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."

Comments

"Trafficking"

[thomn8r]

..is the new "terrorism" which replaced "think of the children"

Re:"Trafficking"

[Rick Schumann]

Human trafficking is a real thing, and it's no laughing matter, but this is a misguided attempt at best, and at worst, as alluded to above, something to be leveraged into censorship of pornography on the internet -- and, no doubt, censorship of anything else they can twist the wording around to also include. Since it's a moral issue, it's difficult for anyone to challenge it without being accused of supporting and approving of human trafficking and the sex trade, and for a politician on either side of the aisle that would be political suicide, especially these days when everyone is so completely and totally polarized. Someone will challenge it, if it's actually going too far, and the courts will no doubt hear it. Also, like most attempts (emphasis on attempts) at censoring the Internet, it likely won't be enforceable anyway; if the content they want to censor is located on a hard drive outside U.S. borders, then there's not a damn thing they can do about it. Not all that difficult these days to get hosting anywhere you need to, and not difficult to move your content to the new hosting.

Re:"Trafficking"

[the_povinator]

Trafficking is a very real problem, despite some of the negative legislation that may result in the name of stopping it.

My problem with "trafficking" is that it is an umbrella term that people principally seem to find useful as a way to conflate various issues and advance agendas that they don't want to state outright. Consider that "trafficking" covers such diverse situations as:

• Teenage girls being coerced into sex work
• People who make it easier for Chinese women to come to the USA on tourist visas to give birth.
• The coyotes who guide people central America across the US border
• The gangs in Libya who either help Africans cross the sea to Europe, or rip them off as they attempt to get to Europe.
• Simple prostitution
• People being brought illegally from abroad as domestic workers (or brought legally but exploited).

The usefulness of ``trafficking'' is that it allows a person who is opposed to one of these forms of trafficking (typically prostitution or illegal immigration) to point to one of the forms that *everyone* can agree is wrong (typically underage children being forced into sex work) and use it as an excuse to crack down on the form of ``trafficking'' that is their real target.

moral majority

[b0s0z0ku]

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.

Re:Why didn't Congress consult with the people...?

[sl3xd]

This one isn't due to partisan ignorance, just the general kind.

• * In the House, the vote was 388-25 vote, with 14 Republicans and 11 Democrats voting in opposition.
• * The Senate vote was 98-2, with one (R) and one (D) voting against it.

This is why it doesn't matter who you vote for

[SuperKendall]

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".

Short-sighted...

[Theaetetus]

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...

... so that it no longer posts these ads...

... making it much more difficult for investigators to go undercover as buyers and find the victims.

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?

Re:Short-sighted...

[gweihir]

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

Which they are not in all these cases. Nobody would advertise something like that openly. It is purely the fantasy of the customer being addressed here. A "lolita" is a sex worker that looks young, but is anywhere from 18-30. There are basically almost no underage sex workers, and where there are, they are 17 or 16. There are, for example, also statements from brothel owners in Switzerland where prostitution used to be legal from 16 years on, that they actually did not want any this young because they cannot do the job well and mainly cause problems. And there were statements from the Swiss police that this was extremely rare and in the small handful of cases they merely informed the parents.

Incidentally, from countries were it is legal, we also know that there are almost no sex workers forced into the trade. For example, the Mafia stopped decades ago, because it does not work economically. A forced sex worker is a bad, non-motivated sex worker that brings in the lowest rates and comes with the problem that typically one of the first customers reports this to the police because men are not total scum. For example a famous case in Germany about 20 years back had 3 actual customers and the first one went to the police. These things are so rare that they make the national news, while there are an estimated 1 million (!) prostitutes in the US.

Re:Why didn't Congress consult with the people...

[SuricouRaven]

Because the people the bill would most directly affect are prostitutes, and no politician wants to be seen as acknowledging prostitutes have any rights at all. As far as politics goes, there are only two valid images of prostitutes: Sinful harlots who need to be locked up for the good of society, and innocent victims who need to be saved from their pimp... and then locked up if they don't reform.

The MPAA did it

[gavron]

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