Cloudflare: FOSTA Was a 'Very Bad Bill' That's Left the Internet's Infrastructure Hanging (vice.com) 192
Last week, President Donald Trump signed the Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (FOSTA) into law. It's a bill that penalizes any platform found "facilitating prostitution," and has caused many advocacy groups to come out against the bill, saying that it undermines essential internet freedoms. The most recent entity to decry FOSTA is Cloudflare, which recently decided to terminate its content delivery network services for an alternative, decentralized social media platform called Switter. Motherboard talked to Cloudflare's general counsel, Doug Kramer, about the bill and he said that FOSTA was an ill-consider bill that's now become a dangerous law: "[Terminating service to Switter] is related to our attempts to understand FOSTA, which is a very bad law and a very dangerous precedent," he told me in a phone conversation. "We have been traditionally very open about what we do and our roles as an internet infrastructure company, and the steps we take to both comply with the law and our legal obligations -- but also provide security and protection, let the internet flourish and support our goals of building a better internet." Cloudflare lobbied against FOSTA, Kramer said, urging lawmakers to be more specific about how infrastructure companies like internet service providers, registrars and hosting and security companies like Cloudflare would be impacted. Now, he said, they're trying to figure out how customers like Switter will be affected, and how Cloudflare will be held accountable for them.
"We don't deny at all that we have an obligation to comply with the law," he said. "We tried in this circumstance to get a law that would make sense for infrastructure companies... Congress didn't do the hard work of understanding how the internet works and how this law should be crafted to pursue its goals without unintended consequences. We talked to them about this. A lot of groups did. And it was hard work that they decided not do." He said the company hopes, going forward, that there will be more clarity from lawmakers on how FOSTA is applied to internet infrastructure. But until then, he and others there are having to figure it out along with law enforcement and customers. "Listen, we've been saying this all along and I think people are saying now, this is a very bad law," Kramer said. "We think, for now, it makes the internet a different place and a little less free today as a result. And there's a real-world implication of this that people are just starting to grapple with."
"We don't deny at all that we have an obligation to comply with the law," he said. "We tried in this circumstance to get a law that would make sense for infrastructure companies... Congress didn't do the hard work of understanding how the internet works and how this law should be crafted to pursue its goals without unintended consequences. We talked to them about this. A lot of groups did. And it was hard work that they decided not do." He said the company hopes, going forward, that there will be more clarity from lawmakers on how FOSTA is applied to internet infrastructure. But until then, he and others there are having to figure it out along with law enforcement and customers. "Listen, we've been saying this all along and I think people are saying now, this is a very bad law," Kramer said. "We think, for now, it makes the internet a different place and a little less free today as a result. And there's a real-world implication of this that people are just starting to grapple with."
Why blame Trump... (Score:5, Insightful)
When the majority of Democrats in the House and Senate voted for this?
Re:Why blame Trump... (Score:4, Insightful)
what "blame" all they said was he signed it, which is factual.
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People blame the president because people always blame the president. They want a single person to point at.
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Presidents always tend to get the blame, regardless of party. Example on the other side: "Obamacare," even though Obama had nothing to do with it's writing. It was primarily written up by Kennedy's team.
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democrats?
you mean the party that has ZERO POWER in this era?
the R's have all 3 power bases.
you wanna blame the D's though?
you truly are an anonymous asswipe.
Re:Why blame Trump... (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm blaming the D's AND the R's. Regardless of who's in power, every representative gets a vote, and nearly everyone used it to pass FOSTA. Had the D's mostly voted against FOSTA, it would have still passed, but I wouldn't blame them. That's how it works.
By the way, if you are a civil liberties person and concerned about privacy, Paul and Wyden would be great to donate to. If you're partisan, donate to the one on your party.
Re:Why blame Trump... (Score:4, Interesting)
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Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
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The President is a Republican. Any one of those three people could have killed the bill.
In practice, Trump couldn't have killed it. He could have made an empty gesture and vetoed it, but unless more than 30 senators changed their mind because of the veto, it would still become law.
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Ron Wyden is amazing. Warren too, but she voted for this travesty.
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The republicans have so much power, they voted to increase the vote to pass a budget to 60% (something they could do with their measly 50%), just to try to pass something evil and blame the Democrats when the Democrats didn't vote for the evil.
The only time they don't have p
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You're right that only the Republicans had the power to make this bill happen, or stop it. All the Democrats could do was to go through the motions: casting a vote and sending a signal. So why the fuck send a signal of support? Are they out of their tiny minds? Did none of their staffers bother to go through this and say "this bill doesn't do what you'd want it to do, despite what it's called. It's a bad bill. Vote no."?
Because there are more GOPer than DEMs (Score:2)
Re:Why blame Trump... (Score:5, Informative)
The vote would have gone no other way. So it lands on the President to veto crap like that if it passes. Even with a "veto proof majority". Especially with a veto-proof majority.
The problem is politics, where everything is framed by the bullies. If you don't vote for it, you'll be vilified.
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the oldest profession (Score:3)
Okay, maybe it is indeed the selling of ass, but not far behind is the often uncompensated occupation of righteous indignation... undoubtedly founded by a special interest group previously in charge of a monopoly on the delivery of ass... not entirely an objective political action committee.
Clearly legalized prostitution is a deterrent to sexual assault. If I hear one more person claim rape isn't a sex crime, I think I might run outside with my hands over my ears and complete those fucking chores I've been putting off... or have another whiskey. I can't be certain.
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If I hear one more person claim rape isn't a sex crime
??? Do people say this?
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??? Do people say this?
I've heard it most of my life. "It's a crime of power and control." They don't mean it isn't *categorized* as a sex crime, though. They're talking about motivations, etc.
Personally, I've always though that it's probably overly-simplistic to boil an entire category of crime down to a single, universal motive.
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In many cases the rape is to be seen as a power play resulting in sex.
You can apply that to just about any crime. Tax evasion is about power, forcing your will over the government and beating the system, not about wanting to pay less money.. it just happens to result in paying less money on your taxes.
I'm sure it is true for some perpetrators but I wouldn't say "many" without some evidence, which I've never seen. I don't know how you'd even collect such evidence. How do you determine the "true" motivation for a crime? Ask the criminal and trust the answer? On the other hand w
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You haven't hung out around very many drunken, entitled frat boys, have you?
And the guy was probably packing serious heat (in his pants) until that last beer shooter vaulted him into the "you wish" whiskey dick clover.
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"We should no more be encouraging rapists to find a supposedly safe outlet for it than we should facilitate murderers by giving them realistic, blood-spurting dummies to stab...to make such a solution available is to risk normalizing rape by giving it a publicly acceptable face."
-- The New York Times
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Was the parent encouraging the raping of prostitutes? In what way is legalized prostitution a deterrent to sexual assault? Now you've got me all confused.
Re:the oldest profession (Score:5, Insightful)
Some of them might. Some of them might rape more. The correct response so such ideas is always "Show me the data."
Unfortunately for you, someone did just that, and the numbers strongly suggest that you're wrong [huffingtonpost.com]. And lest you think the phenomenon is limited to Europe, a present Rhode Island [washingtonpost.com] as a counterpoint.
Disturbing as it might seem to many, legalized prostitution actually does reduce rape and sexual abuse. A lot. We're not talking about some small variation that could be attributed to chance. We're talking about 30% reduction within just two years. Much of this is likely because prostitutes in those areas feel safe admitting what they do to police, which means they can turn in people who commit crimes against them, thus putting people who harm other people behind bars.
More to the point, the argument in favor of legalizing prostitution is precisely the same as the argument for so-called "sancuary cities" that are hostile towards attempts to deport people solely for being undocumented immigrants. Sanctuary cities have lower crime rates as a direct result of those policies, because the immigrant community isn't afraid to report crimes. What possible reason, then, could anyone have for believing that legalized prostitution would not reduce crime in the same way?
And of course, preventing women from charging for sex means that any woman who feels that this is her only plausible way out of abject poverty is denied the opportunity to be so empowered legally, and therefore must therefore do so illegally. This means those women are much more at risk of abuse, at risk of getting caught up in networks of people who "protect" them in exchange for skimming part of the profit, because they aren't eligible for protection by law enforcement, and at risk of rape by former customers. And of course, they can't usefully report those rapes, because the first question out of the defense attorney's mouth will be, "How did you know the defendant," and if the witness's answer is, "Your honor, I plead the fifth amendment," the case isn't going to go well for the prosecution.
Anti-prostitution laws actually contribute to the subjugation of women. They don't prevent it. Anyone who says otherwise is kidding him/herself. The numbers speak volumes, and they say you're wrong. Very wrong. Want to convince me otherwise? Show me your numbers, and tell me why your numbers are better.
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And after all that time carefully editing the last 90% of that post, I missed a typo in the first paragraph. "The correct response to such ideas is always 'Show me the data.'" [redacted swearing]
FTFM.
Re:the oldest profession (Score:5, Informative)
https://journalistsresource.org/studies/government/criminal-justice/legal-prostitution-reduce-rape-holland [journalistsresource.org]
Here's another take on that Dutch study
The authors provide “causal evidence” of a 32 to 40 percent reduction in rape and sexual abuse within two years of a city opening a tippelzone. The higher number is for cities that license sex work in the tippelzone; the lower figure is for cities without a licensing process. “The decreases in sexual abuse are stronger in cities with licensed tippelzones.”
These gains fade over time.
Without precise data on the victims of sexual violence, it is not possible to determine exactly how the number of rapes and cases of sexual abuse fall in the population at large. Some victims are sex workers. But the authors believe the tippelzones lead “to a decrease in sexual violence on women more generally by providing an anonymous, appealing and easily accessible outlet for sex to otherwise violent individuals.”
When licensing is introduced after a tippelzone is established, it increases instances of sexual abuse and rape. This happens because, at first, the tippelzone attracts foreign prostitutes with dubious legal status. When they suddenly need licensing, many leave for “less controlled environments.”
Still, in a survey the authors cite, “95 percent of the interviewed prostitutes report feeling safer within the tippelzone.”
In cities with both a tippelzone and a licensing requirement, the authors find a 25 percent reduction in drug-related crimes within two years. That result persists beyond two years.
The authors do not find a relationship between tippelzones and weapons crimes or violent assaults.
As for perceptions, residents living near a tippelzone without a licensing system believe the tippelzone increases drug-related crime by 6 percent.
In cities where licensing requirements for sex workers are introduced at the same time as tippelzones, perceptions of drug-related crime fall across the city as a whole, though the perceptions rise slightly in areas near the tippelzones.
Seems like a mixed bag and certainly not definitive with "casual evidence".
https://orgs.law.harvard.edu/lids/2014/06/12/does-legalized-prostitution-increase-human-trafficking/ [harvard.edu]
A 2012 study published in World Development, “Does Legalized Prostitution Increase Human Trafficking?” investigates the effect of legalized prostitution on human trafficking inflows into high-income countries. The researchers — Seo-Yeong Cho of the German Institute for Economic Research, Axel Dreher of the University of Heidelberg and Eric Neumayer of the London School of Economics and Political Science — analyzed cross-sectional data of 116 countries to determine the effect of legalized prostitution on human trafficking inflows. In addition, they reviewed case studies of Denmark, Germany and Switzerland to examine the longitudinal effects of legalizing or criminalizing prostitution.
The study’s findings include:
Countries with legalized prostitution are associated with higher human trafficking inflows than countries where prostitution is prohibited. The scale effect of legalizing prostitution, i.e. expansion of the market, outweighs the substitution effect, where legal sex workers are favored over illegal workers. On average, countries with legalized prostitution report a greater incidence of human trafficking inflows.
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I'm not sure that I agree with the quote, we do encourage people with violent urges to work them out in a safe setting. Nothing as graphic as blood-spurting dummies, but punching things like a pillow or a heavy bag is not considered unhealthy when you're working out s
Re:the oldest profession (Score:4, Informative)
After myredbook went down, rapes of sex workers went up almost 20% as they were forced to become streetwalkers again. Already articles are starting to appear about this problem surging again. This law will kill some sex workers.
As a legitimate licensed massage therapist, my independence is greatly cut down as it's hard to find a place to advertise now so only corporate massage outlets can advertise right now. I might have to go work for less than half the rate for massage envy or some place like that. If they'll even hire me (I'm old- but have over two decades experience helping people recover from car wrecks after their physical therapy money runs out, and to relieve migraines, and to help people with fibromyalgia, and people with various overwork syndromes-- but to a spa- they want only young attractive people.)
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" but to a spa- they want only young attractive people."
Sure wasn't like that at my (expensive) Hotel del Coronado vacation the other week. I got an elderly short man that looked like he could've been a professional horse jockey doing my deep-tissue Swedish.
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often uncompensated occupation of righteous indignation
Not as often uncompensated as you'd think. The ability to deliver a mindless voter base motivated by blind rage is worth quite a lot. And if paid enough, their leaders will happily look the other way while the customer fondles a few altar boys.
Best to move offshore (Score:3, Interesting)
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This is why the USA is strange .. (Score:3, Informative)
You are a nation that is fundamentally happy with the idea of people shooting children when they are at school, but the barest glimpse of a nipple and its national indignation. Very strange priorities ...
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Sex is big business, and the market has to be tightly controlled. Putting it the hands of organized criminals makes the rules easy to enforce, without all that legal mumbo-jumbo about your 'rights'. Mafia/corporate/government are not so distinct as the facade alludes.
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Putting it the hands of organized criminals makes the rules easy to enforce, ...
Works so well with drugs... oh... wait :-/
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Wow. Completely wrong.
BOTH sides agree that people shooting children is a bad thing. However, both sides completely differ in their approach on how to prevent this.
One side thinks that if we pass enough gun laws, a person willing to break murder laws will decide to obey gun laws. They also assume that murderers can't use other weapons. America's two largest attacks did not use guns. Nice, France -- 86 people killed with a truck, and that was more deadly than our largest mass shooting.
The other side acce
What a load of crap. (Score:1)
Cloudflare claims "Congress didn’t do the hard work of understanding how the internet works and how this law should be crafted to pursue its goals without unintended consequences. We talked to them about this. A lot of groups did. And it was hard work that they decided not do.”
This is a load of crap. What Cloudflare really wanted was a way that they could continue doing business without having to doing any of the work required for taking on clients. What they wanted was a "get out of jail free
Re:What a load of crap. (Score:4, Insightful)
Imagine a law that says you cannot serve food in restaurants to anyone that either has a felony conviction or is a suspect in an ongoing case in any jurisdiction in the US.
Cloudflare's business should be providing internet infrastructure to paying (or nonpaying) customers. It should not be, at all, trying to decide whether or not a customer's data or business practices are unacceptable in various regions around the world, especially at a level where Cloudflare itself is supposedly criminal liable. Can you imagine needing to undergo a background check to service from an ISP? That's basically what this amounts to.
It's simply ridiculous.
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Imagine a law that says you cannot serve food in restaurants to anyone that either has a felony conviction or is a suspect in an ongoing case in any jurisdiction in the US.
A more apt example would be selling someone a gun when you know they intend to use it to use it to rob a bank. Surprise, that is already illegal!
Re:What a load of crap. (Score:5, Informative)
Now, if you want to say Cloudflare should be liable for illegal activities they're aware of, facilitated by their services, and don't take action to stop, we can probably agree on that. And, funny enough, that's exactly what the existing Safe Harbor laws already do.
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Actually, it's more like selling someone a gun, then learning after the fact that they intend to use it to rob a bank, with the slight difference that, in this case, Cloudflare can take the gun back.
Actually you are wrong. The law requires INTENT to do the act, which means BEFORE it happens. It's not finding out afterwards that something bad happened, it's going into the deal explicitly to promote that act.
Unless Cloudflare is selling ISP services with the intent of promoting prostitution and sales of sex services with sex trafficking victims, they aren't a target of the law.
Now, if you want to say Cloudflare should be liable for illegal activities they're aware of, facilitated by their services, and don't take action to stop, we can probably agree on that.
Then you must agree with FOSTA and SESTA, because the intent requirement is exactly what that means.
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Actually you are wrong.
You seem to have misunderstood what I wrote, because nothing you wrote after what I just quoted disagrees with my point. In fact, that's one of two points I was trying to make.
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Additionally, the following statement you made:
except that FOSTA actually puts that liability on Cloudflare even though they have no way of knowing what someone will use their service for
is also wrong, for the same reason. If you have no way of knowing what someone will use the service for, then you cannot have the requisite intent of se
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I didn't misunderstand, I simply told you that your first sentence was wrong. It is NOT "more like" finding out after the fact that the customer was doing something illegal, it requires knowing BEFORE THE FACT that the intended use is illegal and selling the service WITH THE INTENT of promoting that illegal act.
Ah, I see, you think I was talking about FOSTA, so you did misunderstand. FOSTA came up later in my comment, but the bit you misunderstood there was in response to:
A more apt example would be selling someone a gun when you know they intend to use it to use it to rob a bank. Surprise, that is already illegal!
which, in turn, was in response to:
Imagine a law that says you cannot serve food in restaurants to anyone that either has a felony conviction or is a suspect in an ongoing case in any jurisdiction in the US.
Now, that last one was about FOSTA, but it was also wrong.
Additionally, the following statement you made is also wrong, for the same reason. If you have no way of knowing what someone will use the service for, then you cannot have the requisite intent of selling it to them for the promotion of that illegal activity.
Ah, that logic works fine for a gun, because the gun leaves your store before being used in the commission of a crime (unless it's used to rob your store, of course). It falls apart when referring to a service rendered wholly on your premises, such as the
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Ah, I see, you think I was talking about FOSTA,
Yes, of course. The title of the article here is about FOSTA, the analogy that was presented was about FOSTA, and you refer to FOSTA after you try to present your corrected version of that analogy. Why would I assume you were NOT talking about FOSTA? Just what is your analogy "more like" if not FOSTA?
Ah, that logic works fine for a gun, ... It falls apart when referring to a service rendered wholly on your premises, such as the services offered by Cloudflare because, ostensibly, you should know what is being done on your premises.
That is your assumption, but it does not appear in the law. You must be providing the service WITH THE INTENT, which means before-the-fact knowledge. There is no assumption in the law that any webhosting servic
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FOSTA requires INTENT
Oh? [theverge.com]
The bill would make websites criminally liable for hosting ads and other content linked to a sex-trafficking enterprise. The result would be a major exception to existing Safe Harbor provisions, and has been opposed by groups like the EFF and ACLU
Well, the EFF and ACLU have staff lawyers. Are you an attorney? No? I'll trust their interpretation, then.
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Oh?
Read. The. Law. It's online. The Verge is not a definitive source.
The bill would make websites criminally liable for hosting ads and other content linked to a sex-trafficking enterprise.
Websites, and WITH THE INTENT OF PROMOTING OR FOSTERING. Cloudflare is not a website, they are a web hosting service. They don't have the intent. By the way, if you read the law, it is SESTA that talks about websites.
Well, the EFF and ACLU have staff lawyers.
The EFF and ACLU are hardly unbiased sources. Lawyers will say what you pay them to say. Do you really think that every lawyer who argues that his client is not guilty actually believes his client is not guilty? Do you think a la
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Cloudflare is not a website [...] By the way, if you read the law, it is SESTA that talks about websites.
Right, that's why I'm talking about the Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act.
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It doesn't matter, the other points I made still stand. You trust lawyers paid to have the opinion you like instead of reading the law for yourself. Why do we even have a criminal justice system if we should just trust the word of the defense lawyer that his client is not guilty? Why would he l
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It's still SESTA that talks about websites, so when you single out websites...
...then you aren't in this conversation, which is about Cloudflare.
Several times now, you've tried to direct the conversation as though I were talking about one thing when I was clearly talking about another. Sorry, I'm not going to play that game. That would be why I'm not addressing all of your points.
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The thing with FOSTA is that it makes Cloudflare and similar companies liable if they *don't* investigate their clients.
No, it does not.
FOSTA goes way past this, and says that Cloudflare is criminally liable for content they end up caching, period.
No, it does not. Have you read the bill? Not just the hype about it or carefully selected excerpts, but all the words? If you did, then you missed the word "intent".
This is basically a way to have some leverage over all of these network/content providers to ensure that the government can get what they want from them whenever they ask.
You do realize, I hope, that there are all kinds of laws that a government can use against anyone they choose if all they want is leverage over them. The IRS is a pretty good tool for that, and has been used before. They don't need FOSTA or SESTA. And such a poor tool it would be. IRS: "Send us copies of all your tax related
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Did your ISP subject you to a background check before giving you an account? Since you just volunteered yourself and everybody else for one...?
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Unless they had reason to believe that you're a whore who's going to use the internet connectivity in order to set up an online prostitution service...
"We couldn't help but notice that you show an awful lot of leg in your Facebook photos..."
Your turn.
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You know showing a lot of leg isn't porn, right? It's one of the ways escort websites advertise, though. Then again, so is porn.
You know that "escort service" is not "prostitution", right? It is a cover name that some pimps use, but just "escort service" is not illegal. A webhosting service that is approached to sell services to "Fred's Escort Service" is not knowingly and intentionally selling service to a site offering illegal prostitution services. FOSTA is not violated if they do sell.
Now, if Fred tells the hosting service that he'll pay them with hookers and blow, THEN you can infer intent and prior knowledge, but if it's just
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You know that "escort service" is not "prostitution", right?
I do. Then again, that has nothing to do with my post, other than the fact that I used the word "escort" the same way the post I was replying to did, primarily so as not to confuse the person to whom I was replying. If you want to correct someone, correct them.
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Because that's one of the ways escort sites advertise.
If you're on the actual site, well, the advertising worked. I wouldn't know what that looks like, though, because I've never had to pay for "company".
missionary man (Score:1)
And Donald never used prossies ???
Did he just take them on as apprentices
and teach them about boring missionary sex
Sorry don't care (Score:4, Interesting)
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Why should they get the best of both worlds?
"We'll choose who to do business with based on the content they produce, thank you very much. Oh wait, now you want me to be responsible for those admittedly conscious choices? No way that's unfair!"
A real solution (Score:2)
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What we need is responsibility on the individual breaking a law, not the carrier of the information.
These are not completely isolated activities. What if the "information" is the act that breaks the law? "Promoting prostitution" is against the law in many places; "sex trafficking" in many more. If the information is with the intent of promotion then it is already against the law. For example, I cannot legally stand on the street corner and tell people who pull up that they can "pull around the corner to get a bj for $20 from Julie". Conveying that information is, itself, a crime. And if Julie herself stan
Accountable for Knowingly Assisting Rape? Yes. (Score:2)
If it is not forced or for lack of a reasonable alternative for survival, I am all for legalizing and regulation of prostitution and sites that facilitate sexual hookups. I even applaud the women her wilfully serve in such roles and they make life better for over stressed and depressed men. It's a good thing.
However, Craigslist and others should be held responsible when they know that a good amount of the hookups going on are with women who have been abducted and forced into sexual slavery. The Internet
Re: "it makes the internet a different place" (Score:5, Insightful)
Heaven forbid two consenting adults do whatever the fuck they want, causing no injury to anyone, except for moral busybodies.
Re: "it makes the internet a different place" (Score:1)
Agreed, but in the case of human trafficking, these are not consenting adults but rather a victim of some truly horrendous crimes, and open platforms enable the marketplace. Now, if you want to license prostitutes and have them post an ID number on a site ensuring it is legit, then go for it.
Re: "it makes the internet a different place" (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, there's no way traffickers could get fake ID numbers.
The answer to trafficking is to legalize all forms of prostitution. If there's plenty of consenting supply then there's less profit in supplying it illegally and less people will be trafficked.
The same goes for drugs: Making drugs illegal doesn't take any drugs off the streets, it just fills the pockets of the mafia.
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The answer to trafficking is to legalize all forms of prostitution. If there's plenty of consenting supply then there's less profit in supplying it illegally
You assume there would be "plenty of consenting supply". And you assume that the regulation of the industry would not impose costs that illicit providers would avoid, just like those who smuggle and illegally distribute alcohol, cigarettes, and pot already do.
Where there is profit, there is a profit motive. No, I'm sorry, but the answer to trafficking is to keep it illegal and prosecute those who profit and promote it.
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You assume there would be "plenty of consenting supply"
And you assume that there won't be.
Unfortunately for you, the evidence is on my side. Try looking at a country where it's legal, eg. most of Europe.
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And you assume that there won't be.
I don't see a surplus in places like Nevada or Amsterdam, so yes, I assume that this would not change.
Unfortunately for you, the evidence is on my side. Try looking at a country where it's legal, eg. most of Europe.
Why yes, I see scads of beautiful women just lining up to become sex partners with the kind of men who need to pay for sex, because it is such a wonderful, safe, and desirable profession. I remember walking down the street in Amsterdam to see what could be seen, and I remember wanting to flush my eyes with bleach after doing that.
While the supply might be amazing in such places, the demand isn't for what
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I remember walking down the street in Amsterdam to see what could be seen, and I remember wanting to flush my eyes with bleach after doing that.
Ah, yes, the famous Amsterdam street. For tourists.
That ain't typical. Really.
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The problem is this bill gathers them all up and treats them equally. There's no distinction or any incentive for the sites to create distinction. That's the problem with this bill.
Re: "it makes the internet a different place" (Score:5, Insightful)
In practice it’s more of a consideration than a hard principle, but it’s an important one. It means that with any law that harms innocents for the sake of fighting a certain crime, the rights of these innocents must weigh very, very heavily against the purported goals. And where the impact on innocent bystanders is large, it becomes important to ensure and verify that those goals are actually met. In that light, this law falls seriously short. It’s “think of the children” legislation.
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"Whoosh!"
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Re: "it makes the internet a different place" (Score:2)
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Re: "it makes the internet a different place" (Score:4, Informative)
The general sense I get from this is lawmakers either wanted to make a well-intentioned law but, didn't understand the internet well enough to write it, were informed it was bad as written and it would take far more research and work to design it to work as intended, and the lawmakers decided they didn't want to spend the time/work and passed "whatever" instead or anti-sin activists wanted to shut down smut sites on the internet and intentionally passed it under the guise of an anti-trafficking bill to slide it through. Both scenarios are believable so I'm not sure which is correct. It is possible that group 1 started the bill and group 2 hijacked it, too.
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I, for one, always consider willful ignorance to be malicious.
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It works, that's why it is used. It is also wrong.
If you want to stop a behavior, don't just punish those who do it. Punish those who allow it to happen.
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It's one of the primary tools of dictators.
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Yes, we just call it "having my mouthpiece dole out some hush money" now.
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Well, dipshit, the most pertinent difference is the fact the law in question and the topic of this Slashdot post is the Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act and doesn't mention anything about prostitution in any context other than online services.
So...the free newspapers stacked on the window sills at supermarket exits, the ones with prostitution ads on their back pages, which is what Backpage modeled itself after, are still free? Those rags with their relentless Industrial Workers of the World Unite! attitudes that make Nancy Pelosi look like a knuckle-dragging gorilla named Adolf?
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By the same zany, nonsense logic, we should ban labouring jobs because some people are forced into slave labour.
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Surprise, the internet is global. There are other countries. Tons of them in fact. Jeez, get out of your bubble once in a while. This is just an opportunity for the international community to profit at America's expense by scooping up all this business while the prudish Americans forego the sweet, sweet revenue. Don't we like a good America-bashing?
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This is just an opportunity for the international community to profit at America's expense by scooping up all this business
It's pretty hard for someone to "scoop up" all the money from running a prostitution or sex trafficking operation without some physical presence in the country where the operation takes place. I'm not sure how much profit you can make by advertising German hookers in the US, or why you see an issue with prosecuting the sex traffickers who are in the US just because their bosses are in Argentina.