You're probably right, but I can't help but be reminded of this witty line in "The Martian Chronicles" where the Martians think Earth 'could never support life because... there's far too much oxygen in their atmosphere', indicating they're based on radically different biochemistry from us.
This alternation between comic and tragic is all over The Martian Chronicles. Like, in "Ylla," Yll says that Earth could never support life because "Our scientists have said there's far too much oxygen in their atmosphere" (43). That's comic because it's dead wrong--it's oxygen that makes life possible on Earth.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
* 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.
* 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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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
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.
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.
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
BEIJING, Nov 14 (Reuters) - China's total volume of carbon emissions is set to rise by a third in the next 16 years, according to scholars from China's Tsinghua University, even as the world's biggest carbon polluter has pledged the climate-warming gas emissions will peak by 2030.
China's president Xi Jinping announced this week that the country would strive to bring its spiralling carbon emissions to a peak by "around 2030" as part of a joint commitment with the United States to combat global warming.
High school kids that try to rise up are quickly eliminated by US Air Force Predator drones strikes, flown by our own US military. The kids have AR-15s, but didn't stand a chance against Predators and guided missile strikes.
The Viet Cong, Taliban and Iraqi insurgents all seemed to do OK - they were able to cause enough casualties to US troops that US politicians backed down and tried to pull out US troops and replace them with locals. At which point the rebels took over. The US army is very, very good at fighting a conventional war against a conventional army. It's much less good at dealing with hit and run attacks from insurgents on its supply lines.
Funnily enough the Romans had the same problem. The Battle Of Teutoburg forest was organised by Arminius. Arminius was a German aristocrat who'd been raised a hostage in Rome and had joined the Roman army and knew its strengths and weaknesses. Basically if the Roman army had time to get in formation at a location of its choosing it could chew through endless waves of barbarian attackers, see for example the Battle of Watling Street. However on the march through a forest it was vulnerable to hit and run attacks.
You can't help but be reminded of this when you read how the Iraqi insurgents attacked US supply columns and then fled before more US troops could appear.
Also in a situation where the US army was told to fire on US citizens protecting their constitutional rights they're at the very least likely to non too keen. The worst case scenario would be they simply refuse to do it.
I.e. saying "The US army has better weapons than civilians, therefore it would win, therefore civilians don't need AR-15s to defend against tyranny" is dumb on many levels.
And before anyone says "Well that's good in theory. When has it happened since the war of independence?". The answer is the Battle Of Athens
Slashdot Mirror
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.
You're probably right, but I can't help but be reminded of this witty line in "The Martian Chronicles" where the Martians think Earth 'could never support life because ... there's far too much oxygen in their atmosphere', indicating they're based on radically different biochemistry from us.
https://www.shmoop.com/martian...
This alternation between comic and tragic is all over The Martian Chronicles. Like, in "Ylla," Yll says that Earth could never support life because "Our scientists have said there's far too much oxygen in their atmosphere" (43). That's comic because it's dead wrong--it's oxygen that makes life possible on Earth.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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
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.
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...
Read up on this
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
Yup, they've agreed to peak emissions 'around 2030'
https://www.reuters.com/articl...
BEIJING, Nov 14 (Reuters) - China's total volume of carbon emissions is set to rise by a third in the next 16 years, according to scholars from China's Tsinghua University, even as the world's biggest carbon polluter has pledged the climate-warming gas emissions will peak by 2030.
China's president Xi Jinping announced this week that the country would strive to bring its spiralling carbon emissions to a peak by "around 2030" as part of a joint commitment with the United States to combat global warming.
I think technically you're supposed to pay Oracle $1 each time you say, read or write the word 'container'.
Container. Container. Container.
I've got some S&P tracker ETFs so I guess that means I own some ORCL shares indirectly.
High school kids that try to rise up are quickly eliminated by US Air Force Predator drones strikes, flown by our own US military. The kids have AR-15s, but didn't stand a chance against Predators and guided missile strikes.
The Viet Cong, Taliban and Iraqi insurgents all seemed to do OK - they were able to cause enough casualties to US troops that US politicians backed down and tried to pull out US troops and replace them with locals. At which point the rebels took over. The US army is very, very good at fighting a conventional war against a conventional army. It's much less good at dealing with hit and run attacks from insurgents on its supply lines.
Funnily enough the Romans had the same problem. The Battle Of Teutoburg forest was organised by Arminius. Arminius was a German aristocrat who'd been raised a hostage in Rome and had joined the Roman army and knew its strengths and weaknesses. Basically if the Roman army had time to get in formation at a location of its choosing it could chew through endless waves of barbarian attackers, see for example the Battle of Watling Street. However on the march through a forest it was vulnerable to hit and run attacks.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
You can't help but be reminded of this when you read how the Iraqi insurgents attacked US supply columns and then fled before more US troops could appear.
Also in a situation where the US army was told to fire on US citizens protecting their constitutional rights they're at the very least likely to non too keen. The worst case scenario would be they simply refuse to do it.
I.e. saying "The US army has better weapons than civilians, therefore it would win, therefore civilians don't need AR-15s to defend against tyranny" is dumb on many levels.
And before anyone says "Well that's good in theory. When has it happened since the war of independence?". The answer is the Battle Of Athens
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
That's really a shame. Ever considered doing development on contract?