Senate Passes Controversial Online Sex Trafficking Bill (thehill.com) 169
The Senate today gave final approval to a bill aimed at cracking down on online sex trafficking, sending the measure to the White House where President Trump is expected to sign it into law. From a report: The legislation, called the Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (FOSTA), but also referred to as SESTA, would cut into the broad protections websites have from legal liability for content posted by their users. Those protections are codified in Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act from 1996, a law that many internet companies see as vital to protecting their platforms and that SESTA would amend to create an exception for sex trafficking.
Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), the most outspoken critic of SESTA and one of the authors of the 1996 law, said that making exceptions to Section 230 will lead to small internet companies having to face an onslaught of frivolous lawsuits. EFF expressed its disappointment, saying, "Today is a dark day for the Internet. Congress just passed the Internet censorship bill SESTA/FOSTA. SESTA/FOSTA will silence online speech by forcing Internet platforms to censor their users. As lobbyists and members of Congress applaud themselves for enacting a law ostensibly tackling the problem of trafficking, let's be clear: Congress just made trafficking victims less safe, not more. Sex trafficking experts have tried again and again to explain to Congress how SESTA/FOSTA will put trafficking victims in danger. Sex workers have spoken out too, explaining how online platforms have literally saved their lives. Why didn't Congress consult with the people their bill would most directly affect? [...] When platforms choose to err on the side of censorship, marginalized voices are censored disproportionately. SESTA/FOSTA will make the Internet a less inclusive place, something that hurts all of us. This might just be the beginning. Some of these groups behind SESTA / FOSTA seem to see the bill as a mere stepping stone to banning pornography from the Internet."
Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), the most outspoken critic of SESTA and one of the authors of the 1996 law, said that making exceptions to Section 230 will lead to small internet companies having to face an onslaught of frivolous lawsuits. EFF expressed its disappointment, saying, "Today is a dark day for the Internet. Congress just passed the Internet censorship bill SESTA/FOSTA. SESTA/FOSTA will silence online speech by forcing Internet platforms to censor their users. As lobbyists and members of Congress applaud themselves for enacting a law ostensibly tackling the problem of trafficking, let's be clear: Congress just made trafficking victims less safe, not more. Sex trafficking experts have tried again and again to explain to Congress how SESTA/FOSTA will put trafficking victims in danger. Sex workers have spoken out too, explaining how online platforms have literally saved their lives. Why didn't Congress consult with the people their bill would most directly affect? [...] When platforms choose to err on the side of censorship, marginalized voices are censored disproportionately. SESTA/FOSTA will make the Internet a less inclusive place, something that hurts all of us. This might just be the beginning. Some of these groups behind SESTA / FOSTA seem to see the bill as a mere stepping stone to banning pornography from the Internet."
Why didn't Congress consult with the people... (Score:2, Insightful)
Why didn't Congress consult with the people their bill would most directly affect?
Is that a rhetorical question? Government acts like passing a law automagically fixes everything, but ultimately most laws answer to the law of unintended consequences. As much as I think human trafficking is horrific, you can always expect the government to take exactly the wrong approach to fixing it.
Re:Why didn't Congress consult with the people... (Score:5, Insightful)
Because the people the bill would most directly affect are prostitutes, and no politician wants to be seen as acknowledging prostitutes have any rights at all. As far as politics goes, there are only two valid images of prostitutes: Sinful harlots who need to be locked up for the good of society, and innocent victims who need to be saved from their pimp... and then locked up if they don't reform.
Yes, this is a prostitution bill. Only title says (Score:2)
This is 100% a prostitution bill. There WAS a sex trafficking bill. Then there was an amendment which replaced the entire text of the bill, other than the title. Read the bill as enrolled - it's all about prostitution, nothing about trafficking.
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They call it sex trafficking here, rather than prostitution, because the public associates the word trafficking with human trafficking, because that's where it's most often used. In other words, they're ta
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Re: Why didn't Congress consult with the people... (Score:2)
Vote Kamala Harris for bigoted puritanical neo-fascism!
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People aren't paying attention so they pass this shit. Also unless you have the manpower and money to police it you can't start anything.
The big internet companies actually have the manpower and money to police it so they're not complaining because it kills the upstarts that would undermine their power.
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>Why didn't Congress consult with the people their bill would most directly affect?
Because that wasn't the objective.
Who cares what this bill does, it looks like I'm Doing Something About It to constituents and benefactors. People LOVE asking "so what is X doing about Y". So much it's disturbing.
Bartender! Zero-tols for everyone, on me! I stopped crime or something!
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Who cares what this bill does, it looks like I'm Doing Something About It to constituents and benefactors.
Modern politics in a nutshell.
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You can leave the word "modern" out of your sentence and be just as correct.
Re:Why didn't Congress consult with the people... (Score:4, Insightful)
In this specific instance, I also think that the driving forces behind this law actually wanted a censorship law (finally getting that pesky "free speech" problem under control...), but since that would never fly if done openly, they used one of the four horsemen of the infocalypse. Hence they did not consult with the people that actually understand what this law will do, because they are perfectly aware of these consequences and _want_ them.
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Yea, getting rid of these pesky advances in this "Internet" thing is probably next on their agenda. A nice stable stagnant society under their control is what these people crave. Free speech, innovation, etc. all tools of the devil.
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It is "terrorists, drug dealers, pedophiles, and organized crime": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
The drug part is a bit outdated currently with Cannabis, possession of which could get you behind bars for decades before, being legalized left and right and that illegality basically being outed as an extreme evil done by the lawmakers. (Why is it that lawmakers never pay for their crimes?) So it is understandable you forgot that one.
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Well you're doing a whole lot there yourself, Internet shitlord keyboard warrior.
Re: Why didn't Congress consult with the people... (Score:2)
Except this bill isnâ(TM)t so much to help fight against âoehuman traffickingâ as it is aiming to harm âoesex traffickingâ - i.e. prostitution.
"Trafficking" (Score:5, Insightful)
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Trafficking is a very real problem, despite some of the negative legislation that may result in the name of stopping it.
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and terrorism isn't real?
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It is a statistically low occurrance compared to the top hundred causes of death or injury in the United States.
Re:"Trafficking" (Score:5, Insightful)
Trafficking is a very real problem, despite some of the negative legislation that may result in the name of stopping it.
My problem with "trafficking" is that it is an umbrella term that people principally seem to find useful as a way to conflate various issues and advance agendas that they don't want to state outright. Consider that "trafficking" covers such diverse situations as:
The usefulness of ``trafficking'' is that it allows a person who is opposed to one of these forms of trafficking (typically prostitution or illegal immigration) to point to one of the forms that *everyone* can agree is wrong (typically underage children being forced into sex work) and use it as an excuse to crack down on the form of ``trafficking'' that is their real target.
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"trafficking" covers such diverse situations as: Teenage girls being coerced into sex work
Yes.
People who make it easier for Chinese women to come to the USA on tourist visas to give birth. The coyotes who guide people central America across the US border The gangs in Libya who either help Africans cross the sea to Europe, or rip them off as they attempt to get to Europe.
None of those are sex trafficking. None of those are included in this bill.
People being brought illegally from abroad as domestic workers (or brought legally but exploited).
Nor is that, unless they are then forced into sex.
and use it as an excuse to crack down on the form of ``trafficking'' that is their real target.
The only target of the bill is sex trafficking. They're doing a really bad job of targeting immigration issues, if that's what you want to claim they are actually after.
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"trafficking" covers such diverse situations as: Teenage girls being coerced into sex work
Yes.
Does it really? I don't think that transportation is necessarily involved in that.
None of those are sex trafficking.
He didn't day SEX trafficking, though. Just trafficking.
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Does it really? I don't think that transportation is necessarily involved in that.
Trafficking doesn't mean you have to transport, it means exchange. As in, pimping. You are moving product.
He didn't day SEX trafficking, though. Just trafficking.
He didn't, but the legislation being discussed does. He's also implying that this legislation is bad for using the word "trafficking" because "trafficking" gets expanded to mean so many things -- which this legislation explicitly excludes by limiting itself to sex trafficking.
My bad for assuming that his comment was somehow related to the legislation.
Re:"Trafficking" (Score:4, Insightful)
Gee, if only someone would define it clearly [unodc.org]...
The key element in human trafficking is that it involves coercion. No, visa facilitators don't necessarily fall into the "human trafficking" bucket, because they aren't forcing the Chinese women to come against their will. The gangs in Libya, if they don't rip off the immigrants but instead serve only as guides and charge only fees that are known up front, are also not human traffickers. The honest coyotes also aren't in the business of human trafficking, though they are typically breaking other laws.
The problem is that all of the situations you describe are very often involved in actual human trafficking, to the extent that it's very difficult to tell the difference. A very common tactic is that a migrant makes a deal with a guide (or facilitator) to smuggle (or otherwise move) them somewhere, but the smuggler instead takes them somewhere else (usually several hundred kilometers away), confiscates their passport and other documentation, and says that due to some unexpected bribes/fees/expenses/whatever, the migrant now owes more money, and has to work to pay off the debt. The migrant thinks they can't go to the police, because they'll get sent back with no documentation. They're usually threatened with violence if they even try to escape.
The other broad category you describe is prostitution, either underage or "simple" (whatever that means). Again, the act itself isn't the problem, but the circumstances around it. A prostitute who is not coerced in any way (including not being able to consent due to being underage) is not involved with human trafficking. Any exploitation, though, becomes a separate matter of human trafficking, completely independent of the (potentially legal) prostitution itself.
In short, It's fine for "sex" to be your product, or "relocation", or "assistance", but once your product is "unwilling people", that's human trafficking. Sure, it'd be great if we could limit discussion to only the bad folks in each of those roles you describe. While we're at it, let's make gun laws that only apply to bad folks, too. Conversely, let's only let good people have drivers' licenses, solving the problem of road rage completely!
Re:"Trafficking" (Score:5, Insightful)
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(1) If the content is outside the US, they can place liability on US ISPs that don't censor it.
If you actually read the bill [congress.gov] your outrage will likely lessen quite a bit. The bill has nothing to do with ISPs. It repeatedly talks about websites, and it also talks about deliberate intent to facilitate sex trafficking.
But what's wrong with approving the sex trade among consenting adults?
You're debating a different legal issue.
(3) How is prostitution different from many traditional marriages,
Sorry, now you're well out in left field.
It's cute, fun, and traditional when people spend a lot of money on a wedding and the state stamps its approval, but when it's done by the poor without the state's sanction, it's automatically a terrible thing.
Equating sex trafficking with marriage is about as silly as you can get.
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The question is, can intentionally setting up an unmoderated forum be seen as deliberately facilitating crimes that may be discussed there? Is there an obligation to attempt to moderate content?
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The question is, can intentionally setting up an unmoderated forum be seen as deliberately facilitating crimes that may be discussed there?
Read the bill. I would say "no". "intent to promote or facilitate the prostitution of another person".
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Equating sex trafficking with marriage is about as silly as you can get.
In the case of some arranged marriages, not so much.
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GP was not equating marriage with sex trafficking, but rather marriage with prostitution. It's better nowadays (at least in the US), but several decades ago marriage was the primary way women supported themselves, and there were no laws saying a husband couldn't rape his wife. Even today, there are people who marry old farts for their money, and many of them don't expect to have to do anything except put out. It's more voluntary, but it's still trading sex for money..
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Trafficking... ..is the new "terrorism" which replaced "think of the children"
Neither of those have been replaced. Both are in full swing.
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Banning pornography from the Internet?! (Score:3)
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What next, banning cat pictures?
Our feline overlords won't stand for it. They've reached the conclusion that they can't prevent Furries from mocking them in porn, and so demanded that human pornography be outlawed.
Yes, technically, the lizard people are in charge, but they aren't going to risk a vote of no confidence destroying their fragile governing coalition. They need the cat vote.
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They want to return pornography where they used to find it at their youth: gas stations, kiosks and VIP rooms of British genteleman's clubs.
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nice
moral majority (Score:5, Insightful)
This isn't about limiting "trafficking". This is limiting all sex for pay among consenting adults, which is made easier/safer via peer-to-peer platforms. Someone who advertises on Backpage doesn't need a middleman (aka a pimp).
i.e. it's a law not created to help victims, but rather by marching moral majority morons, to control what consenting adults are allowed to do in their own bedrooms. Same deal as with alcohol and marijuana prohibition laws.
Throw the book at pimps who force people into prostitution or use children. But consenting adults should be able to decide for themselves. Nevada, Amsterdam, and Berlin are good examples of how the business should be treated.
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"Throw the book at pimps who force people into prostitution or use children."
This is part of the problem. If a 'pimp' uses force or children they are not a 'pimp' they are a kidnapper.
It is NOT 'sex trafficking' that is a problem.
It is SLAVERY.
Use the correct terms SLAVERY and KIDNAPPING.
That is why we got this shitty law.
Almost everyone involved does not use the correct terms, so the clueless public and the clueless officials can't tell the difference between a 30 year old woman who wants to make some ext
Drugs have nothing to do with moral majority (Score:4, Insightful)
Right wing ideas don't really survive on their own. Supply side economics, Military Industrial complex, lax environmental regulations and worker protections. None of these are high enough in the polls to make it. But our two party system means if you combine a bit of voter suppression, gerrymandering and the impact of our Senate & Electoral College you can get unpopular policies through despite the polls.
This is why Congress has a 13% approval rating but incumbents. It's also why the Dems have won not just the popular vote for POTUS but even gotten more votes for the House and somehow managed to have fewer representatives. All these shenanigans add up to us barely being a democracy...
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And Tom Brady threw for over 100 more yards than Nick Foles but the Philadelphia Eagles ended up with Super Bowl rings last month because -- according to the rules of the game which BOTH TEAMS AGREED TO -- their team won. If you don't like the rules of the game, either don't play, or get them changed -- the process to do that is very clear. Until then, cry me a river.
That's a pretty horrible example (Score:2)
There's no point to playing a rigged game fairly. You'll always lose. If we call a constitutional convention the right wing will use it to strip the constitution of the few protections workers have.
Fairness is, if anything, a childish concept. We're adults. We're n
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By my reading a constitutional convention doesn't just amend the Constitution. It proposes amendments for the normal ratification process. If it had the ability to change the constitution, the convention would have been better specified.
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Nevada, Amsterdam, and Berlin are good examples of how the business should be treated.
There's more prostitution going on in the city of Las Vegas, where it is illegal, than there is in the rest of the state. If you include Reno, where it is also illegal, then the remainder gets lost in the statistical noise — WP claims that 66 times more money is spent on illegal prostitution in NV than the legal kind. So no. Nevada is a terrible example.
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It's like arguing about how the Amiga was a case of piracy killing a platform, despite the fact that developers/publishers specifically made it hard to purchase/use legitimate copies rather than illegal pirate copies.
Amiga was killed by management.
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Berlin for example has a huge child sex problem that is practically ignored.
... and a law that punishes US companies for what other people put on their US-based servers solves this how?
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That's not been the case in New Zealand since prostitution was legalized a few years ago.
https://www.fairobserver.com/r... [fairobserver.com]
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Study: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/p... [ssrn.com]
Article summarizing study: https://journalistsresource.or... [journalistsresource.org]
I now think decriminalizing prostitution for sex workers, while keeping it illegal for Johns, might be a better solution. I used to be hopeful that legalization would be the answer. Then I saw that study and I've seen nothing to really contradict it (except your example of New Zealand).
(To be fair, the legal, on
Why didn't Congress consult with the people...? (Score:2, Troll)
Because in the Republican-controlled Congress, ignorance is bliss. And they are very blissful.
Re:Why didn't Congress consult with the people...? (Score:5, Informative)
This one isn't due to partisan ignorance, just the general kind.
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This one isn't due to partisan ignorance, just the general kind.
Correct.
OP, on the other hand, is a shining example of the first kind.
wut (Score:2)
Some of these groups behind SESTA / FOSTA seem to see the bill as a mere stepping stone to banning pornography from the Internet.
Lol good luck there
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They will never be able to ban pornography from the internet, but they can certainly do a lot of harm in the attempt. How many services will be forced to close, how many people thrown in jail, as part of this futile effort?
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A lot of those jailed will be "sex trafficking victims". Because that is what the police does: They charge them with prostitution (and sometimes with "trafficking" themselves or each other) and lock them up. Shows nicely that the whole thing is a Big Lie and that this is not about actually helping anybody.
Back to old school (Score:2)
Alright folks, break out your terminal emulators - time to go back to NNTP/Usenet.
Just relocate! (Score:1)
Where's the law that says the Schelling point for sex services needs to have any physical presence in the United States? Websites like Craigslist and Backpage do not require outrageous amounts of computing power, network bandwidth, or programming skill.
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Amusing that the Schelling point in this case would also be the selling point.
Good luck with that. (Score:4, Insightful)
Some of these groups behind SESTA / FOSTA seem to see the bill as a mere stepping stone to banning pornography from the Internet."
Dr. Cox: [wikipedia.org] "I’m fairly sure if they took porn off the internet, there’d only be one website left, and it’d be called, 'Bring Back the Porn!'”
This is why it doesn't matter who you vote for (Score:5, Insightful)
From the article:
"The bill was approved overwhelmingly in a 97-2 vote."
If Hillary had won, she'd be signing something just as egregious into law.
While the two sides argue over frivolities, real freedoms are inexorably crushed by both "sides".
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There are more than two choices. The problem is that this kind of bill is wildly popular with voters, so nobody will vote for the kind of candidate who opposes it.
Or, I dunno (Score:2)
Oops, my bad. I forgot who was in control.
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Late 19th-century feminists had three goals: (a) get women the right to vote, (b) outlaw prostitution, and (c) outlaw liquor, and they achieved all three by 1920. Then women discovered that life is a lot less fun without alcohol, so they voted to legalize it again. But there is no way women will ever vote to legalize prostitution because keeping men in a state of sexual starvation is very important to them!
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Also explains the "war on porn" nicely.
Unfortunate Choice of Wording (Score:3)
"let's be clear: Congress just made trafficking victims less safe, not more"
This makes it look like congress made things less safe for those who traffic victims.
"victims of trafficking".. fixed that for you, EFF!
Don't care (Score:2)
If, for instance, Facebook doesn't know enough to need to ask its users if old men trolling for young boys is wrong, maybe a little cage rattling from the federal government really is called
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The Constitution is an abstract concept. Guns and taxes are only "stupid stuff" in the sense that anything that isn't an actual Platonic ideal is stupid stuff.
High taxes enable perversion of the intent of the Constitution. Nigh-indiscriminate gun-grabbing is both a perversion of the intent of the Constitution and enables more perversion. Military escapades abroad are a perversion, but guess how much worse it would be if all we did was debate that all while acquiescing to higher taxes and more government micromanagement.
I agree with everything you said, and did appreciate the irony in the last sentence, but I would like to add, to expand upon the section I highlighted: Nigh-indiscriminate gun-ownership is both a perversion of the intent of the Constitution and enables more perversion. In addition, from an outside perspective, background checks, licensing and registration, and so on, the seemingly sensible reforms to the current almost-free-for-all, don't add up to 'gun-grabbing' whichever way you slice it. I understand tha
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A misperception is that our gun ownership is nigh-indiscriminate. It is not. ALL commercial sales of both long guns and handguns require a criminal background check. That is a federal mandate. Many states have more stringent mandates. In my home state of Massachusetts, you are required to undergo a background check and waiting period in order to even be eligible to make a purchase. On paper the system is not bad, but the implementation is spotty. Sometimes it's
Short-sighted... (Score:5, Insightful)
But some lawmakers and anti-sex trafficking advocates think the law has gotten in the way of efforts to go after online trafficking suspects like Backpage.com.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), a co-author of SESTA with Portman and a former prosecutor, called Section 230 "outdated and obsolete" during Wednesday's press conference.
They were talking about this on NPR this afternoon - apparently, sex traffickers were posting classified ads on Backpage.com with keywords like "lolita" and "fresh" to indicate underage girls - and the Senator wants to be able to go after Backpage...
Wouldn't it have been much smarter to quietly make a deal with Backpage to forward this info to the FBI as soon as they get it?
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Wouldn't it have been much smarter to quietly make a deal with Backpage to forward this info to the FBI as soon as they get it?
Quiet deals don't let members of Congress make speeches about how they are defending poor innocent children.
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As if the undercovers couldn't adapt their tactics based on changing criminal behavior.
Wouldn't it have been much smarter to quietly make a deal with Backpage to forward this info to the FBI as soon as they get it?
First, you have the issue of a private company providing data to the feds without a warrant. That's the common /. meme when a company hands data to the government voluntarily.
Second, when the criminals determine that Backpage is sending every ad with the word "fresh" in it to the feds, they'll choose a different code word and you'll be back at the poor undercovers not being able to figure out that the code word has chan
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As if the undercovers couldn't adapt their tactics based on changing criminal behavior.
It's a lot tougher when the advertisements go underground to invite-only sites.
Wouldn't it have been much smarter to quietly make a deal with Backpage to forward this info to the FBI as soon as they get it?
First, you have the issue of a private company providing data to the feds without a warrant. That's the common /. meme when a company hands data to the government voluntarily.
There's nothing illegal about that, and it happens every day. Transmit some child porn through your Gmail account. You'll shortly receive a knock on your door from the feds. Google scans all attachments and compares their hashes to a set of hashes provided by the Center for Missing and Exploited Children, and forwards any matches to the FBI.
Second, when the criminals determine that Backpage is sending every ad with the word "fresh" in it to the feds, they'll choose a different code word and you'll be back at the poor undercovers not being able to figure out that the code word has changed.
Again, the issue is not which keyword they use, but whether it's a site that's easily acce
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It's a lot tougher when the advertisements go underground to invite-only sites.
And if the feds start prosecuting Backpage users, whether or not Backpage turns over all ads with the right "keywords", don't you think the traffic will move to that anyway?
There's nothing illegal about that,
I didn't say there was. I said it was a common /. meme -- awful company violates user privacy by handing data to feds without warrant.
Transmit some child porn through your Gmail account.
Like I said, awful company scans every piece of email you send and receive ...
Think of the difference between sharing files on, say, Usenet vs. sharing files on invite-only bulletin boards or torrent trackers.
I understand the difference. The point is that they will start doing that anyway when prosecutions start ramping up, if ever,
Re:Short-sighted... (Score:5, Informative)
They were talking about this on NPR this afternoon - apparently, sex traffickers were posting classified ads on Backpage.com with keywords like "lolita" and "fresh" to indicate underage girls
Which they are not in all these cases. Nobody would advertise something like that openly. It is purely the fantasy of the customer being addressed here. A "lolita" is a sex worker that looks young, but is anywhere from 18-30. There are basically almost no underage sex workers, and where there are, they are 17 or 16. There are, for example, also statements from brothel owners in Switzerland where prostitution used to be legal from 16 years on, that they actually did not want any this young because they cannot do the job well and mainly cause problems. And there were statements from the Swiss police that this was extremely rare and in the small handful of cases they merely informed the parents.
Incidentally, from countries were it is legal, we also know that there are almost no sex workers forced into the trade. For example, the Mafia stopped decades ago, because it does not work economically. A forced sex worker is a bad, non-motivated sex worker that brings in the lowest rates and comes with the problem that typically one of the first customers reports this to the police because men are not total scum. For example a famous case in Germany about 20 years back had 3 actual customers and the first one went to the police. These things are so rare that they make the national news, while there are an estimated 1 million (!) prostitutes in the US.
Ban pornography, nothing important would be lost. (Score:3)
I wish they would ban pornography from the internet. I wish they had banned it 20 years ago. We'd probably be coasting around in self-driving flying cars given the amount of (especially nerd) time we've lost to it.
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And what _exactly_ constitutes pornography?
Where do you draw the line between art and pornography?
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Where do you draw the line between art and pornography?
If a nerd spends less than 1% of his day looking at it, it's art. If he spends more than 10%, it's porn.
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ornography/pôrnärf/
noun
printed or visual material containing the explicit description or display of sexual organs or activity, intended to stimulate erotic rather than aesthetic or emotional feelings.
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We have the technology top ensure that everyone spends their time doing productive work. The only problem is defining "productive" . By what measure is traveling in a flying car more productive than watching a porn video? What is the end goal that we are trying to optimize by banning porn?
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Strip joints/booths are not porn. They are in-person entertainment, they happen in meat-space.
The other forms of porn were much slower speed and thus less damaging. Very much not the same.
yourbrainonporn.org
Our monkey brains are hardwired to seek sex. The hijacking of these circuits with porn is a significant problem as it causes shrinkage of the affected area due to the overstimulation.
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No we wouldn't. We'd be spending all of our time trying to circumvent anti-porn laws. Nerds are nerds for a reason. They will never get anything but porn whether it is legal or not.
We all know how the naming system works. (Score:2)
Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (FOSTA) OBVIOUSLY means the aim is to make it harder to fight online sex trafficking- That's how we do things around here-
The MPAA did it (Score:5, Insightful)
This isn't about sex trafficking. This is about US representatives paid off by the MPAA to remove CDA Sec 230 protections so that they can go after people who share content, require ISPs to censor or block postings, and enforce permanent takedown ("staydown") instead of merely providing a notice that ISPs may or may not send the end-users.
It's a dark day for the Internet. It's a dark day for freedom of expression. It's a dark day for open discourse and discussion. ...and it will make things worse for sex trafficking victims...
Everybody loses. Except congress reelection campaign donation funds.
Ehud
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This is about US representatives paid off by the MPAA to remove CDA Sec 230 protections so that they can go after people who share content, require ISPs to censor or block postings, and enforce permanent takedown
You haven't read the bill, have you? It's pretty specific in what it says about 230. It's also pretty specific in what it deals with. "Share content" isn't mentioned even once, not even sideways, unless by "content" you mean "sexual organs" and "share" you mean "sell or operate in the business of selling."
If your rant is because this law shows that laws can be changed and protections provided to ISPs could be removed, well, good morning. You've woken up to the fact that laws can be changed. This law isn't
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You haven't read that expression about "slippery slope", have you?
It doesn't specify any exact topic whatsoever, but it applies to everything where policy is influenced by money.
E
Re: (Score:2)
You haven't read that expression about "slippery slope", have you?
Of course I have. I also realize that laws have been changed before, so that slope is well above and behind us. This bill does nothing to change it.
It doesn't specify any exact topic whatsoever, but it applies to everything where policy is influenced by money.
Uh, yeah. Tell me who is buying this legislation again? It takes someone with deep pockets to buy legislation that allows easier prosecution of operators of websites that have an "intent to promote or facilitate the prostitution of another person"?
Re: (Score:2)
Dude, it's all over the subject line and the OP.
I know what the subject says. "Tell me again" means tell me again. And in colloquial use it means "are you serious?" Kinda like, tell me again because I must not have heard you right the first time, your statement was so silly.
I'm sure the MPAA is all about buying legislation that deals with sex trafficking websites. Really. They're losing so much money to unregulated sex trafficking websites that they have to get the practice stopped. For sure. Right.
It's obvious you don't think so,
And if you read the actual legislation, it doesn't do t
Backbone Servers (Score:1)
As a Canadian, just gotta say, we need to get those backbone servers the hell out of the USA. Start building out WAY more of our own.
All of this, ajit pai, this crap, it's part of a larger picture to do a sort of fascist takeover of the internet. It is becoming increasingly obvious.
We need to make sure as little as possible of our data flows across US backbone servers.
I am writing to my member of Parliament immediately.
FOSTA? (Score:3)
Why isn't it called ASVFOSTA?
And what's with "SESTA", where does that come from? Aren't acronyms supposed to be made of the first letter of each word of the thing?
If they're going to make their own rules about acronyms, then I'm going to make my own and call this bill "FIESTA" or "SIESTA".
What's the punishment? (Score:3)
Let's say I work for AT&T. Can I use this to publish ads for underage sex on a competitor/enemy's website. Fake ads, but I don't think anyone really cares. (On the darkweb you can buy weapon's grade plutonium. It's true because a reporter saw an ad) Since I control the network, I have godlike powers. I can be very very hard to track down.
Can I use this to cause my competitor/enemy to come under crushing legal scrutiny? Seized servers, fines, etc.
Scope (Score:2)
How does this apply to content hosted outside the USA? Are they simply pushing ISP jobs overseas, or are they going to Build A [Fire]Wall?
Just another reason to move your business offshore (Score:2)
Re:Moscow Donald's Urine Hooker Adventure (Score:4, Funny)
Did you read it? It's right there on page 97:
38.a.14.xiii
The Donald gets first dibs.
You are a little behind the times (Score:1)
How does this legislation impact a treasonous president who hires underage sex workers
It seems odd, but I keep having to remind people that Clinton is not president [dailymail.co.uk]...
Re: (Score:2)
He did bring someone into America with questionable legality for sexual reasons. https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Mela... [duckduckgo.com].