US House Passes Bill To Penalize Websites For Sex Trafficking (trust.org) 190
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Thomson Reuters Foundation News: The U.S. House of Representatives on Tuesday overwhelmingly passed legislation to make it easier to penalize operators of websites that facilitate online sex trafficking, chipping away at a bedrock legal shield for the technology industry. The bill's passage marks one of the most concrete actions in recent years from the U.S. Congress to tighten regulation of internet firms, which have drawn heavy scrutiny from lawmakers in both parties over the past year due to an array of concerns regarding the size and influence of their platforms. The House passed the measure 388-25. It still needs to pass the U.S. Senate, where similar legislation has already gained substantial support, and then be signed by President Donald Trump before it can become law.
Several major internet companies, including Alphabet Inc's Google and Facebook Inc, had been reluctant to support any congressional effort to dent what is known as Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, a decades-old law that protects them from liability for the activities of their users. But facing political pressure, the internet industry slowly warmed to a proposal that gained traction in the Senate last year, and eventually endorsed it after it gained sizable bipartisan support. The legislation is a result of years of law-enforcement lobbying for a crackdown on the online classified site backpage.com, which is used for sex advertising. It would make it easier for states and sex-trafficking victims to sue social media networks, advertisers and others that fail to keep exploitative material off their platforms.
Several major internet companies, including Alphabet Inc's Google and Facebook Inc, had been reluctant to support any congressional effort to dent what is known as Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, a decades-old law that protects them from liability for the activities of their users. But facing political pressure, the internet industry slowly warmed to a proposal that gained traction in the Senate last year, and eventually endorsed it after it gained sizable bipartisan support. The legislation is a result of years of law-enforcement lobbying for a crackdown on the online classified site backpage.com, which is used for sex advertising. It would make it easier for states and sex-trafficking victims to sue social media networks, advertisers and others that fail to keep exploitative material off their platforms.
Diaspora? (Score:2)
Diaspora might finally get some users!
How sex saved the social network!
It's funny... (Score:5, Insightful)
..how you can impose platform censorship under the name of preventing sex trafficking. Let's ignore all the rich and/or shitheads that get away with fucking kids and teens without consequence (politicians, the Catholic church, people in Hollywood, etc.) and look at what Craigslist and Backpage provide: prostitution. Is there illegal trafficking? Quite possibly, but there is also prostitution which is legal in the UK, Australia, NZ, much of Europe and a couple of counties in Nevada.
How about just legalizing prostitution, taxing/regulating it, and then go after actual sex traffickers and pedos, without compromising freedom of speech or making it much more difficult for smaller players to enter the walled gardens of content hosting, media distribution and social networks.
This is a PROSTITUTION bill, not trafficking (Score:2)
Note this bill is NOT about trafficking. There *was* a bill that dealt with trafficking. Then there was an amendment which replaced *all* of the text of the original bill. It's now about prostitution, not trafficking. An example of the current wording of the bill:
--
a defendant may be held liable, under
this subsection, where promotion or facilitation of prostitution activity
---
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Even if you found its goals laudable, SESTA is not a particularly good piece of legislation. Techdirt [techdirt.com] hates it because it's intentionally vague--what, exactly, constitutes "knowing conduct by an individual or entity, by any means, that assists, supports, or facilitates a violation"? We know what violates current law, that is, what constitutes "general knowledge" versus "specific knowledge" versus "red flag knowledge" under the DMCA--but knowing what the law actually is means you can comply with it, and th
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>How about just legalizing prostitution,
Unless you legalize banging children, then you've still got the exact same problem. You've solved nothing.
We either do, or don't, regulate people's activities. You can talk about moving the line, but simply removing it isn't an option. How is using a regulation to take down prostitution, any different than using the same kinds of regulations and enforcement... to take down child prostitution?
The only difference is, you support one of those. But the actual enforceme
Re: It's funny... (Score:2)
and look at what Craigslist and Backpage provide
These are psyops against the printing press, metaphorically speaking. If most of us weren't so fucking ignorant of history - or not caught up in our own distractions - we'd see it for what it is.
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I work in criminal law in Canada and I encounter backpage on a weekly basis. It 100% is used for "illegal" trafficking. For example, girls who are abducted off the streets and forced into prostitution. They are forced onto amphetamines so they can work longer hours and end up completely messed up. Backpage is so convenient they even take payment in bitcoin so the pimps don't have to risk themselves.
One of the most common things is the pimp finds a vu
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And givne that backpage can do plenty to prevent sexual slavery and child prostitution, but they choose not to so they can maximize their profits, backpage should not be allowed to exist..
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..how you can impose platform censorship under the name of preventing sex trafficking. Let's ignore all the rich and/or ...
In some ways the rich were not ignored, i.e. recent sexual harrassment cases certain people in power were taken down (but some remain untouched). I also notice many websites have "escort services" so does this mean there will be a lot more work for law enforcement? I'm thinking the Trump policy for every one regulation, two have to be removed.
Trafficking appears a new term (paradigm shift) so instead of traditionally going after prostitutes (a victimless crime where both agree exchange of money for some
Re:It's funny... (Score:4, Informative)
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Read up on this
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Actually the Rochdale pedo ring had the first prosecutions for sex trafficking in the UK
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
The British government continued its proactive law enforcement efforts to combat trafficking. The UK prohibits all forms of trafficking through the Sexual Offences Act 2003, the Criminal Justice (Scotland) Act 2003 and the Asylum and Immigration (Treatment of Claimants, etc.) Act 2004. These prescribe penalties of a maximum of 14 years' imprisonment, although the specific punishments prescribed for sex trafficking are less severe than those prescribed for rape. The Modern Slavery Act 2015 which became law in March 2015 consolidated existing offences relating to trafficking and slavery.
In 2007, the UK government launched Pentameter II, a large-scale operation aimed at rescuing victims, disrupting trafficking networks, developing intelligence, and raising public awareness. A study conducted by the government in 2007 identified a minimum of 330 individual cases of children trafficked into the UK and, the same year, the government reported prosecutions involving at least 52 suspected trafficking offenders. Although the government reported 75 ongoing prosecutions during the previous reporting period, it convicted only ten trafficking offenders in 2007, a significant decrease from 28 convictions obtained in 2006. Sentences imposed on convicted trafficking offenders in 2007 ranged from 20 months' to 10 years' imprisonment, with an average sentence of four years. In one case in 2008 in the U.K., girls were trafficked for forced prostitution and a man was sentenced to 10 years in prison In January 2008, police arrested 25 members of Romanian organized crime organizations using Romanian children, including a baby less than a year old, as pickpockets and in begging schemes. The Rochdale sex trafficking gang, a group of predominantly British Pakistani paedophiles that preyed on under-age girls in Rochdale, were the first people in Britain to be convicted of sex trafficking, on 8 May 2012
The fact that the Modern Slavery Act was passed as recently as 2015 is pretty clear evidence that sex trafficking is seen as an issue in the UK.
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If Porter had said no one chose prostitution as a career you might have some sort of point, but the idea that people tend to chose it or even that the majority of prostitutes start out choosing it as a career is specious in the extreme.
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Re:It's funny... (Score:4, Insightful)
Actual numbers from places were prostitution is legal says basically all prostitutes are doing it of their own choices with exceptions so rare that they do not really matter. Of course, were it is illegal, the politicos and the police use any kind of lie to justify this illegality (which cannot really be justified) and there the myth that a large parts of prostitutes are forced into it comes from. It is not true, unless you count economic incentives, like, you know, people working jobs for the same reason.
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It's worth differentiating between people who become prostitutes because they enjoy the work and those who are not coerced directly but would rather be doing something else. It's like refuse collection - people do it voluntarily, but most of them would rather do something else.
The majority would prefer it if they could make a good living some other way. Not all, but the majority. That's why charities and NGOs concerned with prostitution treat it as a form of poverty. Something that shouldn't be illegal, jus
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The majority would prefer it if they could make a good living some other way. Not all, but the majority. That's why charities and NGOs concerned with prostitution treat it as a form of poverty. Something that shouldn't be illegal, just regulated and supported, and which is mostly a symptom of other problems in that person's life.
So, like most jobs?
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That's pretty much the definition of employment. I work what would be considered a pretty nice white collar job but I still don't ENJOY it. It fucking sucks having to go to work every day but that's just the reality of being an adult and having bills to pay.
Does their job come with some health risks? Yes, but there is protective equipment for that, and so do other jobs. My dad is a construction worker and in his late 50's - he's had to have multiple surgeries to repair damage from years of hard labor.
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Exactly. The narrative about prostitution not being essentially a regular job is utter bullshit. And those that maintain this narrative are not above using the most outrageous lies to keep their deranged fantasy alive.
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So a CEO that rakes in millions but hates his job is a case of poverty? This makes absolutely no sense.
This is going to result in negative overreach (Score:3)
So again, if this kind of overreach isn't going to change how anyone votes it's hardly worth discussion.
Leave sex workers alone (Score:2, Funny)
I for one think it's great that sex workers have a strong advocate and role model as First Lady.
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First Lady of the Night [youtube.com]
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I'm sure it wasn't her first.
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First, not all sex workers are whores, and I'm absolutely not slut-shaming anyone. The first lady had a keen eye for business and made the most of it. She sold her most valuable commodity and held out for a very good price. She came by her success in an honest way and let's face it, it could not have been easy for her.
I admire her in a way that I could never admire her husband. Though to be fair, he has bigger tits.
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You know what they say about the left. If they didn't have double standards they wouldn't have any standards at all.
Still Alinsky was right that it's a good tactic Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules [wikipedia.org]
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I would stop worrying about standards, quotes and Wikipedia articles. We're going to kill you in your fucking sleep. Worry about that instead.
Good luck with that.
A backdoor way to crack down on prostitution (Score:1)
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I'm having trouble resolving the hooker thing. I personally dislike prostitution; at the same time, I don't believe things are necessarily-wrong because somebody personally dislikes them. I dislike prostitution because of the visible impact it has on society, although those impacts are consequences of other, more-damaging societal problems, and generally only visible in areas facing widespread and extreme poverty.
So here's the thing: there's a second, more-substantial problem with prostitution that's
Think of the children (Score:1)
be careful (Score:1)
Today feminazis have teamed up with religious conservatives in an ongoing effort to ban prostitution. Granted the language around this measure is a little hysterical, grossly misleading, and totally insincere. But I can't say I care that much. I don't enjoy patronizing prostitutes, and in as much as I have some socially conservative feelings, I'm okay with the ban.
*Of course* it will fail, like every other attempt to ban prostitution ever. But like I said, no loss to me.
Now all the self-described Progressiv
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Makes website owners responsible for user content (Score:2)
So this could, ultimately have very negative repercussions for large social media sites.
Sad state of affairs (Score:3)
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However, that's already been said elsewh
Re:Gee, that's too bad (Score:5, Informative)
Sex trafficking is not a 1st Amendment issue. Backpage was using the CDA to shield itself from being prosecuted for running a underage prostitution ring.
https://www.washingtonpost.com... [washingtonpost.com]
The Senate bill, and a similar one in the House, were inspired by the numerous court victories won by Backpage.com, an online classified ads site that hosts massive advertising for prostitution, including an unknown percentage of children being trafficked by adult pimps. Backpage has successfully cited the Communications Decency Act, which protects websites from liability for posts by third parties, to evade both criminal prosecution and civil lawsuits. As attorney general of California, Harris launched a criminal case against Backpage for prostitution, and it was thrown out by a judge who cited the Communications Decency Act.
The Senate's subcommittee on investigations sparked congressional action when it found that Backpage was editing ads to remove references to underage prostitutes, but allowing the ads to remain online. Then, in July, The Washington Post revealed that Backpage was actively soliciting ads from prostitutes on other websites, and creating new ads for those prostitutes so that they could post on Backpage with just one click.
Some members of Congress called for the Justice Department to investigate Backpage for seemingly creating illegal content, not just hosting it. And some opponents of the new bill cited The Post story as evidence that Backpage could be prosecuted under the existing law, with no need to amend the law and possibly open up unforeseen areas of civil and criminal liability.
After the bill was introduced, tech lobbyists worked Capitol Hill trying to drum up opposition. Google issued a statement saying the proposed bill "would be a disaster" and "would actually hinder the fight against sex trafficking." The bill amends both the Decency Act and a federal sex-trafficking statute.
But members of the tech community worked with Senate Commerce Committee staff to tweak the language of the bill, which is scheduled for markup Wednesday. One of the keys was the definition of "participation in a venture" in the anti-sex-trafficking statute, which courts have found did not include Internet sites hosting illegal content. The proposed bill originally defined participation as "knowing conduct, by an individual or entity, by any means, that assists, supports or facilitates a violation" of sex trafficking laws.
Internet companies thought the phrase "by any means" had the potential to be broadly interpreted when analyzing a website's actions. The newly amended bill changes the definition of participation to simply "knowingly assisting, supporting, or facilitating a violation" of sex trafficking laws, Senate staff members said.
The changes to the bill also amend the standard by which state prosecutors can seek to charge or sue websites, requiring them to meet the federal standard, including the new definition above, rather than those established by state law, which can vary widely.
Michael Beckerman, president of the Internet Association, which counts Google, Twitter and Microsoft among its members, said in a statement that "Important changes made to SESTA will grant victims the ability to secure the justice they deserve, allow internet platforms to continue their work combating human trafficking, and protect good actors in the ecosystem."
Beckerman said the association was looking "forward to working with the House and Senate as SESTA moves through the legislative process to ensure that our members are able to continue their work to fight exploitation."
Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) and other members of the Commerce Committee welcomed the endorsement from the Internet Association. "I'm pleased we've reached an agreement," Portman said in a statement. "We've reached
Re:Gee, that's too bad (Score:5, Insightful)
https://reason.com/blog/2017/0... [reason.com]
Partial quote: "Both law enforcement and nonprofits such as the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) routinely use sites like Backpage to search for teenagers reported missing. The cross-country nature of the site allows authorities to track potential victims who may move around a lot, and provides tangible evidence for prosecutors to use against their exploiters. Police also use Backpage extensively when conducting sting operations ostensibly targeting the recovery of minors. Backpage itself has, at least historically, reported suspicious ads (such as those featuring pictures of people who look underage) to NCMEC or local law enforcement."
I'm not saying that Backpage is a company run by angels, but I am definitely saying that there's so much propaganda and lies by omission out there about the Backpage prostitution situation that facts are hard to come by without scooping through truckloads of bullshit and ignoring the moralistic crusaders screaming in your ears that they're right. In any case, the people posting underage prostitution ads are the ones committing the heinous act and going after Backpage won't do a damn thing but shovel a bunch more of the prostitution ad volume onto Tor and I2P. Driving the information further underground and further from the legal reach of law enforcement will only make matters worse.
Re:Gee, that's too bad (Score:4, Informative)
Was Backpage actually running an underage prostitution ring or were third parties running underage prostitution rings and using Backpage as a place to post ads?
https://www.washingtonpost.com... [washingtonpost.com]
A contractor for the controversial classifieds website Backpage.com has been aggressively soliciting and creating sex-related ads, despite Backpage's repeated insistence that it had no role in the content of ads posted on its site, according to a trove of newly discovered documents.
The documents show that Backpage hired a company in the Philippines to lure advertisers -- and customers seeking sex -- from sites run by its competitors. The spreadsheets, emails, audio files and employee manuals were revealed in an unrelated legal dispute and provided to The Washington Post.
Workers in the Philippine call center scoured the Internet for newly listed sex ads, then contacted the people who posted them and offered a free ad on Backpage.com, the documents show. The contractor's workers even created each new ad so it could be activated with one click.
Workers also created phony sex ads, offering to "Let a young babe show you the way" or "Little angel seeks daddy," adding photos of barely clad women and explicit sex patter, the documents show. The workers posted the ads on competitors' websites. Then, when a potential customer expressed interest, an email directed that person to Backpage.com, where they would find authentic ads, spreadsheets used to track the process show.
They were certainly making aggressive moves to break into the underage prostitute ad market. And when people complained they said it was 'third party content' and used the CDA as a shield
For years, Backpage executives have adamantly denied claims made by members of Congress, state attorneys general, law enforcement and sex-abuse victims that the site has facilitated prostitution and child sex trafficking. Backpage argues it is a passive carrier of "third-party content" and has no control of sex-related ads posted by pimps, prostitutes and even organized trafficking rings. The company contends it removes clearly illegal ads and refers violators to the police.
The discovery could be a turning point in the years-long campaign by anti-human trafficking groups, and Congress, to persuade Backpage to stop hosting prostitution ads, which many teenage girls have claimed were used to sell them for sexual exploitation. Lawsuits and criminal prosecutions of Backpage in the United States have nearly all failed because Backpage cites in its defense the federal Communications Decency Act, which grants immunity to websites that merely host or screen content posted by others.
Re:Gee, that's too bad (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Gee, that's too bad (Score:5, Insightful)
Those are very good points. We should expect to see many "think of the children" demands. tied to any such laws.
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Nothing you quoted in that reply says anything about "running an underage prostitution ring" so that claim remains unfounded.
Ok how about "they made aggressive moves to break into the underage prostitute ad market". Are happy with that wording?
As far as the underage thing consider
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
According to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC), the majority of child sex trafficking cases referred to NCMEC involve ads on Backpage. Backpage says that it blocks about a million ads per month, mostly suspected of child sex trafficking or prostitution. Of those, they report around 400 ads a month to NCMEC which in turn notify law enforcement. Content submitted to Backpage is surveyed by an automated scan for terms related to prostitution. At least one member of a team of over 100 people also oversees each entry before it is posted.
Backpage has had continued issues with credit card processors, who were under pressure from law enforcement to cease working with companies that allegedly allow or encourage illegal prostitution. In 2015 Backpage lost all credit card processing agreements, leaving Bitcoin as the remaining option for paid ads.
In an amicus curiae brief, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children says the efforts of Backpage are inadequate and their reporting lacked in several areas. They say Backpage does not report all ads that have been flagged as being underage, does not report when someone tries to advertise children under 18 years of age, and does not respond to requests of parents to have ads of their trafficked children removed. They also say Backpage "encourage[s] dissemination of child sex trafficking content on its website". They say Backpage is much slower in removing ads that advertise children than ads placed by authorities aimed at trapping traffickers, guides traffickers in creating false pages for underage children, instructs traffickers and buyers on how to pay anonymously, and makes it easier to make adult posts than other posts. They said "To all intents and purposes, Backpage has instituted no effective procedures to prevent child sex trafficking ads from being created on its site." They say that they do not use obvious techniques to identify traffickers, such as using the same phone number, email address or credit card of a known trafficker, or reusing the same picture of known victim of human trafficking.
They were clearly turning a blind eye to people advertising underage prostitutes, rather like Pirate Bay did to people posting torrents that violate copyright.
Re:Gee, that's too bad (Score:4, Interesting)
If you look at the site: they turn a blind eye to prostitution hosted at www.backpage.com. Picking and choosing which prostitutes are under-age, lying about their age, or are undercover police is a burden for any website which would be a legal nightmare to undertake. There are many others that have carefully turned a blind eye to such traffic: Craigslist used to do so, and withdrew from the business after a notable murder of a prostitute found on craigslist. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] for more details.
Re:Gee, that's too bad (Score:4, Insightful)
As for TPB, they don't turn a blind eye to torrents that violate copyright. TPB outright doesn't give a damn about copyright. That's kind of their schtick.
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Note: teenagers are not children as in "pedophilia" so there's already some seriously loaded wording by describing underage post-pubescent adolescents this way.
Someone quibbling about the distinction between ephebophiles [youtube.com] and pedophilia seems to be inevitable in these sorts of discussions.
I wonder why...
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Re: Gee, that's too bad (Score:1)
Generally the kind of people get really worked up about pedophilia, are themselves pedophiles. The rest of us just don't care very much because it's both unsavory and vanishingly rare.
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> Having sex with anyone under the age of consent is wrong and illegal. It doesn't matter whether they're 1 year under the AOC or 5 years.
And to extrapolate, it also doesn't matter whether they're 1 hour, 1 minute, 1 second, 1 millisecond, ..., 1 zeptosecond, ...
OTOH, to someone who blithely conflates "wrong" with "illegal", maybe you actually believe this.
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Having sex with anyone under the age of consent is wrong and illegal. It doesn't matter whether they're 1 year under the AOC or 5 years.
And to extrapolate, it also doesn't matter whether they're 1 hour, 1 minute, 1 second, 1 millisecond, ..., 1 zeptosecond, ...
OTOH, to someone who blithely conflates "wrong" with "illegal", maybe you actually believe this.
How about you just away from the kids?
Re:Gee, that's too bad (Score:5, Insightful)
Are you saying it's morally ok to have sex with a 16 year old when your on holidays in Alabama but not ok when your on holidays in Colorado?
Your appeal to authority makes no logical sense on this issue.
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Having sex with anyone under the age of consent is wrong and illegal.
Who decides what's "wrong"? What happens when the abritrary age chosen as "age of consent" is wrong? Because the age of concent in America, 18, is one of the highest in the world. Most of the world uses 14-16 as the age of consent. [wikipedia.org] So who's right and who's wrong? Is the world wrong? Or is America wrong?
Re:Gee, that's too bad (Score:4, Interesting)
Are you saying it's morally ok to have sex with a 16 year old when your on holidays in Alabama but not ok when your on holidays in Colorado?
Your appeal to authority makes no logical sense on this issue.
Or Italy or most of Europe where it's 14. And what if they are legally 18 but still child sized? Like 4'8", 80 lbs? Isn't it just as bad as a pedophile?
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How about you just don't have sex with anyone under 18? Then you won't need to memorize complicated variations in the age of consent. And you won't need to memorize the fiddly spelling of words like 'ephebophile' and 'paedophile' too.
Also it's probably a bad idea to start a website whose whole business model is advertising underage hookers and them claim Section 230 of the CDA protects you.
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Because the age of concent in America, 18, is one of the highest in the world.
The age of consent in America [wikipedia.org] varies by state. The most common state AOC in America is 16.
Re:Gee, that's too bad (Score:4, Insightful)
as it happens, yeah, I do.
It's illegal because society deems it to be wrong. Sure, it's an arbitrary cut off but it's very clearly stated and extremely easy to remember.
Being attracted to a woman capable of bearing a child is biologically programmed. Choosing whether to fuck her is a conscious choice.
Re:Gee, that's too bad (Score:4, Insightful)
Morally the issue is if that person can really consent. So age isn't as important as their mental state/capacity.
I'd feel worse if I thought that person hadn't been given proper sex education, for example. Or if they had some kind of mental illness / disability. Age isn't really relevant, even if they are over what the local age of consent is that doesn't affect the moral factors.
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Careful; the age of consent in most places in Europe is 14-16 if you are that age too; if you're older, (typically older than 20) then it pops up to 18...(and quite right too).
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Careful; the age of consent in most places in Europe is 14-16 if you are that age too; if you're older, (typically older than 20) then it pops up to 18...(and quite right too).
Not true, 14-16 no matter what the age is of the other person. For example, Italy is 14, and could be as low as 13 if the other person is less than 3 years older. It's 16 if the other person has some sort of authority over the 16 year old which must make high school very interesting https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik... [wikipedia.org]
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You don't get it. *SEX* is wrong. It's a dirty, nasty, hideous thing that must be eradicated from the earth before it kills us all. /puritan
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You cited the definition of ephebophilia so you know that referring to teens below the statutory age of unlimited sexual consent in some jurisdictions as "children" to imply that any desire to have sex with them is "sex with children" is dishonest. You have no other way to win this argument than to fire off ad hominem attacks and appeals to you
it isn't a matter of moving standard (Score:2)
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Ouch. Hal is clearly an idiot with an agenda. His name is an anagram for "Harlot Rep", so I think he has some unresolved sexual issues.
It is clear that Backpage knowingly facilitated prostitution by seeking out advertisers and helping them with their ads. It's likely that they turned a blind eye to underage prostitution, but it's unclear if they didn't want to do the job of policing for legal or moral reasons or if they just wanted the extra revenue.
BTW, while the age of consent is lower in much of the worl
Re:Gee, that's too bad (Score:4, Insightful)
Because in many jurisdictions there is no legal distinction between the teenager who has sex with their girlfriend* just one year younger than themselves and the thirty-year-old who rapes a toddler. This is something of an injustice.
*Funnily enough it's less likely to prosecute the other way around.
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I don't think I am wrong or lying. I've been reading up on Backpage and found things like this
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/0... [nytimes.com]
And this
https://www.portman.senate.gov... [senate.gov]
So you've got a company whose whole business model was ads for underage hookers. And they used CDA S 230 against anyone who impeded that model
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
* Backpage.com v. McKenna, et al., CASE NO. C12-954-RSM
* Backpage.com LLC v Cooper, Case #: 12-cv-00654[SS1]
* Backpage.com LLC v Hoffman et al., Civil Action No. 13-cv-03952 (DMC) (JAD)
The court upheld immunity for Backpage in contesting a state of Washington law (SB6251) that would have made providers of third-party content online liable for any crimes related to a minor in Washington State. The states of Tennessee and New Jersey later passed similar legislation. Backpage argued that the laws violated Section 230, the Commerce Clause of the United States Constitution, and the First and Fifth Amendments. In all three cases the courts granted Backpage permanent injunctive relief and awarded them attorney's fees.
Backpage.com v. Dart., CASE NO. 15-3047
The court ruled in favor of Backpage after Sheriff Tom Dart of Cook County IL, a frequent critic of Backpage and its adult postings section, sent a letter on his official stationary to Visa and MasterCard demanding that these firms "immediately cease and desist..." allowing the use of their credit cards to purchase ads on Backpage. Within two days both companies withdrew their services from Backpage. Backpage filed a lawsuit asking for a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction against Dart granting Backpage relief and return to the status quo prior to Dart sending the letter. Backpage alleged that Dart's actions were unconstitutional violating the First and Fourteenth amendments to the US Constitution as well as Section 230 of the CDA. Backpage asked for Dart to retract his "cease and desist" letters. After initially being denied the injunctive relief by a lower court, the Seventh Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals reversed that decision and directed that a permanent injunction be issued enjoining Dart and his office from taking any actions "...to coerce or threaten credit card companies...with sanctions intended to ban credit card or other financial services from being provided to Backpage.com." The court cited section 230 as part of its decision.
At which point Congress passed SESTA which stops people doing that.
And this thread is full people criticizing the notion of the age of consent, pointing out that pedoph
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You are positively Trump-like in your ability to shrug off the truth.
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a company whose whole business model was ads for underage hookers
That's just hyperbole.
At which point Congress passed SESTA which stops people doing that.
Unfortunately it stops a lot of other things too. It's a shitty law, badly written, ill thought out and should not have been fucking passed.
See https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/... [eff.org] as a simple example.
Target sex traffickers and people fucking children but do so in a proportionate and sensible way. SESTA is not the answer.
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Only if, you know, you offered any sort of proof they were doing that. Hell, to the fact that it's claimed they were scrubbing underage ads, from the US Senate report in a footnote:
'Ferrer also personally supervised multiple “deep cleans” of
previously published Backpage ads to scrub them of suspect words. At his direction, words
indicative of underage prostitution and other crim
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What about this?
https://www.washingtonpost.com... [washingtonpost.com]
A contractor for the controversial classifieds website Backpage.com has been aggressively soliciting and creating sex-related ads, despite Backpage's repeated insistence that it had no role in the content of ads posted on its site, according to a trove of newly discovered documents.
The documents show that Backpage hired a company in the Philippines to lure advertisers -- and customers seeking sex -- from sites run by its competitors. The spreadsheets, emails, audio files and employee manuals were revealed in an unrelated legal dispute and provided to The Washington Post.
Workers in the Philippine call center scoured the Internet for newly listed sex ads, then contacted the people who posted them and offered a free ad on Backpage.com, the documents show. The contractor's workers even created each new ad so it could be activated with one click.
Workers also created phony sex ads, offering to "Let a young babe show you the way" or "Little angel seeks daddy," adding photos of barely clad women and explicit sex patter, the documents show. The workers posted the ads on competitors' websites. Then, when a potential customer expressed interest, an email directed that person to Backpage.com, where they would find authentic ads, spreadsheets used to track the process show.
If they really were making a good faith effort to remove ads but didn't have enough people that would be one thing. Actively soliciting ads is quite another.
Now you'll say 'well soliciting sex ads isn't illegal'. However what they're accused of is worse than that
An investigation by a Senate subcommittee revealed earlier this year found that Backpage was editing ads to remove language indicating underage girls were available, rather than removing the ads. "Backpage has been righteously indignant throughout our investigation," said Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), a subcommittee member, "about how we were infringing on their constitutional rights, because they were a mere passthrough." She noted, however, that Backpage was not only changing ads but also was also guiding posters in how to conceal their true intentions.
"But that's nothing compared to this" new information, McCaskill said after The Post described the data. "This is about as far from passive as you can get. This is soliciting. This is, really, trickery. .â.â. So I hope this opens the floodgates of liability for Backpage. Nobody deserves it more."
And it's not just online sex ads either - Backpage executives were accused of pimping and money laundering and involvement in the prostitution and death of a minor -
"This is the commercialization of this crime against children," said Yiota Souras, the center's general counsel. "And it's what businesses do -- they grow internationally; they have marketing plans to beat the competition and offer incentives to get more clients; they seek legal protections for their business interests. This is a traditional business model, but here the transaction too often is selling children for sex online."
In January, Backpage's top officials appeared before the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. Chief executive Carl Ferrer, co-founders Michael Lacey and James Larkin and general counsel McDougall all invoked their Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate themselves and declined to answer any questions.
Ferrer, Lacey and Larkin are facing criminal charges in California for pimping and money laundering, though a court there threw out similar pimping charges last year. And among eight civil suits filed against Backpage this year is a wrongful-death action in Chicago by the mother of 16-year-old Desiree Robinson, who was slain in December after repeatedly being sold for sex on Backpage.
"Every single day, we're learning something new," said Yvonne Ambrose, Desiree's mother. "Not just what's going on with Desiree, but what's happening with Backpage, what they're doing on this site. Everybody knows they're doing it, and they're not being held accountable." Backpage has not responded to the suit, which was filed in May.
In late June, federal agents arrested the man who allegedly had been posting Backpage ads for Desiree, which described her as "Nicki," who was "new in town" and "looking for upscale Gentlemen to have a great time with." The FBI alleged that Joseph Hazley, 33, would drive her to appointments for "commercial sex" and collected some or all of the money she was paid. "I'm in a situation where I'm being pimped," Desiree wrote on Facebook days before her death. "He won't let me leave."
Hazley was charged in federal court with sex trafficking of a minor. Hazley's lawyer, Michael Schmiege, said in an interview that Hazley didn't know that Desiree was a minor and had no role in her killing.
It's like The Silk Road. The Silk
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Sex ads. Not prostitution ads. And again, all the references are "little angel" and "young babe" which is precisely the same language used by tons of 18+ porn and just 18+ people in general.
No doubt. They also didn't say they weren't soliciting s
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So you charge them, arrest them, and try them. If guilty, they go to jail.
Multiple jurisdictions passed laws that criminalized them and when people did that they hid behind CDA S 230. And they won.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
* Backpage.com v. McKenna, et al., CASE NO. C12-954-RSM
* Backpage.com LLC v Cooper, Case #: 12-cv-00654[SS1]
* Backpage.com LLC v Hoffman et al., Civil Action No. 13-cv-03952 (DMC) (JAD)
The court upheld immunity for Backpage in contesting a state of Washington law (SB6251) that would have made providers of third-party content online liable for any crimes related to a minor in Washington State. The states of Tennessee and New Jersey later passed similar legislation. Backpage argued that the laws violated Section 230, the Commerce Clause of the United States Constitution, and the First and Fifth Amendments. In all three cases the courts granted Backpage permanent injunctive relief and awarded them attorney's fees.
Backpage.com v. Dart., CASE NO. 15-3047
The court ruled in favor of Backpage after Sheriff Tom Dart of Cook County IL, a frequent critic of Backpage and its adult postings section, sent a letter on his official stationary to Visa and MasterCard demanding that these firms "immediately cease and desist..." allowing the use of their credit cards to purchase ads on Backpage. Within two days both companies withdrew their services from Backpage. Backpage filed a lawsuit asking for a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction against Dart granting Backpage relief and return to the status quo prior to Dart sending the letter. Backpage alleged that Dart's actions were unconstitutional violating the First and Fourteenth amendments to the US Constitution as well as Section 230 of the CDA. Backpage asked for Dart to retract his "cease and desist" letters. After initially being denied the injunctive relief by a lower court, the Seventh Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals reversed that decision and directed that a permanent injunction be issued enjoining Dart and his office from taking any actions "...to coerce or threaten credit card companies...with sanctions intended to ban credit card or other financial services from being provided to Backpage.com." The court cited section 230 as part of its decision.
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They won because they were not violat
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If people are running a prostitution ring where half of the prostitutes are underage and they use the CDA to avoid getting prosectued [slashdot.org], it's not that surprising that the Congress would eventually do something to change that. Which is that SESTA is.
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You even refute your own claim with your own citations in that post; the charges of pimping where dismissed, so the legal system has already tossed out that claim completely.
Bullshit
https://www.azcentral.com/stor... [azcentral.com]
The criminal case brought by the California Attorney General's Office against Backpage was two-fold.
One set of charges accused the website's operators of profiting from sex trafficking and setting up elaborate schemes that allowed the site to take in money from illegal prostitution transactions. That part of the case stayed intact on Wednesday.
The other part accused the website of acting as a virtual pimp. Those charges were tossed out because the judge ruled that the website did not have a hand in actually writing the ads that sold the services; it merely hosted the ads.
The judge said the allegations of financial crimes are not subject to protection by the Communications Decency Act or the First Amendment.
I.e. there were two sets of charges. Financial ones and virtual pimping. The virtual pimping ones were tossed because of the CDA and First Amendment but the financial ones were not.
I.e. with SESTA in place they would not have been able to use the CDA as a shield. Which meants they would have been prosecuted for both sets of charges. Without SESTA in place they could only be prosecuted for the financial crimes.
I.e. the CDA blocked them from being prosecuted for the v
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So you concede that they successfully used the CDA to get off one of the two sets of charges?
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You have still failed to substantiate your original claims many, many posts back. This part of the discussion is an attempt to distract from that so you don't have to provide proof that those claims are truthful and not just something you made up.
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You're a liar and a pedo apologist.
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Maybe if they just legalized prostitution nationwide we wouldn't have to worry about underage prostitution anymore because it could be regulated better?
Selling/buying sex in private isn't illegal in the UK, and the UK hasn't solved the underage prostitution problem. Or the sex trafficking problem.
In fact UK regulations are pretty sensible [wikipedia.org] and the UK still had chronic problems with those.
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Selling/buying sex in private isn't illegal in the UK, and the UK hasn't solved the underage prostitution problem. Or the sex trafficking problem.
They haven't solved it completely, but they mostly do better than America. The goal of reform is improvement, not perfection. Countries that have liberalized sex laws tend to see less commercial sex related violence, disease, and coercion.
Prudes hate to hear it, but people actually do better when left to decide for themselves what to do with their penises and vaginas, without excessive government regulation.
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They haven't solved it completely, but they mostly do better than America.
1400 girls in Rotherham would probably disagree
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Plus of course the UK has just passed the Modern Slavery Act because sex trafficking is such a problem
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
And then there's this inquiry which keeps losing its chairperson and is frankly unlikely to ever report anything. The reason for that is most likely that some very powerful people would be implicated either in abuse or a cover up and they don't want that to happen.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.. [wikipedia.org]
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You mean this?
In November 2014 Fiona Mactaggart MP added an amendment to the bill concerning prostitution, aimed at criminalising the purchase of sex. In the bill's debate in the House House of Commons, John McDonnell MP argued against the amendment. He highlighted the lack of evidence for any correlation between the Swedish sex purchase ban and a reduction in numbers of sex workers or their clients, and cited findings "that not only do such measures not work, they actually cause harm". McDonnell quoted Reverend Andrew Dotchin, a founding member of the Safety First Coalition: "I strongly oppose clauses on prostitution in the Modern Slavery Bill, which would make the purchase of sex illegal. Criminalising clients does not stop prostitution, nor does it stop the criminalisation of women. It drives prostitution further underground, making it more dangerous and stigmatising for women." The amendment was subsequently dropped.
The Modern Slavery Act is aimed at stopping people being trafficked - some of whom end up forced to work as sex workers.
It doesn't criminalise buying or selling sex, and nor should it. It's the people being forced to work in the sex industry who are the problem.
Re: Gee, that's too bad (Score:2)
They were certainly making aggressive moves to break into the underage prostitute ad market
You're quick to quote Bezos' CIA disinfo rag but I don't suppose it occurred to you that the "underage prostitute ad market" that Backpage wanted so badly to "break into" doesn't fucking exist?? "Ad market..." (rofl)
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https://www.dallasnews.com/new... [dallasnews.com]
For many of us, gift cards are presents for hard-to-please family members who want to pick out their own gadgets at Best Buy.
For pimps and prostitutes, gift cards have become a currency to pay for sex ads on Backpage.com, anti-prostitution activists say.
Dallas-based Backpage, a classified-ad site similar to Craigslist, is the leading online marketplace for sex, according to government investigators and federal prosecutors who have been struggling for years to shut it down. The U.S. Justice Department says more than half of sex-trafficking victims are under 18.
Credit card companies stopped doing business with the website two years ago. People could still buy Backpage ads, but it became more difficult: They had to mail in checks or use complicated digital currencies like bitcoin.
But now, Backpage has begun accepting gift cards from major retailers, The Dallas Morning News has confirmed. That means a pimp could walk into any local grocery store and pick up a convenient, untraceable way to pay the site to post ads selling women, critics say.
So more than half the victims were under 18. That's not a failure of moderation, that's a business model. And Backpage made a fortune - around $45 million dollars.
https://www.azcentral.com/stor... [azcentral.com]
The criminal case brought by the California Attorney General's Office against Backpage was two-fold.
One set of charges accused the website's operators of profiting from sex trafficking and setting up elaborate schemes that allowed the site to take in money from illegal prostitution transactions. That part of the case stayed intact on Wednesday.
The other part accused the website of acting as a virtual pimp. Those charges were tossed out because the judge ruled that the website did not have a hand in actually writing the ads that sold the services; it merely hosted the ads.
The judge said the allegations of financial crimes are not subject to protection by the Communications Decency Act or the First Amendment.
"Indeed, the money laundering charges based on bank and wire fraud on their face, are not based on publication of third party speech at all," the ruling says. "Rather, they are based on the purported illegality of Defendants financial operations."
From August 2013 through October 2016, according to the prosecutors, the website raked in more than $45 million in illegal transactions.
Backpage, according to the indictment, was told by American Express that it would not long process payments because of the website's "overtly sexual content and questionable practices."
Backpage then created, according to prosecutors, a string of companies that could shield the fact the money was involved with Backpage.
According to prosecutors, Ferrer, the Backpage CEO, told employees to remove the name Backpage from descriptions that would show up on transactions. He told another employee, according to the indictment, to tell a credit card company that one of the companies had no relation to Backpage; instead, it helped truck drivers find jobs.
The dismissed counts of pimping suggested that the Backpage executives received prostitution earnings from 12 individuals from California who advertised on the website. According to the indictment, six of those people were under the age of 18.
Once again you see that half of the prostitutes were under age. And Backpage's vast earnings came from them. And the executives got off the pimping charges because of the CDA. Only the money laundering charges stuck.
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I think a better way to look at is to look at this case
http://www.miamiherald.com/lat... [miamiherald.com]
When a 13-year-old runaway threatened to leave a Miami pimp, police say, he forced her to a Liberty City flea market tattoo shop to ink his street name, "Suave," on her eyelids.
The vicious twist to a human trafficking case surfaced this month when Miami police arrested Roman Thomas III, 26, who was already on probation after serving four years in state prison for having sex with a minor.
Thomas was wearing a state corrections GPS monitor when Miami police arrested him on March 18.
The girl, dubbed "Sparkle," was pimped through the classified advertising website Backpage.com, police say. Thomas and a woman plied the girl with liquor, marijuana and the drug Molly as she had sex with men at the Miami Shores Motel.
https://www.nbcmiami.com/news/... [nbcmiami.com]
Now suppose it was a newspaper? I think they'd refuse to run the ad. And if a newspaper run ads like this they would not be protected by safe harbor protections.
I don't see why a website should be allowed to run ads like this, profit from them, and then claim those protections.
And if you look at the law you find it only applies to sex trafficking.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
The Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act (SESTA) is a United States bill introduced by Senator Rob Portman. It seeks to clarify the country's sex trafficking law to make it illegal to knowingly assist, facilitate, or support sex trafficking, and amend the Section 230 safe harbors of the Communications Decency Act (which make online services immune from civil liability for the actions of their users) to exclude enforcement of federal or state sex trafficking laws from its immunity. Portman had previously led an investigation into the online classifieds service Backpage (which had been accused of facilitating child sex trafficking), and argued that Section 230 was protecting its "unscrupulous business practices" and was not designed to provide immunity to websites that facilitate sex trafficking.
I.e. i
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Well, I guess the #MeToo movement stops when the OP can't get any under age nookie.
And trying to poke fun at the 2nd Amendment too while you're at it. Classy.
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But if you start inconveniencing large, unaccountable tech companies, suddenly they're all constitutional scholars.
Right now the media is full of crying kiddies demanding the 2nd Amendment be abolished. And then you see when someone suggests that Section 230 of the CDA should not be a shield against prosecution for running ads for under age or trafficked prostitutes then the tone changes completely and the comment section is full of people sonorously worrying that it's the end of the 1st Amendment.
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Right now the media is full of crying kiddies demanding the 2nd Amendment be abolished.
Sounds like you're the one crying. The 2nd amendment is already limited (no guns on planes), just like the 1st and all the rest. For the record, nobody wants to take your guns away, they just want their kids to be safe when they go to school.
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For the record, nobody wants to take your guns away
For the record, plenty of people think guns should be completely banned.
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FTFY
(Most of the rest of the world disagrees).
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Gotcha. So except for the shotgun . . . you're looking to take the rest away.
It's the equivalent of banning private communications on the internet and television but still claiming that you're fine in regards to the first amendment because you're leaving them newspapers.
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A shotgun to protect your home? Almost nobody has a problem with that.
You need to get out of your bubble. Plenty of people have a problem with that. After the Florida shooting, gun control has been discussed frequently where I work, and I estimate that 20-30% of those who have expressed an opinion believe that all private ownership of guns should be banned.
This may not be a totally representative sample, but it is certainly far beyond "almost nobody".
Just like almost nobody has a problem with reasonable background checks.
Wow. Double bubble. You really need to talk to people. PLENTY of people are vehemently opposed to any further gun control
Re: Gee, that's too bad (Score:2)
For the record, nobody wants to take your guns away
You, sir, are a liar or a moron; I suspect the latter...
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