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Cloudflare: FOSTA Was a 'Very Bad Bill' That's Left the Internet's Infrastructure Hanging (vice.com)
Last week, President Donald Trump signed the Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (FOSTA) into law. It's a bill that penalizes any platform found "facilitating prostitution," and has caused many advocacy groups to come out against the bill, saying that it undermines essential internet freedoms. The most recent entity to decry FOSTA is Cloudflare, which recently decided to terminate its content delivery network services for an alternative, decentralized social media platform called Switter. Motherboard talked to Cloudflare's general counsel, Doug Kramer, about the bill and he said that FOSTA was an ill-consider bill that's now become a dangerous law: "[Terminating service to Switter] is related to our attempts to understand FOSTA, which is a very bad law and a very dangerous precedent," he told me in a phone conversation. "We have been traditionally very open about what we do and our roles as an internet infrastructure company, and the steps we take to both comply with the law and our legal obligations -- but also provide security and protection, let the internet flourish and support our goals of building a better internet." Cloudflare lobbied against FOSTA, Kramer said, urging lawmakers to be more specific about how infrastructure companies like internet service providers, registrars and hosting and security companies like Cloudflare would be impacted. Now, he said, they're trying to figure out how customers like Switter will be affected, and how Cloudflare will be held accountable for them.
"We don't deny at all that we have an obligation to comply with the law," he said. "We tried in this circumstance to get a law that would make sense for infrastructure companies... Congress didn't do the hard work of understanding how the internet works and how this law should be crafted to pursue its goals without unintended consequences. We talked to them about this. A lot of groups did. And it was hard work that they decided not do." He said the company hopes, going forward, that there will be more clarity from lawmakers on how FOSTA is applied to internet infrastructure. But until then, he and others there are having to figure it out along with law enforcement and customers. "Listen, we've been saying this all along and I think people are saying now, this is a very bad law," Kramer said. "We think, for now, it makes the internet a different place and a little less free today as a result. And there's a real-world implication of this that people are just starting to grapple with."
"We don't deny at all that we have an obligation to comply with the law," he said. "We tried in this circumstance to get a law that would make sense for infrastructure companies... Congress didn't do the hard work of understanding how the internet works and how this law should be crafted to pursue its goals without unintended consequences. We talked to them about this. A lot of groups did. And it was hard work that they decided not do." He said the company hopes, going forward, that there will be more clarity from lawmakers on how FOSTA is applied to internet infrastructure. But until then, he and others there are having to figure it out along with law enforcement and customers. "Listen, we've been saying this all along and I think people are saying now, this is a very bad law," Kramer said. "We think, for now, it makes the internet a different place and a little less free today as a result. And there's a real-world implication of this that people are just starting to grapple with."
When the majority of Democrats in the House and Senate voted for this?
Heaven forbid two consenting adults do whatever the fuck they want, causing no injury to anyone, except for moral busybodies.
Imagine a law that says you cannot serve food in restaurants to anyone that either has a felony conviction or is a suspect in an ongoing case in any jurisdiction in the US.
Cloudflare's business should be providing internet infrastructure to paying (or nonpaying) customers. It should not be, at all, trying to decide whether or not a customer's data or business practices are unacceptable in various regions around the world, especially at a level where Cloudflare itself is supposedly criminal liable. Can you imagine needing to undergo a background check to service from an ISP? That's basically what this amounts to.
It's simply ridiculous.
It's about stopping evil activity by throwing out the evil with the good, and saying it's OK if good is harmed. Since these prostitution platforms are used for illegal human trafficking, they must be thrown out even if it harms "legitimate" prostitutes. It must be a wonderful feeling to lay down one's closely held values for the sake of freeing slaves. The sensation of sacrifice must be thrilling.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
By the same zany, nonsense logic, we should ban labouring jobs because some people are forced into slave labour.
Hell no. If you can’t tell them apart, all of them will have to be left alone, and you will have to find some other way to combat human trafficking. That is a core element of a free society under the rule of law.
In practice it’s more of a consideration than a hard principle, but it’s an important one. It means that with any law that harms innocents for the sake of fighting a certain crime, the rights of these innocents must weigh very, very heavily against the purported goals. And where the impact on innocent bystanders is large, it becomes important to ensure and verify that those goals are actually met. In that light, this law falls seriously short. It’s “think of the children” legislation.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
Some of them might. Some of them might rape more. The correct response so such ideas is always "Show me the data."
Unfortunately for you, someone did just that, and the numbers strongly suggest that you're wrong. And lest you think the phenomenon is limited to Europe, a present Rhode Island as a counterpoint.
Disturbing as it might seem to many, legalized prostitution actually does reduce rape and sexual abuse. A lot. We're not talking about some small variation that could be attributed to chance. We're talking about 30% reduction within just two years. Much of this is likely because prostitutes in those areas feel safe admitting what they do to police, which means they can turn in people who commit crimes against them, thus putting people who harm other people behind bars.
More to the point, the argument in favor of legalizing prostitution is precisely the same as the argument for so-called "sancuary cities" that are hostile towards attempts to deport people solely for being undocumented immigrants. Sanctuary cities have lower crime rates as a direct result of those policies, because the immigrant community isn't afraid to report crimes. What possible reason, then, could anyone have for believing that legalized prostitution would not reduce crime in the same way?
And of course, preventing women from charging for sex means that any woman who feels that this is her only plausible way out of abject poverty is denied the opportunity to be so empowered legally, and therefore must therefore do so illegally. This means those women are much more at risk of abuse, at risk of getting caught up in networks of people who "protect" them in exchange for skimming part of the profit, because they aren't eligible for protection by law enforcement, and at risk of rape by former customers. And of course, they can't usefully report those rapes, because the first question out of the defense attorney's mouth will be, "How did you know the defendant," and if the witness's answer is, "Your honor, I plead the fifth amendment," the case isn't going to go well for the prosecution.
Anti-prostitution laws actually contribute to the subjugation of women. They don't prevent it. Anyone who says otherwise is kidding him/herself. The numbers speak volumes, and they say you're wrong. Very wrong. Want to convince me otherwise? Show me your numbers, and tell me why your numbers are better.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Yeah, there's no way traffickers could get fake ID numbers.
The answer to trafficking is to legalize all forms of prostitution. If there's plenty of consenting supply then there's less profit in supplying it illegally and less people will be trafficked.
The same goes for drugs: Making drugs illegal doesn't take any drugs off the streets, it just fills the pockets of the mafia.
No sig today...