Politicians Who Said SESTA Was Needed To Takedown Backpage Claim Victory Over Backpage Takedown... Without SESTA

from the say-what-now? dept

From the very beginning of SESTA and FOSTA, its backers kept insisting that the bill was necessary to takedown Backpage.com. Indeed, Senator Rob Portman, in announcing SESTA, entitled his press release "Senators Introduce Bipartisan Legislation to Hold Backpage Accountable." And he's spent the past six months pointing to Backpage as the reason we absolutely needed SESTA. At launch, his quote was the following:

For too long, courts around the country have ruled that Backpage can continue to facilitate illegal sex trafficking online with no repercussions. The Communications Decency Act is a well-intentioned law, but it was never intended to help protect sex traffickers who prey on the most innocent and vulnerable among us.

Except, as we pointed out multiple times, that's not at all what courts have said. What they've said is that CDA 230 immunizes the site from certain types of liability. But as two recent courts -- not to mention the DOJ shutting down Backpage on Friday -- have made clear, nothing in CDA 230 immunizes Backpage from illegal activity that it directly engaged in.

So you'd think that maybe, just maybe, Senator Portman would recognize that SESTA was a giant unnecessary boondoggle that puts a ton of people and speech at risk. But, nope. Instead, he's released a statement praising the action and pretending that SESTA will "hold online sex traffickers accountable."

“I’m pleased that Congress has taken additional steps by passing my SESTA legislation to let sex trafficking victims seek justice and allow state and local law enforcement to swiftly prosecute websites that violate federal sex trafficking laws. This bipartisan measure will make it easier to hold online sex traffickers accountable, and I look forward to seeing President Trump sign this bill into law next week.”

Except not a single thing in SESTA holds online sex traffickers accountable. Indeed, it does the exact opposite of that, in that it makes it that much more difficult for law enforcement to track down actual sex traffickers. Prior to SESTA, websites (including Backpage) frequently worked with law enforcement to help them track down those using their platforms for illegal activity. Under SESTA, no site will be willing to assist law enforcement in such a manner, because doing so will provide evidence of "knowledge" and thus, potentially, criminal liability. This sweeps the problem of sex trafficking under the rug, which might make Senator Portman feel better, but does nothing to tackle the actual problem, and makes it that much more difficult to find and prosecute actual traffickers, let alone find and rescue victims held against their will.

Still, at least Senator Portman acknowledges that SESTA/FOSTA has not been signed into law yet. That basic fact apparently escaped Representative Mimi Walters, who provided the amendment that attached SESTA to FOSTA in the House. She actually took to Twitter to claim that Backpage was shut down because of her amendment:

That's pretty incredible, considering her bill hasn't been signed into law yet. You would think that a Representative would know that her own bill wasn't a law yet, wouldn't you? Or does Congress not work that way? Anyway, SESTA/FOSTA is not the law yet, and it clearly wasn't used to take down Backpage. And, of course, what was Rep. Walters' reason for pushing SESTA in the first place? The need to take down Backpage. So, not only is she not admitting that her law (which she said was necessary) was not, in fact, necessary, she's now living in a fantasy world where her law must have helped, despite it not yet being a law.

Can we elect better people to Congress please?

Then we have Senator John McCain. His wife has been at the forefront of the anti-Backpage campaign for many years. Indeed, many people I spoke to on Capitol Hill said that it was John and Cindy McCain's support for SESTA that made the bill viable in the first place. So it's no surprise that Cindy McCain was quick to tell the media how good the seizure is, calling it a "good day." And then the Senator put out the following statement celebrating the takedown, but oddly insisting it proves why SESTA was needed.

The seizure of the malicious sex marketplace Backpage.com marks an important step forward in the fight against human trafficking. This builds on the historic effort in Congress to reform the law that for too long has protected websites like Backpage from being held liable for enabling the sale of young women and children. Today’s action sends a strong message to Backpage and any other company facilitating online sex trafficking that they will be held accountable for these horrific crimes.

But, considering that Backpage was taken down prior to SESTA becoming law, how can McCain honestly claim that the law protected Backpage from being held liable? It did not. It only protected them from liability for actions of third parties. It has never protected the site from liability for its own actions. And the takedown on Friday proved that. So it's quite bizarre for McCain to pretend otherwise.

Either way, all of this is yet more evidence that SESTA was never truly about going after Backpage. That was all just a convenient excuse to gut Section 230 of the CDA and pave the way for changing some of the fundamental open parts of the internet, closing them off and putting up more and more gatekeepers. That those who supported SESTA and insisted it was necessary to take down Backpage are now pretending otherwise just underlines that fact.

Filed Under: cda 230, cindy mccain, doj, fosta, intermediary liability, john mccain, mimi walters, rob portman, sesta
Companies: backpage

SESTA's Sponsors Falsely Claim That Fixing SESTA's Worst Problem Harms Hollywood

from the say-what-now? dept

Earlier today, in discussing a long list of possible fixes for SESTA, we noted that the only one that even has a remote chance (i.e., the only fix that actually has the potential of being considered by the Senate) is Senator Wyden's amendment, which is designed to solve the "moderator's dilemma" issue by clarifying that merely using a filter or doing any sort of moderation for the sake of blocking some content does not automatically append liability to the service provider for content not removed. Senator Portman -- the sponsor of the bill -- has insisted (despite the lack of such language in the bill) that this is how SESTA should be interpreted. Specifically, Portman stated that SESTA:

...does not amend, and thus preserves, the Communications Decency Act’s Good Samaritan provision. This provision protects good actors who proactively block and screen for offensive material and thus shields them from any frivolous lawsuits.

Except, that's not what the bill actually says. Which is why the language in the Wyden amendment is so important. It basically adds into the law what Portman pretends is already there.

Thus, you would think that Portman and the other Senators backing SESTA should also support the Wyden amendment. They do not. 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 -- is opposed to the amendment, and sent out a letter supposedly co-signed by other SESTA supporters:

Senators Blumenthal, McCaskill and the other bipartisan sponsors of SESTA oppose the Wyden amendments. These amendments threaten to derail the bill and they would make it even more difficult than current law to hold websites that sexually traffic minors like Backpage.com accountable….The safe harbor amendment would provide websites like Backpage.com with even stronger legal protections than they enjoy today. It also has the potential to disrupt other areas of the law, such as copyright protections. This “bad Samaritan” amendment is not a clarification or a protection for good actors–it is an additional tool to protect traffickers and illegal conduct online.

Here's the problem with that. Almost everything stated above is 100% factually wrong. And not just a little bit wrong. It's 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 -- somewhat incredibly -- shows that SESTA's main sponsors don't even understand the very basic aspects of CDA 230, as they insist on changing the law.

There are at least three obvious problems with this email. First, the amendment would indeed protect good actors because it would eliminate the Moderator’s Dilemma. The authors of this email still don’t understand, or have decided to ignore, the Moderator’s Dilemma. Second, the proposed amendment would not help Backpage–at all. The Senate Investigative Committee report highlighted voluminous facts about Backpage’s knowledge, so I can’t see how Backpage’s purported filtering would come up in any SESTA/FOSTA enforcement.

Third, the email indicates that the amendment “has the potential to disrupt other areas of the law, such as copyright protections.” This is where the screen freezes, the record scratches, and the narrator says in a deadpan, “No, it wouldn’t.” Section 230(e)(2) expressly carves out “intellectual property” claims–including copyright–from Section 230’s coverage. Anyone with even a basic understanding of Section 230 knows this. Yet, the sponsors, on the eve of a decisive vote with monumental stakes for Section 230, appear to be demonstrating a fundamental misunderstanding of what Section 230 says and does. That is very, very confidence-rattling.

Worse, the email has it precisely backwards. The amendment would HELP, not DISRUPT, copyright protection efforts. If services stuck in the Moderator’s Dilemma decide to turn off proactive moderation efforts, that will include turning off copyright filtering. In other words, SESTA/FOSTA may have the unwanted consequence of encouraging Internet services to do LESS copyright filtering. (This is just one of many examples of my claim that SESTA/FOSTA may counterproductively increase anti-social content). The amendment would fix that by not holding their copyright filtering efforts against Internet services for sex trafficking or prostitution promotion purposes, i.e., by filtering for copyright, the Internet services won’t fear that a court will ask why their filters missed promotions for sex trafficking or prostitution. So if Congress wants to avoid “disrupting” efforts to combat online copyright infringement, the amendment is essential.

This isn't a matter of differing opinions. This is the main backers of a bill to drastically change CDA 230 insisting that (1) their bill does something it does not and (2) a fix to their bill that would bring it into line with what they claim their bill does... actually does a bunch of things it absolutely does not.

At this point, 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 -- and causing massive harm in the process.

Filed Under: cda 230, claire mccaskill, copyright, fosta, intermediary liability, moderator's dilemma, richard blumenthal, rob portman, ron wyden, sesta

Can SESTA Be Fixed?

from the will-it-be-fixed? dept

It appears that sometime this week (or even possibly today), the Senate is unfortunately likely to vote (perhaps by an overwhelming margin) for SESTA, despite the fact that it's a terribly drafted bill which no one can explain how it will actually stop sex trafficking. Indeed, it's a bill that many victims advocates are warning will not just make problems worse, but will put lives in danger. And that's leaving aside all of the damage it will do to free speech and tons of websites on the internet.

Much of this could have been avoided if anyone in Congress were actually interested in understanding how the internet worked, and how to write a bill that actually addressed problems around sex trafficking -- rather than buying into a false narrative (pushed mainly by Hollywood) that the liability protections of CDA 230 were magically responsible for sex traffickers using the internet. Two academics who are probably the most knowledgeable experts on intermediary liability, Daphne Keller at Stanford and Eric Goldman at Santa Clara University, have each posted thoughts on how to "salvage" SESTA. If Congress were serious, it would listen to them. But that's a big "if."

Let's start with Keller's suggestions that she helpfully put into a Twitter thread:

First up, she takes on the problematic "knowledge" standard used in SESTA/FOSTA. Again, a key part of the bill is that internet sites can become liable if they have "knowledge" of sex trafficking activity that is done on the platform. But what the hell is meant by "knowledge"? In other parts of the law, even when it's more spelled out, there are examples of legal cases lasting years while everyone wrangles over what "knowledge" means. In the copyright context, Viacom sued YouTube and were in court for more than half a decade, with much of that being over the simple question of whether knowledge meant "specific" knowledge or "general" knowledge. SESTA could solve many of its problems if it made its knowledge standard clear -- and, as Keller notes, one that wouldn't require "teams of lawyers."

Indeed, this is perhaps the largest problem with SESTA (and may also doom the bill in court). Prosecutors and the DOJ have already raised concerns about the standards in the bill, and even the politicians supporting it toss out very, very different definitions. Senator Rob Portman has claimed it requires "intent." Meanwhile, Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers claims that the standard is "knowingly turning a blind eye." That's... extremely different. Senator Cory Booker claims its "a high standard" that requires "proving beyond a reasonable doubt." All of those mean very different things, and when you have the politicians backing the bill all spouting nonsense, and the law itself doesn't clarify, you're making a huge mess.

Keller's second suggestion is to add in real and meaningful penalties for bad faith accusers as well as an appeals process for the accused. This is also a big deal. Again, looking at the DMCA, we've talked about how the one part of that law dealing with bad faith accusations is basically toothless and almost never useful. And thus, the DMCA is abused all the time. We have all those lessons to learn from -- and it appears that Congress is ignoring them.

Up next would be a clear statement that the law does not require monitoring all speech. Such a mandatory monitoring system would have tremendous First Amendment issues -- but unfortunately it seems likely that some may read the bill to require mandatory filtering (oddly, others will read it as saying you shouldn't use filters at all to avoid knowledge -- and that dichotomy of results should just emphasize how poorly the bill was drafted).

Fourth, Keller suggests making it clear that merely monitoring should not be deemed as knowledge (this could be seen as related to clarifying the knowledge standard as well). On that front, there may be an amendment on the table that could help (see below...).

Fifth: the bills should make it clear that it applies to service providers that are end user facing, rather than further up the stack. Again, here's a lesson that we've learned from takedowns in the copyright space. As Hollywood got more and more upset about various things online it continued to move up the stack beyond services to hosting companies, data centers, registrars and even ICANN itself. We shouldn't allow SESTA to allow for the same nonsense.

Finally, Keller suggests that if we must go through with such a bad bill, there should be some requirements on transparency about the impacts for both tech platforms and government agencies, so that we can look back on the bill and determine what it did -- both good and bad.

Will Congress take any of these steps? It doesn't look like it.

As for Goldman, his post focuses on an amendment that Senator Wyden is offering. Last I heard, it appears that the Senate may actually consider this amendment. And it's an amendment similar to one that Goldman himself suggested -- with a very modest addition to SESTA clarifying the whole question of does "monitoring" equal "knowledge." Specifically the amendment would add the following language:

The fact that a provider or user of an interactive computer service has undertaken any efforts (including monitoring and filtering) to identify, restrict access to, or remove material the provider or user considers objectionable shall not be considered in determining the criminal or civil liability of the provider or user for any material that the provider or user has not removed or restricted access to.

As Goldman notes, this one amendment would fix the worst problems of SESTA (while still leaving in place plenty of others). If you at least support making SESTA less horrible, he suggests calling your Senators and letting them know:

If you think this is a meritorious fix to a bad bill, then *immediately* call your Senators (you have 2, remember!) and tell them:

1) You oppose SESTA/FOSTA because it’s not clear the law actually helps sex trafficking victims; and

2) You want your Senator to support Sen. Wyden’s proposed content moderation amendment because it ensures online services will keep being the first line of defense in the fight against sex trafficking.

Note 1: This issue could be moot as early as Monday afternoon, so literally CALL NOW.

Note 2: CALL, not email. The EFF has made it easy for you to do.

It seems quite likely the bill is going to pass very soon and then get signed into law. The fact that there are simple and reasonable ways to improve on the bill, which Congress is blatantly ignoring, is problematic.

Filed Under: cda 230, daphne keller, eric goldman, fosta, intermediary liability, knowledge, knowledge standard, moderator's dilemma, rob portman, ron wyden, sesta

Senator Portman Promises To Pass Bills To Harm Tech Companies If They Won't Support SESTA

from the this-is-how-you-legislate? dept

Senator Rob Portman, one of the authors of a terrible piece of legislation in SESTA, has gone on the offensive in trying to get the bill passed. He gave a rousing speech on the Senate floor, in which he (1) misrepresented his own bill, (2) misrepresented CDA 230, and (3) threatened to pass even worse legislation if more tech companies don't support SESTA.

I may not be an expert on how to legislate... but this does not seem like a good way to legislate.

Let's start with the most incredible part: the threat to pass even worse legislation if the tech industry can't support SESTA more broadly (and, remember, many of the biggest tech companies already support the bill). And, really, the main thing blocking the bill at this point is the fact that the House decided to go in a different direction with the bill, recognizing the myriad problems with SESTA. But, to Portman, it's all tech's fault, and thus this bizarre nonsensical threat:

If you don’t start cracking down on this obvious crime against humanity, which is what I believe trafficking is, I think you’re going to see much, much broader legislation to deal with the internet.

But, of course, all of the big tech companies ALREADY do "crackdown" on sex trafficking, whenever they're aware of it happening via their platforms. Notice that Portman doesn't actually name any of the tech firms as facilitating this -- he just insists they do. The only company he names, naturally, is Backpage. But he fails to mention that Backpage shut down its adult ads section due to lots of political pressure, and that the company is not immune from lawsuits for content it actually creates, and that the company is not immune from the DOJ filing a federal lawsuit, and that there's a still ongoing grand jury investigation into Backpage. In short -- existing law seems to be working just fine.

So why is Portman saying tech companies need to crack down on sex trafficking or he'll help pass an even worse law? It makes no sense, and is no way to competently legislate. It's a way to vindictively legislate in a manner that will have disastrous consequences for the internet, innovation and for free speech -- including the free speech of those who are actually working to stop sex trafficking, or who are victims who need help. SESTA makes the problem worse. Blaming intermediaries doesn't help anyone stop sex trafficking. It doesn't provide any new tools for law enforcement to go after sex traffickers. It does create incentives for tech platforms to not look to clean up their sites -- the exact opposite of what Portman is talking about above -- because it includes a "knowledge" standard. And what's the best way to avoid having knowledge? By NOT LOOKING.

It's a bad bill that will make the problem of sex trafficking worse, not better.

The rest of Portman's talk is filled with other misleading or simply wrong statements.

Here’s the tragic part of this. Not only are more and more lives being ruined, more and more heartbreaking stories, but it’s because of a federal law that provides immunity to these websites. So it comes right back here, right to these desks, right to this Congress, right to us as legislators to fix this problem—not try to smooth it over, but to actually fix the problem, which is that some of these online trafficking sites are immune from prosecution because of a federal law. It was a well-intended law. It was written 21 years ago—the Communications Decency Act.

No. It's because horrible human beings are engaged in sex trafficking, and the focus should be on tracking them down and arresting them. SESTA doesn't help with that, and in fact makes it more difficult. Also, more importantly, the immunity provided to websites by CDA 230 is limited. It doesn't apply to federal crimes (remember that federal grand jury mentioned above?). It doesn't apply to content created by the website. It doesn't apply to the people actually creating the content (i.e., the sex traffickers themselves). Why doesn't Portman admit to any of this? Because it destroys the rationale for the bill.

Ironically it was put in place, in part, to make it a crime to send pornography to kids online, but it’s been twisted and used by these trafficking sites to provide them the ability to say ‘you can’t touch us. You can’t go after us.’

Uh, Senator Portman is leaving out a key piece of all this: which is that while it's true that the CDA was put in place to make it a crime to send pornography online, that whole part of the law was thrown out as unconstitutional and a First Amendment violation. It's not that the law was "twisted." It's just that the part he's talking about was BLATANTLY A VIOLATION OF THE CONSTITUTION that Senator Portman has sworn to uphold. The part that remained of the CDA -- Section 230 -- is the part that actually encourages sites to filter, moderate or remove content by limiting liability.

SESTA changes that equation and actually removes much of the incentive to moderate the content. It creates incentives for the companies not to even look.

Part of what the law says in trying to promote the internet is that if you post somebody else’s material on your site, you’re not liable.

This wasn't to "promote the internet," it was to correctly apply basic principles of liability. You don't blame the tool. You blame the user. If a platform hosts content, you blame who created the content. Also, Portman is misprepresenting CDA 230 in the sentence above. While it's true that it does protect platforms that "post somebody's else's material," that's not the key part of it. That implies that CDA 230 is designed to protect the deliberate action of "posting somebody else's material." But the law is even more about content posted by users. In most cases, it is not the site "posting somebody else's material," it's users posting their own material. And NOTHING in the law says that those users can't be prosecuted if the material violates the law. It just says you don't blame the tool, who is the service provider hosting the material.

All we’re saying is if you know that this involves trafficking, and Senator Blumenthal talked about his experience as a prosecutor, I mean this is a high bar—the knowing standard, then you can’t get away with this.

Except the standard, as written, is not actually that high. It was improved from its even worse initial draft, but is still quite broad, and would leave tons of sites completely at risk of frivolous lawsuits.

By the way, the other side of the argument is by the tech community, some of whom support this legislation, some of whom do not. But for the people in technology who are concerned about this, I just have to tell you, I don’t get it. This is very narrowly crafted to this issue. We’re not trying to affect the freedom of the internet, just the opposite.

IT IS NOT NARROWLY CRAFTED. That's what people keep trying to explain to Portman. He can repeat "it's narrowly crafted" over and over again, and people who actually have experience with attacks on internet platforms know that, as written, it will lead to a lot of frivolous litigation and fishing expeditions -- and widespread censorship to avoid liability, along with LESS activity by platforms to moderate the content. THAT is the concern. No one who is fighting SESTA is arguing that we shouldn't go after those responsible for sex trafficking. We're explaining how this bill DOES NOT DO THAT and not only will very likely MAKE THE PROBLEM WORSE, but it will also have massive collateral damage -- including damage that will make it harder to stop sex trafficking.

And for those in the tech community who continue to oppose this legislation, I ask you to look into your hearts and think about the impact this is having on families all across the country.

Yes. That's why Portman can't name a SINGLE site other than Backpage that he claims is responsible here (and he never mentions that Backpage stopped adult ads). Because these sites do care about this issue and they don't allow or encourage sex trafficking on their platforms. So why is he asking them to "do more" when the only things in his bill will encourage these sites to "do less"? And why is he threatening to pass even worse legislation?

Is this really how Senator Portman legislates? By misrepresenting facts? By misrepresenting existing law? By misrepresenting his own bill? By misrepresenting what companies currently do? And then by threatening to pass even worse legislation if companies don't do the thing they've always done already?

Filed Under: cda 230, intermediary liability, rob portman, sesta, sex trafficking

Dear Senators Portman & Blumenthal: What Should Blogs Do If SESTA Passes?

from the how-do-we-stay-on-the-right-side-of-the-law dept

So we've spent some time talking about why SESTA is such a bad bill even in its updated form (which fixes just a tiny sliver of the overall problems). And we may have some more soon about other problems with the language in the bill, but for now I want to make this even more real and ask Congress -- and SESTA authors Senators Rob Portman and Richard Blumenthal, specifically, what they think bloggers, independent journalists, citizen journalists and anyone who hosts comments on their site should do if SESTA passes. Because all these sites are platforms protected by Section 230 of the CEA and, as SESTA is written, parts of it are so unclear that it could introduce significant legal liability, or at least uncertainty over whether or not they're liable for the comments readers post on their sites and articles.

One thing we've heard over and over again from SESTA supporters is that the bill won't have any impact on most sites because (they claim) "no one accidentally facilitates sex trafficking." We wonder how they can be so certain. Ignoring, for the moment, that all sorts of important speech can be branded as speech related to trafficking, even for speech we all agree is problematic, it is not clear what the Congressional authors of the bill, and SESTA's staunchest advocates, think smaller sites, like ours, should do to ensure that none of that content ever sneaks through and ends up in our comment sections. To use us as an example: we're a small site, with a small team and limited resources. But we do allow comments on our posts, because we think community is an important aspect of a modern media site -- and we get a lot of comments, to the point that it is literally impossible for us to review every single comment on the site. We also, obviously, get a fair number of spam comments, and have put in place spam filters. The spam filters are pretty good, but they will make a few Type I and Type II errors at times (i.e., accidentally holding a legit comment and accidentally letting through a spam comment).

The number of comments (spam and not spam) vary day by day, but it's not uncommon to deal with on the order of 2000 comments or so (both spam and not spam) on a daily basis. We cannot read through all of them. And at least some of the spam may be advertising questionable and illegal behavior -- potentially sex trafficking. Here's an example that I found in our spam filter. The title of the spam reads "hot chinese women" but the text of the comment links to a site advertising "columbian girls" and while we've redacted part of the URL (we don't want to promote them at all), as you can see, part of the domain involves "love." Most of the text is nonsense garbage which is just designed to get through a spam filter (thankfully, in this case, it did not work):

Is this comment "facilitating sex trafficking" under federal law? I certainly hope not. But it's possible that the links in that spam go to a site that facilitates sex trafficking. And, while this comment was caught in our spam filter, what if it had gotten through? Do we now have "knowledge" that Techdirt, via its open comments, "assisted, supported, or facilitated" a violation of sex trafficking law? I would still argue that we don't, because we had no knowledge of that particular comment, and if we had seen it sneak through the spam filters, we clearly would have flagged it as spam and taken it off the site. But... the standard in the bill is not at all clear. Even worse: could this very post -- in which I'm explaining to Congress the uncertainty created by its own bill -- be used as evidence of me showing "knowledge" that sometimes spammers try to post these kinds of comments on our site? Is that enough to pass the hurdle in the bill to suggest I now have the requisite "knowledge" to potentially be both civilly and criminally liable? That would be a patently ridiculous outcome, but that, alone, represents some of the key problems of the bill as written.

Indeed, my concerns about merely asking Congress what sites like ours should do, demonstrate the automatic chilling effect in the bill. The chilling effect is happening now, before the bill is even passed.

I would hope that most rational people would say that we should not be liable just because some spammer is possibly clever enough to get a comment like this around our spam filters. But... as the bill is worded now, I am left wondering how do I avoid such liability? There are no clear safe harbors that tell me what steps to take to avoid such liability. Are we required to use a spam filter? What if none are perfect enough? Is the only way I can protect Techdirt be to kill the comment section and all the benefits a comment section enables? Can Senators Rob Portman and Richard Blumenthal tell me what to do? After all, during the hearing on this bill, when Blumenthal was told about its effect on smaller, independent sites, he insisted that such sites were "outliers" who "should be prosecuted." Is that what Blumenthal really thinks? A blog with a spam filter that is not 100% accurate should be prosecuted? If that's not what he thinks, then shouldn't the law he helped write make it clear for bloggers like me that merely allowing comments should not expose us to liability? Do small sites like Techdirt need to get pre-approval by the Internet Association who endorsed the bill to know if we'd be ok? Or, more likely, should sites like ours now need to go spend hundreds or thousands of dollars on lawyers to get an opinion that won't actually stop any potential lawsuit?

I am sure that many supporters of SESTA will argue that this is an extreme scenario. They will say, "Oh, come on, no one is going to go after you for a spam comment." I hope that's true! But, under the language of the bill, it's unclear. And that's the problem. We've certainly seen (repeatedly) that when someone wants to attack a site, they will use whatever laws they can find on the books. To make matters worse, SESTA also allows state Attorneys General to bring both civil and criminal suits. We've certainly upset some state Attorneys General in the past. Would a vindictive one use this opportunity to stifle Techdirt and shut it down? I, again, hope not, but we're living in an age where apparently it's considered okay for politicians to use their bully pulpits to threaten legal action against opponents, including the press.

There may be ways to improve SESTA -- but many of the ideas on the table also have potential serious negative consequences. We should be engaged in a careful discussion about those consequences and the costs and benefits of various approaches. There needs to be a clear explanation for how sites like ours can avoid these risks. But that's not what's happening. Small sites don't have the resources of a Facebook or a Google. They can't just spend thousands of dollars on lawyers to figure out how to navigate this new vague language, which wouldn't even guarantee that they won't get in trouble just because, say, a spam filter isn't good enough.

SESTA isn't just a bad bill because it won't do anything to stop trafficking (the trafficking will continue). It leaves smaller sites, such as ours, completely in the lurch over what our own level of risk is. So, a plea to Congress -- and Senators Portman and Blumenthal specifically: if you are going to move forward on this bill at least fix it so that sites like ours know what to do to stay on the right side of the law.

Filed Under: cda 230, comments, intermediary liability, richard blumenthal, rob portman, sesta, spam, techdirt

Senator Portman Pushes Forward With SESTA, Despite Being Misinformed

from the this-is-bad dept

It appears that Senator Rob Portman has decided to push forward with SESTA -- the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act -- a bill with problems we've discussed in great detail. Despite previous suggestions that the bill would not move forward until there were important fixes in place, it's now been announced that a committee vote will happen next week. It's possible that the bill will be amended prior to that vote, but as of right now, that's not clear. (Update: And about the time this post was published, a a manager's amendment has been pushed out. It fixes some of the most egregious problems with the bill, but leaves most of the problems intact.)

In support of this renewed push, Portman has published an opinion piece at Wired that no fact checker should have allowed. It is fully of completely faulty statements, and fairly incredible ones at that. It's kind of scary that it appears that Portman may be looking to undermine some fundamental principles of how the internet works based on a bunch of false statements. Even the title is just wrong:

How Federal Law Protects Online Sex Traffickers

It doesn't. Federal law is clear that law enforcement can go after sex traffickers. There is nothing in SESTA about going after sex traffickers. SESTA is entirely about going after internet platforms because someone may have used them in the process of "facilitating" sex trafficking.

It is a stain on our national character that sex trafficking is increasing in this country, in this century, and experts say it is happening because of the internet and the ruthless efficiency of online sex trafficking.

So much to unpack in this one sentence. As discussed earlier, the supposed epidemic of sex trafficking is grossly exaggerated. That is not to say it doesn't happen -- because it quite clearly does, and when it does happen, it's a serious problem. But Portman specifically has massively exaggerated the scope of the problem, and when you do that it's easier to support ridiculously overbroad "solutions" that would actually turn the small problem into a much bigger problem.

Sex trafficking has moved from the street corner to the smartphone, and online sex trafficking has predominately occurred through one website: Backpage.com.

And, as explained multiple times, if Backpage has, in fact, broken the law, there are already laws to deal with it. Backpage itself has already shut down its adult section (which only became big after politicians pressured Craigslist to do the same -- suggesting that chasing traffickers from platform to platform won't do much to stop trafficking). Just a few years ago Congress passed the SAVE Act, specifically targeting Backpage. It has not been used. Instead of passing another law, perhaps Portman should be asking why it hasn't been used? Similarly, CDA 230 has never covered federal crimes. The DOJ has always been able to target Backpage if it was violating the law (and it's been reported that the DOJ already has a grand jury investigation going into Backpage's actions). So why do we need a new law?

Headlines tell the tragic stories: In March 2013, police reported that a Miami pimp forced a teen to tattoo his name on her eyelids. In June 2017 in Chicago, feds charged a man for prostituting a 16-year-old girl before her murder. That same month, three people were accused of pimping a pregnant teen for sex.

All of these stories are horrible. But all of them involve criminals who were caught, with some of the evidence coming from Backpage. So, it seems like a bigger question may be: why aren't the police working harder to scan Backpage for evidence of these crimes and stopping them earlier? In the past, we've noted that law enforcement has successfully used these sites as tools to track down pimps and traffickers. It seems so odd to focus all of the attention on websites rather than the actual traffickers. It's almost as if Portman is trying to take the blame away from the traffickers themselves.

These heinous crimes, and countless others, involve Backpage, and yet the website has repeatedly evaded justice for its role in child sex trafficking.

Because Backpage wasn't doing the trafficking. And again, if they were, law enforcement is already able to go after the platform.

Despite these facts, courts have consistently ruled that a federal law called the Communications Decency Act protects Backpage from liability for its role in sex trafficking. This 21-year-old law was designed to ensure websites aren’t held liable for crimes others commit using their website. The legislation has an important purpose, but now, because of broad legal interpretations, it is used as a shield by websites that facilitate the sale of women and children for sex.

This is both wrong and a sleight of hand. First, no court has said that Backpage is protected from its role in sex trafficking. If Backpage is actively involved in the sex trafficking itself, it does not qualify for CDA 230 protections. And, again, even without that, there is no immunity in CDA 230 for federal crimes (and, again, the DOJ has a grand jury going on this). The fact that Portman is so proactively misrepresenting nearly everything should worry people.

Similarly, sites are not using CDA 230 "as a shield," but to make it clear that the focus should be on actual traffickers rather than on the tools they use.

Traffickers use cars as well. Will Portman's next bill be holding Ford and GM responsible for any trafficking that uses cars?

The Communications Decency Act should not protect sex traffickers who prey on the most innocent and vulnerable among us.

IT DOES NOT. It never has. Nothing in CDA 230 protects traffickers. Traffickers are violating the law and law enforcement has every right to go after them. Hell, the three examples that Portman presented above all involve traffickers arrested by law enforcement. That seems to contradict his own point.

I do not believe those in Congress who supported this bill in 1996 ever thought that 21 years later, their vote would allow websites to knowingly traffic women and children over the internet with immunity.

Again, if it the sites themselves are involved in the trafficking, then CDA 230 already doesn't cover them.

However, courts and attorneys generals have made it clear that their hands are tied. In the most recent example, in August, a Sacramento judge threw out pimping charges against Backpage because of the liability protections afforded by this 1996 law, and he invited Congress to fix this injustice.

No. Their hands are tied in prosecuting Backpage without evidence of Backpage itself breaking the law. That's different. It doesn't tie their hands in prosecuting actual traffickers. And it doesn't stop them from prosecuting Backpage for evidence of actual crimes. Notice how Portman conveniently leaves out that while the judge in Sacramento threw out the pimping charges (because Backpage isn't doing the pimping) it let the case move forward on money laundering claims. In other words, Backpage is still in court, despite Portman implying that the entire case was dismissed.

This injustice is why I, along with more than two dozen of my colleagues from both sides of the aisle, introduced the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act.

The bill would do two things. First, it would allow sex trafficking victims to get the justice they deserve by removing the law’s unintended liability protections for websites that knowingly facilitate online sex trafficking. Second, it would allow state and local law enforcement to prosecute websites that violate federal sex trafficking laws.

Portman is misleading in his description of his own bill. It does not only apply to those who "knowingly facilitate online sex trafficking." The "knowledge" standard in the bill is extraordinarily broad, covering "knowing actions" that are then used to facilitate sex trafficking. The distinction may be subtle, but it's huge. It means that a platform just needs to know about what its service can do, not the outcome. Wikipedia "knows" that people can add links to its online encyclopedia. It doesn't "know" when someone advertises sex trafficking via such a link. But under the current standard in the bill, that doesn't matter. The language about knowledge of how a service works, rather than the illegal activities, is a real problem with this bill.

The bill will achieve these ends without threatening the years of progress we have made in creating a free and open internet.

He says this despite the fact that nearly every internet company and expert says he's wrong. And plenty of sex trafficking experts as well. Just this week, a sex trafficking expert who helped write the State Department's own report on sex trafficking has said that this would create huge harms for the internet and for victims of sex trafficking.

The standard for liability in our bill is a high bar to meet.

This is simply incorrect. Multiple tech and legal experts have explained this over and over again. Simply saying there's a high bar does not make it true. The plain language of the bill shows that the bar is extraordinarily low.

Some in the tech community incorrectly claim that this bill will expose innocent websites to frivolous lawsuits. But my Senate colleagues and I carefully crafted this legislation to remove immunity only for websites that can be proven to have intentionally facilitated online sex trafficking.

Again, he can repeat this false claim as much as he wants, and it still doesn't make it true. The language in the bill is clear. If he wants it to only target those who have "intentionally facilitated online sex trafficking" he needs to change the language. Daphne Keller, at Stanford, just released a paper this week on ways to fix SESTA, and someone should send a copy to Portman.

There are already exemptions in the Communications Decency Act’s liability protections for intellectual property violations that exist without undermining the fundamental intentions of the law. It is unreasonable to suggest the result of a narrowly tailored exemption against knowing sex traffickers would be any different.

This is the most frustrating line in the entire piece. If Portman had the slightest bit of understanding about how the DMCA's notice-and-takedown provisions are routinely abused to censor the internet, there's no way he'd claim that it hasn't "undermined" anything. The fear here is that SESTA creates a kind of DMCA notice-and-takedown on steroids, because it adds possible criminal penalties. From the description here, it almost appears as if Portman doesn't even know that DMCA safe harbors exist for copyright, or that the lack of CDA 230 coverage for trademarks created a massive influx of court cases until eventually the courts effectively said that there was a DMCA-like safe harbor over trademarks as well.

In short, Portman seems to be either making an argument out of pure ignorance, or intentionally misrepresenting what's happening on the intellectual property side of the fence.

We have a moral responsibility to protect the most vulnerable among us and combat this injustice. Every day we wait is too late for countless vulnerable women and children.

And yet, absolutely nothing in SESTA actually protects those victims. They will still be trafficked. The bill only targets internet companies providing platforms that traffickers use. They will keep using the internet to traffic, even if badly targeted lawsuits take those companies down. Indeed, it's likely that they'll move to platforms that make it more difficult for law enforcement to figure out what's going on. SESTA will make the problem worse, not better, and will create tremendous collateral damage in the meantime.

Filed Under: cda 230, intermediary liability, rob portman, sesta, sex trafficking
Companies: backpage

Backpage Kills Adult Ads On The Same Day Supreme Court Backed Its Legal Protections, Due To Grandstanding Senators

from the someone-teach-the-senate-the-law? dept

A few years back, we detailed how ongoing grandstanding and toothless legal threats finally forced Craigslist to shut down its "adult services" section. None of that did anything to stop prostitution or human trafficking online. It just moved to other sites -- which was particularly ridiculous, given that Craigslist had been proactive in working with law enforcement to help them track down the actual perpetrators of crimes via the site. And, the illegal behavior just moved on to somewhere else -- as did the ridiculous grandstanding. The main target since Craigslist shut down its services: Backpage.com, the Craigslist-alike site that spun off from Village Voice Media. And now, after an even more intense grandstanding and legal campaign, Backpage has also been pressured to shut down its adult section. If you go to it now, you'll see this instead: And here's the craziest part. This happened on the same day the Supreme Court basically said Backpage is legal and the legal claims against it are bogus. But the law is apparently meaningless in the face of a pair of grandstanding Senators who want their names in the headlines, pretending they care about human trafficking, while actually making the problems worse.

Last May, we wrote about an excellent 1st Circuit appeals court victory for Backpage.com, which (like nearly every other court before them) found that the site was clearly protected by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. As we've discussed many, many times, there are a number of people out there who would like to ignore the fact that while some users of Backpage may be violating the law to engage in prostitution, the proper response is to go after those actually breaking the law, and not the platform they're using. That's the very heart of Section 230, and it's exactly what many, many courts have realized. The case we wrote about last May (and also wrote about when Backpage prevailed at the district court level the previous May) involved three clear victims: women who were forced into selling sex as teenage runaways. Their situation is undoubtedly awful -- but it was the fault of those who exploited and abused them, and not the online service they happened to use.

On Monday, the Supreme Court effectively put its stamp of approval on the 1st Circuit appeals court ruling by denying the plaintiff's petition to hear an appeal on that ruling. While it's not quite the same as saying that the Supreme Court fully endorsed the opinion of the 1st Circuit saying that Section 230 clearly protects Backpage from being blamed for how people use the site, it certainly suggests that the court didn't see any major problems with the ruling.

But... there's just something about Backpage that makes politicians want to stupidly and misleadingly grandstand. Just hours after the Supreme Court effectively blessed the 1st Circuit ruling saying Backpage hadn't broken the law, Senator Claire McCaskill released a report (with Senator Rob Portman) that blasts Backpage for "knowing facilitation of online sex trafficking." This is in advance of a grandstanding Senate hearing that McCaskill/Portman have prepared to parade out the executives of Backpage to yell at them for facilitating sex trafficking, even just as the Supreme Court has basically said this entire line of argument is completely bogus.

The report is a joke. The crux of the report is that, via subpoena, the Senate staffers were able to determine that Backpage edits and or bans certain words that indicate an ad is for prostitution. Let me repeat that: the Senate is mainly annoyed that Backpage proactively looks for and blocks situations where it appears that the ads may be for prostitution -- especially involving children. Yet, the Senate investigators twist this to make it sound like a bad thing.

Over time, Backpage reprogrammed its electronic filters to reject an ad in its entirety if it contained certain egregious words suggestive of sex trafficking. But the company implemented this change by coaching its customers on how to post “clean” ads for illegal transactions. When a user attempted to post an ad with a forbidden word, the user would receive an error message identifying the problematic word choice to “help” the user, as Ferrer put it. For example, in 2012, a user advertising sex with a “teen” would get the error message: “Sorry, ‘teen’ is a banned term.” Through simply redrafting the ad, the user would be permitted to post a sanitized version.

I'm not entirely clear what they're complaining about here. You could also quite clearly see this as Backpage letting users know that it is not a place that should be used for sex trafficking, because it clearly alerts them to things that they don't want on the site. But the Senate staffers seem to have intentionally spun this to appear in the absolute worst light.

On top of that, Section 230 is again quite clear that any effort a platform does take to moderate stuff doesn't change the fact that a site is protected from liability. And that's to encourage exactly the type of behavior that Backpage is already doing: which is choosing voluntarily to block certain types of ads that they don't want. Now, I'm sure some will argue, as the Senate report tries to say, that because Backpage then allows another ad without the "banned" words through, that it's not stopping the underlying activity, but that's basically mandating that any online platform have incredibly adaptive and complex filters to make sure that anyone who tries to get around their filters cannot do so. That's a very dangerous precedent, and would basically make it impossible for any online service to exist, without being massive.

The report argues that the "editing" of posts by Backpage takes away 230 immunity:

Backpage and its officers have successfully invoked Section 230 in at least two other cases to avoid criminal or civil responsibility for activities on the site. In neither case, however, did the court have before it evidence that Backpage had moved beyond passive publication of third-party content to editing content to conceal illegality.

The argument here rests on the ruling in the infamous Roommates.com case from nearly a decade ago -- which remains the biggest case where a Section 230 defense failed. But that's a very different situation. Roommates.com failed because the Roommates system itself was asking questions deemed to be illegal under housing law (about racial preferences and such). That was part of the site that was fully created and controlled by Roommates.com. The difference here is that while Backpage may be running some of its posts through a filter, that's to moderate the content to remove descriptions of illegal sex trafficking or illegal prostitution. In other words, what Backpage is doing is actually moderating content, which is explicitly allowed and encouraged by the "Good Samirtan clause" of CDA 230, found in section (c). That part of the law says that the immunity applies even for "any action voluntarily taken in good faith to restrict access to or availability of material that the provider or user considers to be obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected." It seems quite clear that Backpage editing posts to remove such content falls squarely into that bucket.

The report is also strange in that it uses Backpage's own helpfulness to law enforcement against it. It highlights how law enforcement regularly gets reports and details of child trafficking because of Backpage:

According to the latest report from NCMEC, 73% of the suspected child trafficking reports it receives from the public involve Backpage. According to the Massachusetts Attorney General, “[t]he vast majority of prosecutions for sex trafficking now involve online advertising, and most of those advertisements appear on Backpage."

In other words, one of the best tools out there for finding and stopping sex trafficking is... Backpage.com. And the Senators response is to blame Backpage and make them legally liable? How does that make any sense at all? Now that Backpage has shut down those ads, they'll scatter elsewhere. Sex trafficking won't stop and it will be harder for law enforcement to track down and find actual perpetrators or save actual victims. Let's be clear: Senators McCaskill and Portman, in an effort to get their names in the headlines, have just made sex trafficking easier, by making law enforcement's job harder.

The report also makes a big deal out of the fact that Backpage's execs know that the site is used for trafficking and prostitution, but, again, so what? That's like the same claims that the legacy entertainment industry made about YouTube. Just because you know that a site can and sometimes is used for illegal behavior does not automatically make the site liable for that illegal activity. That's quite clear under Section 230, yet totally ignored by this report.

The Supreme Court got this right... while Senators Claire McCaskill and Rob Portman appear to be yet another set of politicians who are grandstanding by blaming a platform, rather than doing anything that will actually help stop sex trafficking. And the end result is that Backpage has shuttered that section. This won't stop or even diminish sex trafficking and prostitution online. Just as it moved from Craigslist to Backpage, it will continue to move elsewhere -- and that will probably be to a site that is even less willing to work with law enforcement to help track down and stop real illegal behavior. Similarly, this witchhunt has taught any new platform that any attempt to diminish the blatant use for sex trafficking and prostitution will be twisted to pretend that it's just trying to "hide" that activity.

This is a travesty. McCaskill and Portman will get their headlines, and sex trafficking will continue -- it will just be harder to help actual victims.

Filed Under: cda 230, claire mccaskill, grandstanding, rob portman, section 230, sex trafficking, supreme court
Companies: backpage

Former USTR Comes Out Against TPP -- Though Not Necessarily For The Best Reasons

from the the-tpp-fight-continues dept

People who have worked for the USTR tend to pretty religiously support any and all new trade agreements, so it seems somewhat noteworthy that the former USTR, and now Senator, Rob Portman, has come out against the TPP agreement, saying that he doesn't think that it's a good deal. There are, of course, a number of caveats here that potentially make this at least slightly less of a big deal than it might otherwise be. Specifically:

1. There's a pretty good chance he's doing this purely for political reasons. He's in a tight re-election campaign for the Senate, and his opponent has been quite opposed to basically any trade deal including the TPP -- and many Ohio residents (i.e. voters) believe (rightly or wrongly) that trade deals mean fewer manufacturing jobs. Portman was also a big proponent of pushing through "Trade Promotion Authority" or fast track, which was seen as a sort of proxy vote on TPP, because it would bind Congress's hands to just an up/down vote on the TPP, without any ability to push back on particular aspects of the agreement. And, Portman also made it clear he could change his mind if the TPP was "improved."
2. Some of the reasons he's given seem to track with those of Senator Orrin Hatch, in complaining that the TPP doesn't go far enough in expanding intellectual property rights, mainly for big pharmaceutical companies (specifically data exclusivity rules around "biologics.")

So, it could certainly be argued that his speaking out against the TPP are for suspect reasons (and of suspect authenticity). Still, it is rather incredible that a former USTR would proactively say that they don't support such a major trade agreement, and highlights (at the very least) just how toxic the TPP has become with the voting public. And of course, that should raise some pretty serious questions. If the voting public doesn't support the TPP at all, why are we continuing to pursue it?

Filed Under: rob portman, tpp, ustr