Forbidding the promotion of prostitution on the Internet…would be “to burn the house to roast the pig.” – Alex F. Levy
Unless you were overseas, deeply inebriated or in a coma for the past two days, I’m sure you’ve heard that the massive internet censorship bill known as FOSTA passed the US Senate Wednesday as unanimously as bad laws based on moral panic always do; all it lacks is Trump’s signature to become law, and unless he pulls one of his bizarre reversals that’s pretty much a given. The law is so blatantly unconstitutional (on several grounds, including flagrant violations of the first and tenth amendments, and article 1’s ban on ex post facto laws) that even the DoJ (which never saw an expansion of federal power it didn’t like) recognizes that, and it will indubitably be challenged as soon as it hits the ground; unless the judge who hears that challenge is some kind of incompetent lunatic he’ll issue an injunction against enforcing it until the case is settled, which could take years. But that doesn’t mean we can relax; the big businesses which control the internet are so risk-averse many of them are unlikely to wait for the outcome of that ruling, and will simply start pre-emptively censoring sex work content as Reddit already has:
Sometime around 2 a.m. [yesterday], Reddit banned several long-running sex worker forums from the platform. The move comes just hours after the Senate passed a bill making digital facilitation of prostitution a federal crime. Under the new law, social media sites and other hubs of user-generated content can be held criminally liable…Even if individuals aren’t targeted by law enforcement for placing ads, and even if individual cases brought by state prosecutors are struck down as unconstitutional, a lot of platforms will preemptively ban anything remotely related to sex work rather than risk it. So far, four subreddits related to sex have banned: Escorts, Male Escorts, Hookers, and SugarDaddy. None were what could accurately be described as advertising forums…The escort forums were largely used by sex workers to communicate with one another…
Craigslist followed last night, removing its US personals ad section and posting this apology:
US Congress just passed HR 1865, “FOSTA”, seeking to subject websites to criminal and civil liability when third parties (users) misuse online personals unlawfully. Any tool or service can be misused. We can’t take such risk without jeopardizing all our other services, so we are regretfully taking craigslist personals offline. Hopefully we can bring them back some day. To the millions of spouses, partners, and couples who met through craigslist, we wish you every happiness!
I and many others have explained why this law is so uniquely awful, but let’s just sum it up once more:
- It allows US government censorship of the entire internet, destroys social media in all but the most neutered form, and creates a de facto internet cartel controlled entirely by the wealthiest and most powerful media corporations;
- It criminalizes all sex work advertising and creates a new federal prostitution crime;
- It allows both ambitious DAs and greedy opportunists to attack any internet entity with either criminal charges or civil suits for activity that was perfectly legal when it occurred.
Even if you aren’t a sex worker or civil libertarian, you should be able to see the issues with this, and so should all of the politicians who voted for it, who are guilty of nothing short of criminal incompetence:
Notre Dame law instructor Alex F. Levy:
The law relies on the unsubstantiated idea that reducing prostitution will reduce trafficking. Indeed, the legislative report defends the regulation by proclaiming, without citation, that “[p]rostitution and sex trafficking are inextricably linked, and where prostitution is legalized or tolerated, there is a greater demand for human trafficking victims and nearly always an increase in the number of women and children trafficked into commercial sex slavery”…But the claim that legalizing (or decriminalizing) prostitution leads to sex trafficking is widely controverted by scholars…Congress does not even inquire into the basic reliability of the premise that undergirds this sweeping content-based speech restriction…it…restricts Constitutionally protected speech, yet fails under both strict and intermediate scrutiny standards. It is unconstitutional and should not be passed into law…
Tech law journalist Mike Masnick:
…Senator Richard Blumenthal — who has spent years attacking the internet, and who has already stated that if SESTA kills small internet businesses he would consider that a good thing…sent out a letter…[in which] almost everything stated…is 100% factually wrong…so wrong that it raises serious questions about whether Blumenthal understands some fairly fundamental issues in the bill he’s backing. Professor Eric Goldman has a pretty concise explanation of everything that’s wrong with the statement, noting that it…shows that SESTA’s main sponsors don’t even understand the very basic aspects of CDA 230…you have to start wondering what the hell is happening in the Senate, and in particular in Senator Blumenthal’s office. He is not just doing a big thing badly — he is gleefully spouting the exact opposite of basic facts about both the existing law, and the bill he sponsored. I know that politicians aren’t exactly known for their honesty, but he seems to be taking this to new levels…
Even economist Scott Cunningham, whom I’ve castigated more than once for not grasping basic facts about the demimonde, sure understands this one:
…This bill claims to be all about sex trafficking, but it seems to have a deep ignorance about how these markets work and a deep ignorance about the benefits of these technologies. The people who support it don’t know about the client screening, they don’t know about the movement indoors and they don’t know that women are using these online platforms in order to avoid danger. They don’t know or they don’t care…
Though Cunningham is perhaps being cautious and/or polite in his last statement, I think it’s pretty obvious that the latter clause is far more likely than the former. Don’t you?
It’s total crap, and other than maybe a stubborn prosecutor or two with a hair up their ass- I doubt all that much will be done, or as you said, it will get thrown out as unconstitutional in the end. It’s more of a “look like we’re doing something about this,” type of law. However, my fear was more on the websites end, with them using self-protective measures. I was informed about Craigslist earlier tonight. It’s shitty, that’s where I started, in the “casual encounters” section, the adult section was already gone by then. My IP got blocked there due to flagging on various accounts 2 Novembers or Decembers ago, up to the point I couldn’t even use my phone to post on Wifi with the data turned off! At least by then I had diversified a bit. Once I’d gotten a new phone, I decided not to go back, due to the high bullshit to dates ratio. I’d gotten accustomed to less crap and didn’t look forward to overwhelming replies with low success. But I’d still occasionally scour men’s ads during slow times (and often recognized repeat and chronic posters by title, far as who were not worth replying to for one reason or another.) I’m hoping that my current main sources of new business stay available. Actually, a few months ago, I noticed that one of my screening sources was not taking new information, then saw that everything had been cleared out, even phone numbers I had added to or avoided due to comments on there. I didn’t understand why. I guess that this is probably why! Perhaps that is also the reason I have run across numbers on other sites marked as “unsafe” at a high rating, but without any details – so the warning isn’t taken down! So the safety and timewasting screening issue is definitely something that worries me quite a bit.
Or: they know and they care, and they mean to discourage vice by making it more dangerous, a strategy openly acknowledged when drug warriors do it.
When I first heard of this monstrosity, I thought maybe I misunderstood something since on its face it sounds so outrageous and clearly unconstitutional that no one in their right mind would back it. Well, so much for that theory. I guess it’s impossible to overestimate the stupidity and willingness to further oppress the populous when it comes to our Congress, and government in general.
Seeing that Blumenthal is pushing this comes as less of a surprise, but the real blame for him rests with the voters in Connecticut who elected this fraud. How stupid and gullible can someone be who would vote for someone who flagrantly fabricated his own past and record? And now the rest of us have to suffer from the likes of him.
Even more shocking is the cowardice of Craigslist and other sites to kowtow to this sort of nonsense, even before it’s law, no less. If I was in charge of a site like that (I’m not), I’d happily look for a chance to take this kind of crap into court and trash this piece of garbage and get a ruling on its unconstitutionality. Instead, they just roll over and play dead, and then add tripe to their announcement that further insults their users’ intelligence and good will. Who needs oppressive laws when those that should be on the front lines just roll over and play dead? So much for the exercise of free speech, even when one controls the printers ink (or, in the more contemporary sense, electrons). “Coward” is too kind a word to use for them. “Traitor” and “stooge” are closer to the truth.
Ultimately I think that it is going to take judicial decisions to finally decriminalize sex work in this country, just as it took USSC decisions to rid us of laws aimed at criminalizing homosexuality and banning same-sex marriage. Challenging laws like FOSTA can only be a step in that direction and toward the bigger goal. Now I wonder who is going to step up and take on that task.
Reblogged this on Nəgəstä Nəgəst – In Her Own Right.
“Even more shocking is the cowardice of Craigslist and other sites”
What’s shocking about it? To put it another way: what obliges Craigslist to be brave? It ain’t Batman, it doesn’t have a duty to the public. It’s only public duty is to obey the law. If Craigslist was some sort of nonprofit constituted to provide a public space then maybe.
It’s interesting to see, for all the words about corporate control and influence of the government, how simple and easy it is for the government to swat down corporations when it feels so inclined.
@Paul Murray: You’re responding to my posting, so I’ll respond.
What’s shocking about Craigslist’s behavior? It ostensibly exists to serve the public, it takes revenues from the public, and it even glibly mentions the millions of its users who benefited from its personal section in its swan-song message closing down the section. Does it have a legal obligation to take a stand on issues like FOSTA? No. Does it even have a moral obligation? Probably not. But one would hope that it might have an interest in not being told by the government what it can or can’t publish, who it can serve, or what services it provides and needs it meets.
“It’s (sic) only public duty is to obey the law.”
FOSTA isn’t even a law, not yet, it’s not, so that doesn’t apply in this case. Maybe it never will become law. And as a public accommodation, I would argue that CL does have other obligations, an obligation to its users being one, and not just an obligation to obey the law.
Regardless, does CL and other public accommodations and publishers have to accept every detail of every law, no matter how loony, repressive, or unconstitutional? No, they can challenge them — that’s what courts are for. They can show some backbone. They can act both in their own self-interest and in the interests of their users. And some do. But CL apparently is not among them. Instead, CL has chosen to abandon those interests and to simply shut up and go away, even before any law comes into effect. And I call that cowardice.
By the way, did you see the guy who was basically praising this law all over Twitter in the days leading up to the vote? This highly misinformed asshat was spouting that the most “overpriced” among us would be most affected, and the “normal” priced girls would be fine. He also said that any girl charging over $500 for a date should be subject to felony charges! Women who charge higher rates can afford actions like moving their websites to overseas hosts, SEO to still be found easily, use paid advertising sites that can afford to do the same. Caty Simon has it right- the most vulnerable to this are those who have barely moved indoors, posting on free, high traffic sites such as Craigslist, and having to worry about things such as making their daily payment on their hotel room as not to be homeless! Oh, the same dipshit on Twitter had previously been bitching about some girls referring to clients as “slobbyists,” but men who don’t behave badly probably don’t have to worry about being referred to that way by most escorts!
The previous commenter saying that Craigslist is being cowardly is absolutely correct.
I predict that if this law stands, the main result will be to move these ads to completely anonymous (and potentially offshore) forums such as 8chan. Then the police will be even more frustrated than they are now, because their efforts against even legitimate crimes will get nowhere.
In effect they are killing the reputation mechanism, which both good and bad guys rely on to predict others’ behavior. Let’s see who has more to lose as a result. I think it’s the government busybodies.
FOSTA/SESTA is even having a negative effect on those of us who write erotic fiction: Amazon has stripped rankings off of listing from books in erotica and similar genres, which means less visibility and less sales The Erotic Authors Guild is already responding. Gad, how I hate Puritan asshats!
The law is wrong on so many levels. Also, in the grand scheme of things it may not be a lot, but up here in Canada Craigslist is charging $5 per ad now.
Its cold comfort, but at least 2 Senators remembered their oaths to the US Constitution: Rand Paul (R-KY) and Ron Wyden (D-OR). They are the only Nays on both the Cloture and Passage votes. As I try to tell anyone who will listen, if they think the government cares about them or their livelihood is basically living with a serial abuser and suffers from Stockholm Syndrome.