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EFF Sues To Invalidate FOSTA, An Unconstitutional Internet Censorship Law (eff.org)
schwit1 quotes a report from the Electronic Frontier Foundation: We are asking a court to declare the Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act of 2017 ("FOSTA") unconstitutional and prevent it from being enforced. The law was written so poorly that it actually criminalizes a substantial amount of protected speech and, according to experts, actually hinders efforts to prosecute sex traffickers and aid victims. In our lawsuit, two human rights organizations, an individual advocate for sex workers, a certified non-sexual massage therapist, and the Internet Archive, are challenging the law as an unconstitutional violation of the First and Fifth Amendments. Although the law was passed by Congress for the worthy purpose of fighting sex trafficking, its broad language makes criminal of those who advocate for and provide resources to adult, consensual sex workers and actually hinders efforts to prosecute sex traffickers and aid victims. The EFF goes on to cite some examples of how FOSTA has already censored the internet. Most notably, two days after FOSTA was passed in the Senate, "Craigslist eliminated its Personals section, including non-sexual subcategories such as 'Missed Connections' and 'Strictly Platonic,'" reports the EFF. Reddit even removed some of its subreddits out of fear of future lawsuits.
voted for this? Was it really just that he feared the Repubs using it in a "think of the children" line of attack? I hate to say it but if that's true, well, he's not wrong... That's the trouble with these laws. It's just like all the post 911 crap. People over react. I can't tell you how many people will tell me with a straight face "everything changed after 9/11" and not realize it only changed because we let it...
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The Aussie Lagga
This kind of thing reminds me of what Jack Tramiel said to his assistant when asked how he could do business with Germans after having been through Holocaust:
"You know," he once told me, "it's hard to believe it really happened. But it can happen again. In America. Americans like to make rules, and that scares me. If you have too many rules you get locked in a system. It's the system that says this one dies and that one doesn't, not the people. That's why I don't hate the German people. Individuals, yes. Rules, yes. But not all Germans." He shrugged. "They just obeyed the rules. But that's why we need more Commodores. We need more mavericks, just so the rules don't take over."
I'm assuming the "non-sexual" part of "certified non-sexual massage therapist" is descriptive, just letting us know that they're not a "happy endings" kind of massage therapist, not that they're certified in something called "non-sexual massage".
But given that this is just an ordinary massage therapist, what is their connection to FOSTA and why are they part of this case?
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
its broad language makes criminal of those who
Basically they are suing for the fear of the government miss-applying criminal law through an analogue or going beyond the exact text of the law. Why are we seeing this pattern of backlash again and again? Is there an increasing collection of actual criminal cases in the US that imply such breaking of the basic principles of the use of criminal law?
I'm thankful that the EFF exists. You guys rock, I feel like you're one of the only good guys out there.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
him to vote for it. Right wingers like Pelosi & Schumer I expect that from. They're really Republicans they just run in a district that votes "D". I just expected better from Bernie.
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Such personal freedom, BIGLY rights over your own body. Pussygrabber President is sure to fix this one any day now.....
You couldn't pay me enough to emigrate to that shithole cuntry.
You're not free so long as somebody controls your access to food, shelter, healthcare, education and transportation (the latter being required to access the former). Until you have reliable access to those things then you're one bad year (or month if you're 40% of Americans) away from disaster and doing whatever anyone tells you to get those things. You're what's referred to as a Wage Slave.
What's the old saying? Everyone has a price. Bernie's one of the few politicians to recognize that devil's details. True liberty comes when every man, woman and child is gauranteed the things needed to live. When that happens and the 1% can't threaten you with death by starvation only then are you really free because only then can you say (and mean it), fuck you, I'm not doing that. Until then you'll do what's told when it comes down to a choice of doing it or dying of starvation / lack of medicine.
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I would have voted for Bernie if I had been given a chance.
But I was not surprised that he, and pretty much every other Democrat, and Republican,voted for this bill. Of the two voting against, one was R and one D...
It's not because he was afraid of anything. It's because most of the people in DC crave power above all else, and this bill was a pure manifestation of power of people as they come.
This delusion that there is more than a micron of difference between R and D must end.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I went to university for computer science and specialized in 3D graphics.
It took me about four years to slog through that program. I graduated and immediately got a job in the VFX industry, which was so insanely stressful that it burned me out in less than 2 years. I spent the next little while bouncing between interviews and bagging groceries at the local food store. All the jobs I applied for looked like they were going to be the same perma-crunch bullshit, so I gave up and went back to IT.
I spent the next year or so running some network at a dead-end job for a company that was in a state of perpetually going out of business.
Around the same time, I started to open up online about a few of my fetishes. They're nothing bad or illegal. Most people wouldn't even consider them R-rated, since there's zero nudity involved and absolutely no sexually explicit stuff. If a normal person saw the sort of thing I'm interested in, they'd probably just go "what?" and laugh. It's literally that harmless. I met a lot of people interested in the same thing (of which there's quite a few), and made some amazing friends along the way. They all told me the same thing- I should start up a Patreon account and put my 3D skills to use.
So I did.
Within 6 months, Patreon was my sole source of income, with more money coming in through Gumroad and direct PayPal payments through my artist website. I was making more than I ever did at either of my two former jobs. Everything was totally legit and legal- I marked all my content as NSFW whenever required, and followed the rules everywhere I could.
Recently, I got suspended for Patreon. To be fair, the Patreon folks were extremely helpful and had me up and running again within 24 hours. This is not about them though, it's about FOSTA/SESTA.
You see, I'm not even a US citizen. I live in Canada. However, FOSTA has made Patreon's payment processors paranoid to the point that they are all locking down everything to the point that they don't want to deal with anything even remotely considered NSFW, even if it's not actually pornographic in nature (which my content is not). Patreon has fought back to a certain point, but they're basically losing an unwinnable battle. The more the paypament processors torque down the screws, the more Patreon has to clamp down on "NSFW" content.
I got suspended over a banner showing a fully clothed 3D model sitting on a bar stool looking into the camera. I'll admit that the character in question was pretty curvy- but once again, I don't do nudity or anything even remotely considered sexually explicit. This wasn't anything worse than the sort of thing you'd see after spending 5 minutes on Instagram.
I had to remove that banner and replace it with something else. After I did that, my account was unlocked and I was back in business.
What I'm worried about, however, is that this is only the beginning, and that my entire online business may be threatened as a result of knee jerk reactions to FOSTA. I fear that one day, I may not be able to rely on this source of income anymore, despite the fact that what I'm doing is completely legal and something I'm actually good at. I know many other people who have run into similar issues in the past 2 weeks, all because everyone is getting super paranoid about the new laws. Some of them have resolved their issues, others are permanently screwed by the new tighter interpretation of the community rules.
This shit needs to stop.
FOSTA is having a HUGE impact in a ton of industries that have nothing to do with what the bill was originally designed to prevent. It was poorly thought out and needs to be taken out behind the barn and summarily put down. I sincerely hope the EFF succeeds here, or this turns into a huge legal battle for the US Government that results in them being put on the hook for a few billion dollars of lost e-commerce. I don't know how the fuck this bill crept up into service or why there was no major outrage over it, but it's clear that the only thing it's doing is damaging the online economies. Why nobody thought of this beforehand is beyond me, but I guess it's all about control and power in the end, and that's exactly what FOSTA is designed to provide.
Whoever voted this down should be ashamed of themselves and probably didn't even read it.
Porn isn't (or rather, wasn't before this dumbass law) illegal. They are also sex workers, as are strippers, which are also legal. But it now isn't legal to advertise for them.
The key issue here is that people like you know that already and are playing dumb. Conflating all these issues allows you to impress your moral standards on other people. Get out of my country.
The legality of porn in the US is a really complicated matter, and depends on state. There are a lot of laws which are intended to make it legal, but also completely impractical to produce or distribute. Fortunately for the porn fans of the internet, most of these laws have not been enforced for years.
> ... Patreon's payment processors paranoid
Plenty of P's please!
Are you implying that there are non fans of porn still surfing the internet? Pass me that pipe, will yas?
If i denounce your post for being advertising for woman trafficking, slashdot probably will have to remove it, regardless of being or not.
The website simply does not have the resources to manually check every complaint, and if they miss a real one, the government shuts the site down.
And this is true for pretty much all the websites with user content.
They are also sex workers, as are strippers, which are also legal.
Strippers aren't sex workers unless they're exchanging sex for money. Dancing for money isn't sex even if you do it naked. My understanding is that a high percentage of strippers are also prostitutes, but it didn't seem that's what you meant.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I feel for you, but please, stop using Patreon and Paypal. That's your problem right there, relying on payment processors for even a semi-controversial business. Especially considering their past histories of shutting down people over perceived offensiveness. You do realize Paypal was founded by hardcore Christian conservatives, right?
Take a bit of time out of your day to learn some code. Whip up a payment solution of your own, slap it onto your website. If you're making as much money as you say you are, I'm sure your bank would help you set up an API that'll make things easier. They'd gladly help cut out some middlemen -- after all, more money in your account means more money in theirs, too.
Banks are much less legally capable of pulling your money away from you due to some stupid knee-jerk corporate policy -- they require an actual court order to freeze your funds. A paranoid bank manager cannot stop your flow of income due to his own personal and non-legal opinion on how a law will affect his business.
This is the sort of comment that gets made up around here. Links to site or it didn't happen.
By the time it reaches the Supreme Court, there will be 5 reliably conservative justices.
No, that isn't what I meant. The issue is that your definition of sex work is too strict, both by the standards of those performers, who generally self-identify as sex workers, and by the standard of this law, which would make it just as hard for them to advertise.
for any kind of advice. This is the same guy who tried to cheat the Amiga company out of their hard work and tech by leveraging them into a deal where he gave them a short term loan because they were desperate (having spend all their money building the tech). He lost that when Commodore came in and saved the day but held the Amiga back a year with frivolous lawsuits he eventually won.
He was an impressive organizer, but he ran Atari into the ground largely by being a complete dick to the suppliers who made the Atari computers a success. He thought he could muscle them out and go direct to the consumer, which sounds good in theory but having a good reseller adds value. Jack never thought much of anyone, and that was his problem.
Read a little more on his history or go watch the Youtube video Kim Justice did on him even. He made his fortune taking advantage of people in the worst sort of cutthroat manner. He wanted fewer rules because rules made it hard for him to do that.
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If anyone can save us from this bullshit, it's the EFF. "Sex trafficking" is the new Satanic Panic.
How do you have less than $1m when you make $174,000 and your wife made $160,000?
Seems like money management is not his strong suit. So, yea, let's put him in charge. Great idea there sport.
If you think there's nothing sexual about a strip tease even though there's no penetration, you're either going to the wrong strip clubs, or are doing sex wrong.
FOSTA is having a HUGE impact in a ton of industries that have nothing to do with what the bill was originally designed to prevent.
I'm sorry for your troubles, that is very unfair, but I don't agree that this is unintended. Child trafficking was the excuse, but using the government to enforce puritan morals was certainly intended.
Porn isn't (or rather, wasn't before this dumbass law) illegal. They are also sex workers, as are strippers, which are also legal. But it now isn't legal to advertise for them.
The key issue here is that people like you know that already and are playing dumb. Conflating all these issues allows you to impress your moral standards on other people. Get out of my country.
This isn't about porn. This law is about people engaging in illegal shit or aiding and abetting illegal shit.
If a site is shutting down their legal sites because of this law they're idiots or are afraid of being able to prove they're on the up and up.
If i denounce your post for being advertising for woman trafficking, slashdot probably will have to remove it, regardless of being or not.
The website simply does not have the resources to manually check every complaint, and if they miss a real one, the government shuts the site down.
And this is true for pretty much all the websites with user content.
Show me where the law says that. Go ahead and quote it, please.