The new forums will be named Coin Return (based on the most recent vote)! You can check on the status and timeline of the transition to the new forums here.
The Guiding Principles and New Rules document is now in effect.
[FOSTA/SESTA]: Sex and Internet Censorship
Astaereth
In the belly of the beastRegistered User regular
In the belly of the beastRegistered User regular
From Engadget:
Many sites are moving to curtail anything remotely related to sex or sex work to try and avoid new liability the bill enables around a vague definition of sex-related activity. Experts argue that this is ultimately a bad way to fight sex trafficking and also bad for everybody else who gets caught in the crosshairs (I personally am particularly worried about the LGBT community, since they often get hit by this kind of thing).
Is this good or bad, is there something that should be done, is this a free speech issue? Should sites and internet companies be pressured to stand up for these communities? Is there something stupidly hypocritical about the government regulating and internet sites capitulating over this kind of speech while refusing to take a stand against the alt right and harassers?
Congress just legalized sex censorship: What to know
One week ago, the worst possible legislation curtailing free speech online passed and sex censorship bill FOSTA-SESTA is on its way to be signed into law by Trump.
Hours after the announcement, everything from the mere discussion of sex work to client screening and safe advertising networks began getting systematically erased from the open internet. Thousands — if not hundreds of thousands — of women, LGBTQ people, gay men, immigrants, and a significant number of people of color lost their income. Pushed out of safe online spaces and toward street corners. So were any and all victims of sex trafficking that law enforcement might've been able to find on the open internet.
It's unconstitutional, but the damage is already being done. Despite the fact that FOSTA-SESTA isn't even law yet -- it could take anywhere from 90 days to until 2019 to take effect -- online companies, always dangerously prudish with their algorithms, or hypocritical with their free speech rhetoric, appear to be in a rush to proverbially herd sex workers (and all us people who talk about sex for a living) out of the airlock into places where no one can hear us scream.
Many sites are moving to curtail anything remotely related to sex or sex work to try and avoid new liability the bill enables around a vague definition of sex-related activity. Experts argue that this is ultimately a bad way to fight sex trafficking and also bad for everybody else who gets caught in the crosshairs (I personally am particularly worried about the LGBT community, since they often get hit by this kind of thing).
Is this good or bad, is there something that should be done, is this a free speech issue? Should sites and internet companies be pressured to stand up for these communities? Is there something stupidly hypocritical about the government regulating and internet sites capitulating over this kind of speech while refusing to take a stand against the alt right and harassers?
+2
Posts
One, SESTA is an absolute trainwreck of a law. The design was basically driven by anti-sex evangelical groups masquerading as anti-trafficing activists, actual experts were pretty much sidelined, and the law is so vague that there is going to be years of court battles over this. People are going to be harmed by this - sex workers will be less able to keep themselves safe via the internet, and marginalized communities will be attacked.
Two, this trainwreck has been a long time coming, in large part to online free speech absolutists basically not grasping that, once again, if you let a principle become a cover for abuse and harm, people are going to start questioning its legitimacy. SESTA happened, in part, because of a perception that the law granted blanket indemnity to websites, so long as they could link bad conduct to end users, even if the website was clearly supporting said bad conduct - which in turn made pulling that protection back seem like the proper course of action.
Good grief
Aggravated if you prostitute 5 people.
Wouldn't it also kick legal brothels off the internet?
Having a hard time pinning down existing legality, so I just googled up the HBO-Famous one and it certainly exists, but I'm also not finding any of the Nevada-centric opposition that I would expect.
The thing is, a lot of experts on trafficking and sex work have said that the law being overly vague will prevent sex workers from using the internet to protect themselves, whether it's by screening clients or sharing info.
It has an exception for that, as an affirmative defense.
I kind of feel like you can't count on people to preserve their privileges through good behavior. Section 230 was always doomed
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
Or everyone else. I'm giving *at least* even odds someone tries to use this to shut down all encrypted chat services by arguing they facilitate prostitution.
Also there's this pants on head section (bold)
Seems p unconstitutional wrt to the new crimes they've created
Oops, I flicked right past that. I blame the odd choice to de-emphasise the section titles on the fancy text page.
(Though I appreciate the effort!)
The big problem is that it'll take years for this to reach them.
Also it would be a welcome bit of shadenfreude to see this struck down in federal court and watch SCOTUS just refuse to hear the appeal.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
I'm not saying that in a critical manner, I literally am having trouble parsing this bill and interpretation of the new law in regards to, well, a lot of things
Well, the easiest part of this to criticize is the text "The amendments apply regardless of whether alleged conduct occurs before, on, or after this bill's enactment." It's pretty clearly a violation of the Constitution's provision against ex post facto punishment, and there's no way that will stand up in court. Even our most conservative judges will balk at that.
The second problem is in Section 3. Emphasis mine.
This means that anybody who sets up a website or communication service for sex workers is committing an additional federal crime - regardless of whether the sex workers are victims of human trafficking or not, or whether the admins of the website are financially benefiting from the website or not.
Sex workers oppose this because websites like Backdoor and Seeking Arrangement are broadly considered to be safer ways of plying the trade than other methods.
The third problem is in Section 5. Links and emphasis mine.
The concern that ACLU, EFF, DOJ, and others have is that lower courts could interpret this broadly. Let's say I'm not merely an admin of a Backdoor-like website; I'm a hosting company or ISP. I could be held to be 'participating in a venture' if one of my customers is using my service to host a Backdoor-like website.
For context, earlier versions of the bill had an even broader version of the language there. This version of the bill includes what ACLU calls the Manager's Amendment. To quote ACLU regarding the slightly-less-bad version of the bill (that eventually passed):
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
A) Courts will swiftly and uncontroversially drop the hammer on the ex post facto provision, as soon as anybody who has standing challenges it.
C) I'm not totally sure about the anti-prostitute language. My suspicion is it will stand in one form or another. IANAL but I'm pretty sure there's nothing unconstitutional against passing a law that adds additional criminal charges to commercial ventures that intentionally facilitate illegal activities.
The big problem here is what happens in the meantime. I was a teenage Feralling when the CDA was passed and a lot of service providers flipped the fuck out because they felt like they had to actively police their own customers. Granted, the public Internet was also new and scary then; nobody had a very clear sense of the legal responsibilities of service providers to begin with. But if banning a few questionable customers saves ISPs or webhosts even the hint of a legal headache, they'll do it.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
An unconstitutional curtailing of free speech isn't exactly the best soapbox for lecturing those dedicated to protecting free speech.
The idea that if we'd just given in a little more before it wouldn't be so bad now is not in the least compelling to me. People who felt pulling that protection back was the proper course of action were never on the right side to begin with.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
If anyone uses PA forums PMs to set up a money for sex trade, PA can be held responsible as a party?
Is this correct?
They have to fix that line.
This means that google and apple and microsoft and sprint and verizon and at&t and hilton and marriott and...
They are all fucked.
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
This isn't like most free-speech issues where the crimes involved are generally victimless. The rights of people actively being sex-trafficked are as important if not more so than the rights of people whose speech would be limited, and if this does anything to make sex trafficking less common then that part of it will be a positive step for the freedom of all.
I'm not saying that the bill as it is isn't an overreach that may cause more harm than good. But taking a hard-line stand here for absolute freedom of speech will just serve to let more people be hurt.
Who's more flighty, Facebook and Amazon's shareholders or pro-sex trade voters?
Microsoft's already getting out ahead of this with their new ToS coming out in May. It's some legitimately worrying shit:
Not to put too fine a point on it, but that’s basically the reasoning for the Patriot Act.
97 to 2.
That's the reasoning for why the Patriot Act wouldn't be inherently wrong when divorced from its details and other relevant context. If a law is bad, it's because it hurts people more than it helps them. Freedom of speech is almost always a good thing, but there are other rights to consider too.
2421A says "with the intent to promote or facilitate the prostitution" so I don't think "everyone on the internet" needs to sweat that one.
If you don't vote for it, you're not tough on crime or you don't care about sex trafficking victims, etc etc.
Wyden is pretty well informed about internet stuff so I assume he voted no because of the concerns being raised in this thread about unintended repercussions.
This doesn't really seem relevant to the bill, nor am I super worried about stronger anti-harassment policies on Xbox Live.
Yeah, this is not a bill you can easily vote against and it's had basically zero real mindshare in the general public so it's not like there's a huge swell of popular support you can look to in order to stiffen their spines.
It's probably targeted towards people making abusive calls on the service, which is fair enough. The policy obviously isn't intended to be applied in the majority of the cases that it could theoretically be applied to.
Of course, it's probably a terrible idea to create formal policies that moderation staff are expected to completely ignore at their personal discretion.
Napster got “screwed” because they couldn’t show policy against copyright. (they were right to be screwed). This is in the same vein, “we have policy and are taking action so we are clearly not intending to have this kind of behavior in our platform”
I'm sorry, but free speech wasn't being protected by giving companies a blanket exemption from liability online. Batzel was a shitty, tech-ignorant ruling that set up an untenable position, and the whole mess with Backpage should have been a wakeup call about that.
Can there actually be a middle ground? I think it was already mentioned that if companies sense a sliver of a wisp of an impending lawsuit, they shut it down forever. I don't see a law that gives them a reasonable amount of liability working.
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
A large part of the issue is that companies are getting indemnified for their own actions if they can tie them back to an end user - this is what the problem with Batzel is, where a listserv operator was able to claim indemnity for what was basically a digital newsletter that they edited before distributing. If you took that and removed the digital aspect, nobody would have even tried to make the argument that he should have at the least had to face the charges in a court of law, because it's been long established that you are responsible for items that you print, even if they were written by someone else.