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Senate Passes Controversial Online Sex Trafficking Bill (thehill.com)
The Senate today gave final approval to a bill aimed at cracking down on online sex trafficking, sending the measure to the White House where President Trump is expected to sign it into law. From a report: The legislation, called the Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (FOSTA), but also referred to as SESTA, would cut into the broad protections websites have from legal liability for content posted by their users. Those protections are codified in Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act from 1996, a law that many internet companies see as vital to protecting their platforms and that SESTA would amend to create an exception for sex trafficking.
Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), the most outspoken critic of SESTA and one of the authors of the 1996 law, said that making exceptions to Section 230 will lead to small internet companies having to face an onslaught of frivolous lawsuits. EFF expressed its disappointment, saying, "Today is a dark day for the Internet. Congress just passed the Internet censorship bill SESTA/FOSTA. SESTA/FOSTA will silence online speech by forcing Internet platforms to censor their users. As lobbyists and members of Congress applaud themselves for enacting a law ostensibly tackling the problem of trafficking, let's be clear: Congress just made trafficking victims less safe, not more. Sex trafficking experts have tried again and again to explain to Congress how SESTA/FOSTA will put trafficking victims in danger. Sex workers have spoken out too, explaining how online platforms have literally saved their lives. Why didn't Congress consult with the people their bill would most directly affect? [...] When platforms choose to err on the side of censorship, marginalized voices are censored disproportionately. SESTA/FOSTA will make the Internet a less inclusive place, something that hurts all of us. This might just be the beginning. Some of these groups behind SESTA / FOSTA seem to see the bill as a mere stepping stone to banning pornography from the Internet."
Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), the most outspoken critic of SESTA and one of the authors of the 1996 law, said that making exceptions to Section 230 will lead to small internet companies having to face an onslaught of frivolous lawsuits. EFF expressed its disappointment, saying, "Today is a dark day for the Internet. Congress just passed the Internet censorship bill SESTA/FOSTA. SESTA/FOSTA will silence online speech by forcing Internet platforms to censor their users. As lobbyists and members of Congress applaud themselves for enacting a law ostensibly tackling the problem of trafficking, let's be clear: Congress just made trafficking victims less safe, not more. Sex trafficking experts have tried again and again to explain to Congress how SESTA/FOSTA will put trafficking victims in danger. Sex workers have spoken out too, explaining how online platforms have literally saved their lives. Why didn't Congress consult with the people their bill would most directly affect? [...] When platforms choose to err on the side of censorship, marginalized voices are censored disproportionately. SESTA/FOSTA will make the Internet a less inclusive place, something that hurts all of us. This might just be the beginning. Some of these groups behind SESTA / FOSTA seem to see the bill as a mere stepping stone to banning pornography from the Internet."
Why didn't Congress consult with the people their bill would most directly affect?
Is that a rhetorical question? Government acts like passing a law automagically fixes everything, but ultimately most laws answer to the law of unintended consequences. As much as I think human trafficking is horrific, you can always expect the government to take exactly the wrong approach to fixing it.
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
..is the new "terrorism" which replaced "think of the children"
Banning pornography from the Internet?! What next, banning cat pictures? Might as well shut the whole thing down.
This isn't about limiting "trafficking". This is limiting all sex for pay among consenting adults, which is made easier/safer via peer-to-peer platforms. Someone who advertises on Backpage doesn't need a middleman (aka a pimp).
i.e. it's a law not created to help victims, but rather by marching moral majority morons, to control what consenting adults are allowed to do in their own bedrooms. Same deal as with alcohol and marijuana prohibition laws.
Throw the book at pimps who force people into prostitution or use children. But consenting adults should be able to decide for themselves. Nevada, Amsterdam, and Berlin are good examples of how the business should be treated.
Because in the Republican-controlled Congress, ignorance is bliss. And they are very blissful.
Some of these groups behind SESTA / FOSTA seem to see the bill as a mere stepping stone to banning pornography from the Internet.
Lol good luck there
Fully licensed blockchain psychiatrist
Alright folks, break out your terminal emulators - time to go back to NNTP/Usenet.
Did you read it? It's right there on page 97:
38.a.14.xiii
The Donald gets first dibs.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Where's the law that says the Schelling point for sex services needs to have any physical presence in the United States? Websites like Craigslist and Backpage do not require outrageous amounts of computing power, network bandwidth, or programming skill.
Some of these groups behind SESTA / FOSTA seem to see the bill as a mere stepping stone to banning pornography from the Internet."
Dr. Cox: "I’m fairly sure if they took porn off the internet, there’d only be one website left, and it’d be called, 'Bring Back the Porn!'”
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
From the article:
"The bill was approved overwhelmingly in a 97-2 vote."
If Hillary had won, she'd be signing something just as egregious into law.
While the two sides argue over frivolities, real freedoms are inexorably crushed by both "sides".
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Maybe legalize prostitution? Problem solved, no eroding of our rights involved.
Oops, my bad. I forgot who was in control.
"let's be clear: Congress just made trafficking victims less safe, not more"
This makes it look like congress made things less safe for those who traffic victims.
"victims of trafficking".. fixed that for you, EFF!
Facebook, Google, Twitter and the rest of the the customer-facing big boys already censor. Infrastructure providers like GoDaddy censor. Square and Paypal censor, to the extent that commerce may be considered speech. Actually worse for the latter since it's the commerce equivalent of private speech they're going after.
If, for instance, Facebook doesn't know enough to need to ask its users if old men trolling for young boys is wrong, maybe a little cage rattling from the federal government really is called for. How about that...a right wing nutjob who voted Libertarian says federal oversight isn't necessarily a bad thing.
But some lawmakers and anti-sex trafficking advocates think the law has gotten in the way of efforts to go after online trafficking suspects like Backpage.com.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), a co-author of SESTA with Portman and a former prosecutor, called Section 230 "outdated and obsolete" during Wednesday's press conference.
They were talking about this on NPR this afternoon - apparently, sex traffickers were posting classified ads on Backpage.com with keywords like "lolita" and "fresh" to indicate underage girls - and the Senator wants to be able to go after Backpage...
Wouldn't it have been much smarter to quietly make a deal with Backpage to forward this info to the FBI as soon as they get it?
I wish they would ban pornography from the internet. I wish they had banned it 20 years ago. We'd probably be coasting around in self-driving flying cars given the amount of (especially nerd) time we've lost to it.
Only I can judge you.
Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (FOSTA) OBVIOUSLY means the aim is to make it harder to fight online sex trafficking- That's how we do things around here-
You are being ripped off every second of every day, so that advertisers can help rip you off even more tomorrow.
See here. It's identity politics, regular politics and racism. Not sure about prostitution but it wouldn't surprise me. A huge part of our legal system is about voter disenfranchisement. e.g. Nailing poor people with a conviction that strips voting rights.
Right wing ideas don't really survive on their own. Supply side economics, Military Industrial complex, lax environmental regulations and worker protections. None of these are high enough in the polls to make it. But our two party system means if you combine a bit of voter suppression, gerrymandering and the impact of our Senate & Electoral College you can get unpopular policies through despite the polls.
This is why Congress has a 13% approval rating but incumbents. It's also why the Dems have won not just the popular vote for POTUS but even gotten more votes for the House and somehow managed to have fewer representatives. All these shenanigans add up to us barely being a democracy...
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This isn't about sex trafficking. This is about US representatives paid off by the MPAA to remove CDA Sec 230 protections so that they can go after people who share content, require ISPs to censor or block postings, and enforce permanent takedown ("staydown") instead of merely providing a notice that ISPs may or may not send the end-users.
It's a dark day for the Internet. It's a dark day for freedom of expression. It's a dark day for open discourse and discussion. ...and it will make things worse for sex trafficking victims...
Everybody loses. Except congress reelection campaign donation funds.
Ehud
As a Canadian, just gotta say, we need to get those backbone servers the hell out of the USA. Start building out WAY more of our own.
All of this, ajit pai, this crap, it's part of a larger picture to do a sort of fascist takeover of the internet. It is becoming increasingly obvious.
We need to make sure as little as possible of our data flows across US backbone servers.
I am writing to my member of Parliament immediately.
And what _exactly_ constitutes pornography?
Where do you draw the line between art and pornography?
Why isn't it called ASVFOSTA?
And what's with "SESTA", where does that come from? Aren't acronyms supposed to be made of the first letter of each word of the thing?
If they're going to make their own rules about acronyms, then I'm going to make my own and call this bill "FIESTA" or "SIESTA".
#DeleteFacebook
Let's say I work for AT&T. Can I use this to publish ads for underage sex on a competitor/enemy's website. Fake ads, but I don't think anyone really cares. (On the darkweb you can buy weapon's grade plutonium. It's true because a reporter saw an ad) Since I control the network, I have godlike powers. I can be very very hard to track down.
Can I use this to cause my competitor/enemy to come under crushing legal scrutiny? Seized servers, fines, etc.
Where do you draw the line between art and pornography?
If a nerd spends less than 1% of his day looking at it, it's art. If he spends more than 10%, it's porn.
How does this apply to content hosted outside the USA? Are they simply pushing ISP jobs overseas, or are they going to Build A [Fire]Wall?
Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
given Mr Brady's history. And even if it wasn't, read my post a few more times. The right wing is cheating (gerrymandering, voter suppression come into play. As for the Senate & Electoral college, the game was rigged before I was born.
There's no point to playing a rigged game fairly. You'll always lose. If we call a constitutional convention the right wing will use it to strip the constitution of the few protections workers have.
Fairness is, if anything, a childish concept. We're adults. We're not playing games here. We're deciding who lives and dies. Grow up already. The sooner you do the sooner you can join the fight and we can start fixing things.
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He did bring someone into America with questionable legality for sexual reasons. https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Mela....
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
Pretty sure Clinton has "run" plenty of beauty pageants over the years, if you catch my drift (it's not drifting very far at all from the subject).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
ornography/pôrnärf/
noun
printed or visual material containing the explicit description or display of sexual organs or activity, intended to stimulate erotic rather than aesthetic or emotional feelings.
Only I can judge you.
I don't care about pornography, but can we please ban cat and dog videos. I think those are a bigger time waster than porn.
This is 100% a prostitution bill. There WAS a sex trafficking bill. Then there was an amendment which replaced the entire text of the bill, other than the title. Read the bill as enrolled - it's all about prostitution, nothing about trafficking.
Clearly self-driving flying cars (whatever that means) are pornography because some people get off on it! So we should ban self-driving flying cars.
Ezekiel 23:20
Sex trafficking is prostitution. The word "trafficking" just means trade in illegal goods - "drug trafficking" means buying or selling illegal drugs, "human trafficking" means buying or selling humans (i.e.: slavery), "sex trafficking" means buying or selling sex (in those places where that is illegal).
They call it sex trafficking here, rather than prostitution, because the public associates the word trafficking with human trafficking, because that's where it's most often used. In other words, they're taking advantage of public confusion to crack down on prostitution in a way that most of the public wouldn't normally support but a few members of the public will cheer for.
Those few members of the public who will cheer for this tend to be single-issue "family values" voters, which is why the EFF is describing this as a stepping stone to banning pornography from the internet. I really doubt that it will ever get that far, but targeting prostitutes like this is... effective. Reversing this will be difficult, people are generally unwilling to stick up for prostitutes to that degree.
It would be ironic if on a government website that allows user postings, someone posted something that would be illegal under FOSTA, which in turn would make the government site liable. All the LULZ
No we wouldn't. We'd be spending all of our time trying to circumvent anti-porn laws. Nerds are nerds for a reason. They will never get anything but porn whether it is legal or not.
...
To be clear, well, I think that prostitution of the legal sort, that is, between consenting adults, is not much of a problem (I mean, in today's society, I think that we'd be less fearful of sexuality), but vulnerable people being exploited is a very important issue to be addressed, and in many places people still have to get over their misconceptions about sex and in addition empower people, as through feminism, to be educated enough to help avoid those sorts of exploitation and reduce that kind of scenario.
There are surely some jurisdictions where the USA will be unable to enforce this stupid law. People will adjust and some business will leave the USA, but their customers will remain in the USA.
We have the technology top ensure that everyone spends their time doing productive work. The only problem is defining "productive" . By what measure is traveling in a flying car more productive than watching a porn video? What is the end goal that we are trying to optimize by banning porn?
"Sex trafficking" does not refer to prostitution in general. It specifically means coercion or enslavement someone and prostituting them against their will. The phrase doesn't mean that it's sex that's being trafficked, but people.
Look I didn't make that up, trafficking just means buying or selling something illegally. Thus, "sex trafficking" means buying or selling sex illegally. The fact that people often use "sex trafficking" as shorthand for "human trafficking for the purpose of sex" means that interested parties can exploit that ambiguity in language.