage. Instead, they'd rather go after Backpage--make an example of them, even, since they didn't cave to think-of-the-children grandstanding like Craigslist did.

...which is why we now have a bill tailor made to throw Backpage employees in jail, retroactively, for whatever, because fuck you. I don't think many people here are dumb enough to find credible the sincerity and good intentions of a politician, on the eve of midterms, crying THINK OF THE CHILDREN, but it bears repeating that those sentiments are exactly why we're entertaining an ex post facto law to make King George proud, in 2018, when everything it purports to criminalize is already illegal.

Re:It's funny...

[ckatko]

>How about just legalizing prostitution,

Unless you legalize banging children, then you've still got the exact same problem. You've solved nothing.

We either do, or don't, regulate people's activities. You can talk about moving the line, but simply removing it isn't an option. How is using a regulation to take down prostitution, any different than using the same kinds of regulations and enforcement... to take down child prostitution?

The only difference is, you support one of those. But the actual enforcement of laws makes no distinction. You can still take down a site like Voat by intentionally flooding it with child porn (which _did_ happen). Or do you think that somehow, there will be less abuse if it's only restricted to stopping child porn? Because... if so, I'd love to hear it.

Re: It's funny...

[Type44Q]

and look at what Craigslist and Backpage provide

These are psyops against the printing press, metaphorically speaking. If most of us weren't so fucking ignorant of history - or not caught up in our own distractions - we'd see it for what it is.

Re:It's funny...

[AmiMoJo]

It's worth differentiating between people who become prostitutes because they enjoy the work and those who are not coerced directly but would rather be doing something else. It's like refuse collection - people do it voluntarily, but most of them would rather do something else.

The majority would prefer it if they could make a good living some other way. Not all, but the majority. That's why charities and NGOs concerned with prostitution treat it as a form of poverty. Something that shouldn't be illegal, just regulated and supported, and which is mostly a symptom of other problems in that person's life.

Re:It's funny...

[drinkypoo]

The majority would prefer it if they could make a good living some other way. Not all, but the majority. That's why charities and NGOs concerned with prostitution treat it as a form of poverty. Something that shouldn't be illegal, just regulated and supported, and which is mostly a symptom of other problems in that person's life.

So, like most jobs?

Re:It's funny...

[ravenshrike]

If Porter had said no one chose prostitution as a career you might have some sort of point, but the idea that people tend to chose it or even that the majority of prostitutes start out choosing it as a career is specious in the extreme.

Re:It's funny...

[nctritech]

You said "the idea that people tend to chose it or even that the majority of prostitutes start out choosing it as a career is specious in the extreme." It seems that a majority of prostitutes do, in fact, choose it as a career. Half of the prostitutes in a new survey say they became prostitutes because of sexual curiosity, and 68 percent consider their line of work as part of their sexuality."

Re:It's funny...

[nctritech]

All of that is a red herring. We're talking about adult prostitution, not child sex trafficking. You have made the same erroneous conflation as the last post. What does this have to do with whether or not adults choose prostitution as a career?

Re:It's funny...

[Jason1729]

Wow, way to spout off what you know nothing about.

I work in criminal law in Canada and I encounter backpage on a weekly basis. It 100% is used for "illegal" trafficking. For example, girls who are abducted off the streets and forced into prostitution. They are forced onto amphetamines so they can work longer hours and end up completely messed up. Backpage is so convenient they even take payment in bitcoin so the pimps don't have to risk themselves.

One of the most common things is the pimp finds a vulnerable girl, pretends to pursue a relationship, then pushes her into prostitution to make money "for us", next thing she knows, she's a full-time prostitute being held prisoner.

One girl got away, 6 months later she ran into the guy who'd been holding her as a sex slave. He beat her almost to death to punish her for his lost income.

There are also many underage girls on there, many who allow themselves to be talked into it. A couple of weeks ago, I dealt with a 16 year old girl who was working as a prostitute until she was old enough to work in a strip club. Since she was under 18, the legit strip clubs turned her away, but backpage gave her a chance to work.

I can give you hundreds of stories. One pimp told his victim who tried to leave "I'm going to sell your pussy forever". One made his victim work 20 hours straight to earn the money to have his name tattooed on her. The one thing all these stories has in common is backpage.

In Canada, prostitution is legal. We are talking about something completely different here. So please stop ranting about a subject you know nothing about as if you were some expert. This is exactly about going after sex traffickers and pedos.

Re:It's funny...

[misexistentialist]

Hardly far-fetched that a higher paying job is being chosen, which is why legislation was created to disincentive it. There are 10s of millions of people working unpleasant jobs that are also low-paid, kids too, but those jobs are encouraged because serving corporations is moral

Re:It's funny...

[k6mfw]

..how you can impose platform censorship under the name of preventing sex trafficking. Let's ignore all the rich and/or ...

In some ways the rich were not ignored, i.e. recent sexual harrassment cases certain people in power were taken down (but some remain untouched). I also notice many websites have "escort services" so does this mean there will be a lot more work for law enforcement? I'm thinking the Trump policy for every one regulation, two have to be removed.

Trafficking appears a new term (paradigm shift) so instead of traditionally going after prostitutes (a victimless crime where both agree exchange of money for some "action"), it then shifts the focus to the ones that force the prostitutes to do business and take most of the money. i.e. a woman gets economically desperate, a pimp exploits her and gets most of the money and keeps her basically enslaved in the business.

Like many laws that seem to have good intentions, there is always some other angle of why it was sponsored. I don't think prostitution will ever be legalized in USA because there's just too many feel we need "high moral standards" i.e. ok to show people getting killed on TV but not ok to show people having sex.

Legalizing prostitution? Could there be a paradigm shift like how marijuana is being legalized? 50 years ago that would have been unthinkable.

Re:It's funny...

[Anonymous Coward]

To be fair, you're working in criminal law. You're probably not going to have cases come under your nose where someone is following the law. You meant to say that "what I see of it 100% is used for illegal trafficking." I think you don't know what you're talking about. Working in criminal law doesn't make you an expert or an authority any more than working for IBM makes you a computer programmer.

Re:It's funny...

[MBGMorden]

That's pretty much the definition of employment. I work what would be considered a pretty nice white collar job but I still don't ENJOY it. It fucking sucks having to go to work every day but that's just the reality of being an adult and having bills to pay.

Does their job come with some health risks? Yes, but there is protective equipment for that, and so do other jobs. My dad is a construction worker and in his late 50's - he's had to have multiple surgeries to repair damage from years of hard labor. My cousin was also a construction worker who fell from the roof of a building and died. I have a family friend who works in a factory who lost a finger in a machine at work.

All those jobs are considered "morally appropriate", but somehow a woman choosing to engage in prostitution is so morally upsetting to you that you just assume that it MUST be the case that someone else is FORCING her into it or you just arbitrary conflate adults with children to try and make the whole practice illegal.

Re:It's funny...

[gweihir]

So a CEO that rakes in millions but hates his job is a case of poverty? This makes absolutely no sense.

Re:It's funny...

[gweihir]

Exactly. The narrative about prostitution not being essentially a regular job is utter bullshit. And those that maintain this narrative are not above using the most outrageous lies to keep their deranged fantasy alive.

Re:It's funny...

[Anonymous Coward]

"In Canada, prostitution is legal."

Wait, what?!

Re:It's funny...

[Jason1729]

Sorry,not 100% is illegal, but it is 100% certainly used for illegal activities. The poster I was replying to said it may or may not used for illegal stuff, but the legal stuff justifies its existence.

And givne that backpage can do plenty to prevent sexual slavery and child prostitution, but they choose not to so they can maximize their profits, backpage should not be allowed to exist..

Re:It's funny...

[Anonymous Coward]

To be clear, selling sexual services is legal in Canada since we don't want to restrict what women can and can't do with their bodies.

Purchasing sexual services is illegal in Canada because evil men shouldn't be allowed to exploit women. Nobody ever said the laws in Canada make sense.

Re:It's funny...

[ColdSam]

Sure, and Backpage 100% certainly is used for murder. Why don't they just prevent all murders while they're at it?

As an expert I'm sure you can tell us all the things Backpage can easily do to prevent illegal trafficking without damaging the rest of their business. I'll wait.

HAHAHAH

[Anonymous Coward]

oh yes, they will legislate away the worlds oldest profession, because that has worked wonders throughout human history

Re:HAHAHAH

[Anonymous Coward]

It's why money was invented...

This is going to result in negative overreach

[rsilvergun]

But is this going to change how anyone here votes? Either in a primary or general election? If not, there's zero reason for Congress not to support these kind of things. There are people who _will_ vote for Congresscritters who push this sort of legislation. This is part of the "tough on crime" theme that's dominated American politics for ages.

So again, if this kind of overreach isn't going to change how anyone votes it's hardly worth discussion.

Re:This is going to result in negative overreach

[Anonymous Coward]

Won't change the way I vote. But that's because I never never vote for Republican or Democrat. Well except for Trump because F U to the both of the parties.

Re:This is going to result in negative overreach

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, I'll purposely vote against any Representative that voted for this bill. Oh wait, gerrymandering means they'll hold the position forever, nevermind.

Re:This is going to result in negative overreach

[Anonymous Coward]

this is just a feather for those up for re-election to wave around come november... 'see? i did *this*'.... ('pay no attention to the absolute shit legislation i supported and voted for that i'm *not* talking about')......

it was not needed, as feds can use existing laws to obtain records and data from 'offending' sites to take 'em down (if they're part of it) or to go after the actual bad guys (if the site itself isn't in on it).

Re:This is going to result in negative overreach

[Anonymous Coward]

Change your vote how? At 388-25 it's pretty much unanimous. Based on https://www.govtrack.us/congress/votes/115-2018/h91 there's also no difference in the yes/no ratio between the two parties.

Even if you voted against those who voted for this bill, odds are overwhelmingly in favor of their replacements voting the same way.

Leave sex workers alone

[PopeRatzo]

I for one think it's great that sex workers have a strong advocate and role model as First Lady.

Re:Leave sex workers alone

[Anonymous Coward]

Mate, that was a low blow, even for you. I lol'd anyway because I like lulz tomfoolery.

Re:Leave sex workers alone

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the first role model for that was J. Edgar Hooker.

Re:Leave sex workers alone

[PopeRatzo]

Mate, that was a low blow

I'm sure it wasn't her first.

Re:Leave sex workers alone

[DNS-and-BIND]

Accusing women of being whores, and slut-shaming. You really think you don't need to adhere to your own side's standards, do you? Those standards are for everyone else, but you get to freely violate them any time you see fit, don't you?

Re:Leave sex workers alone

[PopeRatzo]

Accusing women of being whores, and slut-shaming.

First, not all sex workers are whores, and I'm absolutely not slut-shaming anyone. The first lady had a keen eye for business and made the most of it. She sold her most valuable commodity and held out for a very good price. She came by her success in an honest way and let's face it, it could not have been easy for her.

I admire her in a way that I could never admire her husband. Though to be fair, he has bigger tits.

You really think you don't need to adhere to your own side's standards, do you?

I have set no standards. I don't believe in political correctness. I leave the standard-setting and pearl-clutching for those of you on the alt-right who were always so respectful of MIchelle Obama when she and her husband were in the White House.

Now go fuck yourself.

Re:Leave sex workers alone

[Mal-2]

First Lady of the Night

Re:Leave sex workers alone

[Hal_Porter]

You know what they say about the left. If they didn't have double standards they wouldn't have any standards at all.

Still Alinsky was right that it's a good tactic Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules

Re:Leave sex workers alone

[Anonymous Coward]

This from someone who thinks having a full on rapist, Bill Clinton, in the White House is acceptable. The current count of sexual assaults from Clinton is around 26 women that have come out.

Sorry, you liberals lost the war on sex scandals. From Al Frankin, John Conyers, Bill Clinton all they way to Adam Schiff and Mark Warner trying to collude with Russians to get naked photos of Trump.

Sad.

Re:Leave sex workers alone

[Anonymous Coward]

You are a misogynist. Attack women and when confronted you attack the person who pointed it out.

What a disgusting person.

Re:Leave sex workers alone

[Anonymous Coward]

You know what they say about the left. If they didn't have double standards they wouldn't have any standards at all.

Still Alinsky was right that it's a good tactic Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules

I would stop worrying about standards, quotes and Wikipedia articles. We're going to kill you in your fucking sleep. Worry about that instead.

Re:Leave sex workers alone

[Hal_Porter]

I would stop worrying about standards, quotes and Wikipedia articles. We're going to kill you in your fucking sleep. Worry about that instead.

Good luck with that.

Re:Leave sex workers alone

[Anonymous Coward]

You obviously don't set standards for appearance Popefatso or on how much pizza you gobbled https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-QqAn6jRY748/UP906Z4OONI/AAAAAAAAMBw/4UJL1sLYx2E/s1600/Gun+Nut+Article+for+Bell+of+Lost+Souls2.jpg/

Srsly?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, a lot of the people who are for making sex work itself completely legal are pissed with sex traffickers and forced prostitution--unfortunately, very few seem to realize that it would help if they were significantly more vocal and active about this.

Sadly, legislation cannot force people to grasp that the situation is not one of absolutes here--that people both willingly and unwillingly enter this vocation, or understand that paying somebody for sex does not make it not rape if they're not a willing party to the transaction.

What happens when you go after *the demand side*?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's supply and demand

When there is a demand for something, there always be someone who supply that something

And in the world we live in, the authority almost always targeted the suppliers, while rarely deal with those who made the demand

In drug cases they go after those who made the drugs, those who transport the drugs, and those who sell the drugs

They seldom go after those who USE the drugs

In sex industry they go after the pimps, the prostitutes, while those 'johns' are seldom apprehended

Why is that?

When the Philippines decided to go after the demand side - the drug users - what happened?

The whole world attach the 'cold blooded' tag onto the Filipino president

I guess if we start to cut of the little brothers of all those 'johns' we might too be accused of being 'cold blooded'

A backdoor way to crack down on prostitution

[Jarwulf]

They want to crack down on hookers but in this day and age it'd look like they're wasting their time so they'll conflate prostitution with sex trafficking and crack down on it that way.

Re:A backdoor way to crack down on prostitution

[bluefoxlucid]

I'm having trouble resolving the hooker thing. I personally dislike prostitution; at the same time, I don't believe things are necessarily-wrong because somebody personally dislikes them. I dislike prostitution because of the visible impact it has on society, although those impacts are consequences of other, more-damaging societal problems, and generally only visible in areas facing widespread and extreme poverty.

So here's the thing: there's a second, more-substantial problem with prostitution that's a matter of facts rather than personal feelings.

92% of female New York hookers state they'd get out of prostitution if they thought they'd have enough money to survive. I don't believe that, of course: they've lived a life of insecurity, and they've developed a level of comfort with this thing that has brought them security. They're going to continue, because that's what they've done for so long, and there's always that sense of need for security that makes you reluctant to break this sort of long-standing behavior.

What I do believe is that they got into it because of the money, or they stayed in it because of the money: they needed money, they had little perceived choice, so they did what they believed they had to so as to survive.

Clearing up those basic societal problems will thus reduce potentially 92% of new prostitution in New York. Many of these prostitutes (around 40%, although I forget the exact number) began before the age of 14.

The existing problem is one of behavioral health.

Our corrections system should help people; it fails at this today. At the very least, prostitutes should end up interfacing with corrections; what happens after that is what's up for debate. Because of problems like sex trafficking and economic desperation (which isn't sex trafficking, but rather a personal decision made when other options would lead to a loss of personal security), people become prostitutes essentially against their will; and they get stuck like that for similar reasons as discussed.

We need to identify these people and shake them up a bit. Find anything that's forcing them into this situation and fix it so they don't have to do this anymore. Make them analyze their lives, determine if they need to be prostitutes, and then make a decision about whether they want to. Then, if they decide not to, we help them change their behavior.

If they decide to continue being prostitutes... well, that's the part that's actually up for debate. Do we fine them? Jail them? Regulate them? Try to change them? At what point are we no longer "helping"?

Somebody else needs to start that conversation; I'm avoiding it at the moment for petty reasons. On the other hand, I haven't been elected to office yet, so I have some time before I really have to take responsibility for these things.

Re:A backdoor way to crack down on prostitution

[Anonymous Coward]

FTFY

92% of people state they'd quit their jobs if they thought they'd have enough money to survive.

Think of the children

[Urinal Pube]

Maybe my tinfoil hat is too tight, but my first thought is that Google and Facebook are setting up a way to take down Craigslist, in order to take over local online classifieds.

Re: Think of the children

[Anonymous Coward]

Can't wait until they find out what people need and are willing to trade sex for.

This is a PROSTITUTION bill, not trafficking

[raymorris]

Note this bill is NOT about trafficking. There *was* a bill that dealt with trafficking. Then there was an amendment which replaced *all* of the text of the original bill. It's now about prostitution, not trafficking. An example of the current wording of the bill:
--
a defendant may be held liable, under
this subsection, where promotion or facilitation of prostitution activity
---

Re:This is a PROSTITUTION bill, not trafficking

[Anonymous Coward]

Note this bill is NOT about trafficking. There *was* a bill that dealt with trafficking. Then there was an amendment which replaced *all* of the text of the original bill. It's now about prostitution, not trafficking. An example of the current wording of the bill:
--
a defendant may be held liable, under
this subsection, where promotion or facilitation of prostitution activity
---

One of the most interesting things about "human trafficking" is that it is extremely rare, especially in the United States. Law enforcement, legislators, and the media have worked to broaden the definition of "human trafficking" to stoke public hysteria. They have their own motives: law enforcement uses the FUD to expand their powers, legislators like to pass the bills that expand law enforcement's powers so they can boast about it to their constituents, and the media loves a scary story that will inflate ratings. It's gotten to the point where all prostitutes are considered victims of human trafficking according to crime statistics, as well as children who are taken by a non-custodial parent. It's an entirely made up crisis. When you hear statistics like "x people are victims of human trafficking each year" just assume you're being lied to.

Does this include Facebook?

[Anonymous Coward]

I have tons of evidence Facebook allows this to happen on purpose.

Re: What happens when you go after *the demand sid

[Anonymous Coward]

Its obvious to anybody who thinks for a second that its about going after those who profit from vice, not those who are exploited by it.

In the case of drugs the exploited are the users. In the case of prostitution the exploited are the prostitutes. Simple really.

be careful

[Reverend Green]

Today feminazis have teamed up with religious conservatives in an ongoing effort to ban prostitution. Granted the language around this measure is a little hysterical, grossly misleading, and totally insincere. But I can't say I care that much. I don't enjoy patronizing prostitutes, and in as much as I have some socially conservative feelings, I'm okay with the ban.

*Of course* it will fail, like every other attempt to ban prostitution ever. But like I said, no loss to me.

Now all the self-described Progressives who might be tempted to support this, should perhaps give it a second thought. Today we ban prostitution. Tomorrow we ban sodomy and feminism. For the exact same reasons.

When you find yourself a political ally of wahhabists, maybe you should ask yourself if that's really where you want to go.

Re:be careful

[iamhassi]

That's funny, because prostitution is about the most empowering career a person can have without student loan debt. Get paid an impressive salary without a day of school? Sign me up! Ironic that feminazis would be against empowering women. I think it's a jealousy thing, older generation realizes no one would pay for them anymore so they force the younger generation to not be able to do it either. Of course schools don't want women doing that because they'd be unnecessary for nearly half the population. Church don't want it, less marriages. Govt don't want it either because govt makes more taxes on married couples.

Re:be careful

[Anonymous Coward]

....self-described Progressives who might be tempted to support this...

And what about the self-described Progressives liike me who don't, per se, support it? Your Republican Conservatard bias is showing. You just couldn't let it go by without taking a pot shot at it. Low class move.

What I do support is legalized prostitution that's regulated and taxed. Out it the open it's easier to monitor, make sure the people engaged in it are clean, healthy, and over age 18. It should be easier to eliminate the pimps an the other criminal elements.

... Today we ban prostitution. Tomorrow we ban ...

I don't know what planet you're on, but today we already ban prostitution in this country. (Except for some rural Nevada counties.)

Re:be careful

[Anonymous Coward]

Today feminazis have teamed up with religious conservatives in an ongoing effort to ban prostitution.

The sad thing is that I actually agree with your general point. But what's the point of espousing your opinion in such an inflammatory manner? If you presented your opinions rationally and without resorting to name calling, you might actually change some people's minds. But when the second word of your post is an epithet, you've made your post completely useless as a matter of discourse. You've ensured that only those who already agree with you will care about your post. What's the point of that?

Posted AC b/c I modded.

It's interesting...

[crreimer]

..how you can impose platform censorship under the name of preventing sex trafficking. Let's ignore all the rich and/or shitheads that get away with fucking kids and teens without consequence (politicians, the Catholic church, people in Hollywood, etc.) and look at what Craigslist and Backpage provide: prostitution. Is there illegal trafficking? Quite possibly, but there is also prostitution which is legal in the UK, Australia, NZ, much of Europe and a couple of counties in Nevada.

How about just legalizing prostitution, taxing/regulating it, and then go after actual sex traffickers and pedos, without compromising freedom of speech or making it much more difficult for smaller players to enter the walled gardens of content hosting, media distribution and social networks.

Re:It's interesting...

[Anonymous Coward]

This is absolutely not creimer. You're a good troll god bless you sir.

Re:It's interesting...

[Anonymous Coward]

Here are some posts from creimer's old accounts. I'll start with his love of child brides.

If all my assets were liquidated, I would still have enough cash to buy a new car and head off to Mexico to find a chica to marry.
https://slashdot.org/comments....

You're aware that are some states in the U.S. that allow underage marriage as young as 14 years old?
https://slashdot.org/comments....
As for my comment, I've heard stories of engineers retiring at 50, moving to Mexico and marrying underage girls. Since I work with ex-military, the Philippines is a popular retirement spot for marrying underage girls as well. It's all about getting the most bang for your retirement dollars.
https://slashdot.org/comments....
That only works if you retire to Mexico, build a mansion (by local standards), marry an underage sweet thing and bequeath all your possessions to the village.
https://slashdot.org/comments....

You need to be more specific. I wrote 3,000+ comments this year.
https://slashdot.org/comments....

Nah... I just do it to piss off my trolls and make coffee money off of them.
https://slashdot.org/comments....
We have different priorities. You want to climb the corporate ladder. I want to own the corporate ladder.
https://slashdot.org/comments....

Your bitch licks your balls. Most people don't brag about practicing bestiality. Is there a reason why you married a dog and not a goat?
https://slashdot.org/comments....

My employers don't care about what my Slashdot trolls think. Now go off and lick your balls somewhere else.
https://slashdot.org/comments....
iPhone 6s and reduce my monthly bill from $80 to $50. As a phone and a video camera, the iPhone 6s isn't obsolete. As a Sprint customer for 20+ years, Sprint will always offer me a new iPhone if I decide to stop using the 6s as a phone in the next several years.
https://slashdot.org/comments....
Miracle workers are never afraid to ask for a second opinion. Supervisor gave me his opinion ? and a mess to clean up. Lesson learned from this incident: if something isn't quite broken, break it.
https://slashdot.org/comments....

So you can turn around call me a liar again? People have been playing that game with me for years.
https://slashdot.org/comments....
Based on what I've read about Uber, he need to tell the boys to clean up their locker room behavior, zip up their pants, and attend sensitivity training until everyone agrees that women are not sexual objects.
https://slashdot.org/comments....

Which doesn't violate the Slashdot TOS. If you got a problem with that, take it up with management.
https://slashdot.org/comments....
This year I've posted ~4,000 comments.
https://slashdot.org/comments....

I don't bother with mod points. I'm doing something much more sinister. It took ten story submissions ? I'll have to double check the

Re: It's interesting...

[Anonymous Coward]

This makes no sense. A quick google shows itâ(TM)s 18 with permission, 21 without. Why would a 25 year old not be an adult?

In short, you are a stupid pervert.

Yes, it should

[Anonymous Coward]

Any organization that allows os promotes sex trafficking should be shut down, have their corporate charter revoked, and any individual involved should be arrested and immediately shot, no trial.

WCGW?

[Anonymous Coward]

So then what? Will they prosecute media that doesn't block other things they don't like? What part of "Free Press" didn't they get?

These assholes will never learn. Criminalizing "vice" is totalitarian. In order to enforce laws against private, (apparently) consensual activities the government has to take away everyone's rights (e.g. association, labor, press, privacy, pursuit of happiness) in order to find and prosecute crimes of vice.

Booze, dope, sex, gambling... prohibition always feeds criminals while failing to prevent the "vice" in question. The laws against prostitution actually facilitate sex trafficking by forcing the whole industry underground (the trafficked women can't call the police or social services)

The government needs to grow the fuck up!

Makes website owners responsible for user content

[Chas]

So this could, ultimately have very negative repercussions for large social media sites.

Re:Makes website owners responsible for user conte

[Anonymous Coward]

No - why do you think Google/Alphabet and Facebook spend millions lobbying in DC and contributing to campaigns of scumbag Democrats AND Republicans? They will get themselves excluded.

What Aboubt Email And The Like

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sure some sex traffickers use email to conduct business. Are they going to go after the company that runs the email? What about twitter? Instagram?
What about brick and mortar places that offer free WiFi? Is Dunkin' Donuts going to be fined every time someone uses their services for selling people?

Re:Makes website owners responsible for user conte

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope. But any upstart competitors to those large social media sites? You bet.

Re:PopeFATZO, only way you get any?

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you mad that your moose wouldn't put out for you today you sick fuck? You don't realize when you have been trolled you dumb sack of shit. Don't you know, all who troll you are paid by Soros who is trying to keep you from fucking his moose herd. Soros pays me $50 every time I point out your sick moose cum guzzling ways. Now please, stop molesting the wildlife.

conservative values under attack

[Anonymous Coward]

Another example of how conservative values are under attack in America.

Sad state of affairs

[p51d007]

As much as I wish sex traffickers would be thrown into a volcano...SLOWLY, I more worry about the tinkering with the Constitution. The minute they start placing restrictions on something, they will come back to take more and more and more. Most of the crap on the web, I don't care for, but, I just ignore it. Sex trafficking is a sick perverted thing and needs to be stopped, but this isn't the way to do it.

Re:Sad state of affairs

[pots]

As many people in this thread have already said, the word "trafficking" just means selling something illegal. "Drug trafficking" is selling illegal drugs, "sex trafficking" is selling sex in those places where selling sex is illegal (most of the United States). In other words, it's prostitution. In this case they're taking advantage of public confusion over the term in order to come down hard on prostitution in a way that the majority of the public doesn't support.

However, that's already been said elsewhere in this thread. What I'd like to point out is that you are calling for prostitutes to be thrown into a volcano, slowly. I assume that this is hyperbole, you weren't really calling for anyone to be literally tortured to death, and I assume that you didn't realize that you were actually talking about prostitutes rather than human traffickers (slavers). So I'm assuming that you're not so extreme in your viewpoint that you want a relatively minor crime, prostitution, to be punished by tortuous death.

None the less, that is what you just called for. ... ::sigh:: I guess I just wanted to point that out.

Evidence of innocence

[Anonymous Coward]

... liability for the activities of their users.

Google search and Facebook have enforced censorship policies for some time because they don't want to be blamed for subscribers posting illegal material. This law essentially demands all corporations perform censorship; of prostitution adverts. This may be the top of a slippery slope; in the same way that "national security" included pedophilia and copyright infringement, or the same way that "sex offender" included public urination and hiring a prostitute.

"... put an end to modern-day slavery here in the United States."

Ahh, yes: A politician claiming, once again, that writing a few thousand words onto paper will make crime disappear.

... crackdown on the online classified site backpage.com, which is used for sex advertising.

"Law-enforcement lobbying" is conflating safe-harbour provisions and inciting crime. The US already has laws for giving assistance to criminals or inciting a crime. This universal attack on third parties (web-page publishers) is demanding proof they are not committing those deeds; meaning censorship and banning people from the internet as evidence of their innocence.

Not in favor of the trafficking - But

[Anonymous Coward]

How long does the trafficking have to be on the web site before it becomes an offense on the part of the tech company? It does take a while to find such things. What if the actual access area is encrypted or something? Is the tech company required to "crack it"?

Not in favor of the trafficking itself, but such laws by politicians are often more destructive than leaving things alone. They are also often used for political advantage. Suppose a tech company was allowing news critical of the establishment to be published. One of the best ways to punish them back would be to hire someone to "sneak" some sex trafficking onto a web site of theirs and then "leak" information about it to the appropriate police agency. "Sneak" and "Leak". Worse things have been done.

Believe it was Thomas Jefferson who said he would rather live in a society with the inconveniences of too much liberty than live in one with the problems of too little. Just saying.

LOL! Look @ "BLoAtAuRuS ReX" react... apk

[Anonymous Coward]

PopeFATZO instead of projecting your own sickness (mainly grotesque obesity)? Go eat a salad FATBOY, lol!

* Truth sure "got to you" didn't it, lardball? LOL, yes it did!

(Look @ your "FoAmInG-@-TeH-MoUtH" raging "ReAcTiOn")

APK

P.S.=> RoTfLmAo - YOU are now OFFICIALLY BANNED from the Pizza shop, lol... apk

Aw! Poor FAT short "BLoAtAsAuRuS ReX"

[Anonymous Coward]

Aw! Poor FAT short "BLoAtAsAuRuS ReX" are you upset lil' fatboy? STFU & eat your salad! You are BANNED from pizza shops lardboy!

* YOU HAVE BIGGER TITS (& no dick, lol https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-QqAn6jRY748/UP906Z4OONI/AAAAAAAAMBw/4UJL1sLYx2E/s1600/Gun+Nut+Article+for+Bell+of+Lost+Souls2.jpg//) THAN 99% of women you DISGUSTING LARDBODY!

Telling folks to 'fuck off'? Fatboy, you WISH you still could but those tiny lard encrusted stubs you call arms are too heavy (lol) for "self management" of your "needs" (the cost of all that PIZZA hahaha) & your IMMENSE GUT (lmao) is in the way (your clever use of hydralic lifts did help though, lol) - too bad you have no stamina due to atrophied musculature & inherting a stub dick lol! You get TIRED before you can "get off" (so we see WHY you are such a miserable fat fuck, lol).

APK

P.S.=> Keep "ReAcTiNg" Lardboy - your facade is crumbling (& you're VERY EASY to "get to", you weak-minded little FAT dimwit)... apk

it isn't a matter of moving standard

[aepervius]

Pedophilia is the attraction to youth which DO NOT present sexual secondary characteristic, and is recognized as a mental illness. Whereas hebephilia and otehr associated preference, usually look for people which do HAVE secondary sexual characteristic, and are also interrested into sex. This is also not a DSM IV mental illness. This *MAY* be recognized both as being immoral, which is fine, but confusing a mental illness with a (potentially) amoral sexual preference is wrong. Pedophilia is one thing, a mental sickness, hebephilia and other associated preference are not, especially that most of the time it isn't a preferential choice.

PopeFATZO, you'd never even be LAST, lol!

[Anonymous Coward]

See subject & Why? All that PIZZA helped you 'sculpt' (not) that "fine physique" (no dick https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-QqAn6jRY748/UP906Z4OONI/AAAAAAAAMBw/4UJL1sLYx2E/s1600/Gun+Nut+Article+for+Bell+of+Lost+Souls2.jpg/ for starters (lmao) & inheriting a STUB DICK doesn't help your case either!

* For shit's sake FATBOY - get real!

No wonder you have to PAY FOR IT "Women love fat men Long as the wallet is fat" (& when the pencil is small like fatso is too) from https://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=11728465&cid=56100915/

APK

P.S.=> The only even REMOTELY CONCEIVABLE way any woman would even *THINK* of giving you a hummer (IF she could find that stub underneath that VOLUMINOUS GUT (lol) of yours that is) is IF you had a SHOTGUN to her head (& not even then! Hell, most women, unless they had a heroin habit & needed the scratch for a fix, would commit SUICIDE instead - hahahaha)... apk

PopeFATZO, only way you get any?

[Anonymous Coward]

See subject: How can I prove it you fat deformed UGLY fuck?? Your photo & "fine physique" pizza sculpted (ugh) https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-QqAn6jRY748/UP906Z4OONI/AAAAAAAAMBw/4UJL1sLYx2E/s1600/Gun+Nut+Article+for+Bell+of+Lost+Souls2.jpg/ (yes, that's YOU)!

Further proof of his GROTESQUE physique is his PIZZA diet "Don't eat pizza all the time. Trust me" from https://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=11747015&cid=56126866/

LOL - the delusional FAT fuck also admits he pays for it "Women love fat men Long as the wallet is fat" (& when the pencil is small like fatso is too) from https://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=11728465&cid=56100915/

* PopeFATZO also admits MANY TIMES he's paid by George Soros https://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=11729899&cid=56102973/ & https://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=11669511&cid=56024869/

Can you BLAME him? I don't - why? He needs FUNDS to maintain all the added capillarity his LARD LAYER has (lol).

APK

P.S.=> How DARE a grotesquerie like you (that hates himself & WHO CAN BLAME YOU for it? lol) say that? You're a disgusting PIG, you fucker with NO CLASS - putting down the 1st lady you fat DISGUSTING LARDBODY scumbag TRAITOR (paid by George Soros another ugly fuck)... apk

Republican Presidency.

[AutodidactLabrat]

Interfere with gun business? Never!
Interfere with sex Business? Always
Interfere with Russian Trolls? Never
Interfere with citizens peacably assembling to request redress of grievances? Always

Michelle Obama has a penis

[Anonymous Coward]

There is photographic proof - just search.

Cue Selective Enforcement

[Anonymous Coward]

This bill removes the safe harbor piece for websites, meaning you can now remove any site which allows user content to be posted by spamming fake Human trafficking content and reporting them, the admins are ultimately responsible if any gets posted, not simply for not removing it.

creimer spam alert!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't click on his homepage link! creimer is trying to get you to subscribe automatically to his youtube channel and make money off you!

CREIMER' SUBMISSIONS UPDATE:
Note also that creimer is trying to regain karma by getting his submissions published as articles on /. so make sure to go to:
https://slashdot.org/~crreimer
https://slashdot.org/~cdreimer
https://slashdot.org/~criss69
https://slashdot.org/~Anonymou...
https://slashdot.org/~FatCashe...
https://slashdot.org/~ILoveFat...
https://slashdot.org/~IHateFat...
https://slashdot.org/~IAteFatC...
https://slashdot.org/~ITapeFat...
https://slashdot.org/~IApeFatC...
https://slashdot.org/~IPrayFat...
https://slashdot.org/~FatCashe...
and mod down his submissions as well. The great thing is that you don't even need mod points to mod down a submission, just click on the "minus" icon!

Yes, believe it or not, creimer owns all the above sock puppet accounts. It is a mystery why Slashdot management tolerates it!

creimer wrote:

I don't bother with mod points. I'm doing something much more sinister. It took ten story submissions ? I'll have to double check the number ? to move cdreimer's karma from neutral to excellent without ever being exposed to the capricious mods. Mmmmmwwwwahahahahahahaha!

https://slashdot.org/comments....

Danger, Will Robinson, Danger! Creimy is posting more than 2 posts a day. Hurry! mod down otherwise /. will go to hell again!

Note: you can mod down even if already at -1 to lower karma and to prevent lost /. users to accidentally mod up.

creimer wrote:

All you need to do is find a website with a permissive TOS, say, Slashdot, create a Python script to scrape your own comments, sprinkle Amazon affiliate links in various posts, and then re-post past links whenever possible. Won't be long before you start making "coffee money" each month.

https://slashdot.org/comments....

C.D. Reimer is a renowned Slashdot collaborator, as he puts it himself; "Because of the quality of my posts and my article submissions, I'm a highly rated commentator and moderator."

But does anybody ever wondered what "C.D." stands for? Well, it stands for Creimy Dumpty of course!

Creimy Dumpty sat on the wall,
Creimy Dumpty had a great fall.
All the king's horses
And all the king's men
Couldn't put Creimy Dumpty
Together again.

Creimy's siblings video and theme song, very realistic, especially the pants, just like Creimy's:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

With "Vice President Pence Vowing US Astronauts Will Return To the Moon", we are sure they will need miracle workers up there, here is what it would look like. Note that Creimy takes care of bringing a lot of food to the moon as depicted below:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Creimy's real pictures:
Before the sex change:
https://ibb.co/cc7Ddw
After the sex change:
https://ibb.co/gVad65

Creimy's "enterprise-level" chair,

Re: What happens when you go after *the demand sid

[Anonymous Coward]

Incorrect. In the case of prostitution, the exploited ones are the johns who are unable to get sex any other way and so are forced to pay top dollar for it. The prostitutes are the ones who profit, in most cases, not the exploited ones.