The Backpage sex-trafficking case testing the limits of the First Amendment

[Borealis]

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/07/29/first-amendment-limits-backpage-escort-ads-219034

In June 2015, an ad appeared on Backpage.com in Texas with a series of alluring photos of a naked woman, who described herself to potential dates as “fun, young, exotic,” and “ready
to be your fantasy girl.” By the end of the month, the woman had been murdered by a customer who responded to the ad. He set her corpse on fire in an attempt to destroy the
evidence. When the victim’s father contacted Backpage.com to try and get the pictures of his dead daughter removed from the site, the company didn’t immediately comply.

At the time, Backpage was the largest online publisher of sex ads in the world with city-specific sites spanning 97 countries. In the 11 years since it had been launched, it had earned
some $500 million for its owners. But it was also the scourge of law enforcement officials across the country whose investigative files teemed with hundreds of examples of cases
that had connections to ads on the site

The longtime business partners portray themselves as First Amendment martyrs, fighting to preserve free speech on the internet. They believe this battle isn’t just a self-preservation
strategy but a natural extension of the pioneering newspaper company they planted in the Arizona desert more than four decades ago, a network of alternative weeklies that would
span the country before taking a massive revenue hit from the internet. Their innovation—Backpage.com—not only saved the company, they say, but it brought needed sunlight to a
sexual underground.

Since 2010, more than two dozen lawsuits have been filed against the company seeking damages for individuals who say they’ve been victimized by traffickers who relied on the online
marketplace to facilitate their crimes.“What they had been doing is providing a platform where it was incredibly easy to sell a child to be raped multiple times a day,” said Yiota Souras,
general counsel for the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

But Backpage.com has prevailed repeatedly in those cases, typically getting them dismissed even before any significant evidence was collected. The company’s defense was simple:
Federal law—specifically Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act—protects online publishers from civil or criminal penalties for hosting content posted by third parties. In
short, they’re no more responsible than a knife manufacturer whose product is used in a stabbing.

In January 2017, Lacey, Larkin and three other top Backpage officials strode into the third floor of the Dirksen Senate Office Building to testify before the Senate Permanent
Subcommittee on Investigations. Lacey, in particular, displayed an air of bored resignation with the proceedings. At one point, he conspicuously yawned as senators laid out the grim
details of human trafficking through Backpage.

The million pages of emails, memos and financial records that Backpage had produced under court order revealed what company officials had refused to discuss in public. They had
systematically edited ads, routinely deleting words such as “Lolita,” “school girl” and “amber alert” in favor of coded terms such as “red roses” (money) and “GFE” (girlfriend experience).
The investigation also determined that Backpage was involved in three out of every four child trafficking reports received by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. In
addition, the report concluded that the purported sale of Backpage to Ferrer in 2014 was a sham, and that Lacey and Larkin retained ownership stakes and operational control of the
company.

At nearly the same time as the indictments were handed down in March, Congress voted by overwhelming margins to amend the Communications Decency Act. The bipartisan bill
allows prosecutors or victims to take websites to court if they knowingly enable sex trafficking through advertisements, posts or other means. Advocates hailed the two developments
as a breakthrough moment in fighting online trafficking of juveniles.

But many advocates of online free speech fear the weakening of federal protections will spark a wave of litigation and open the door to Congress further eroding protections. In late
June, Human Rights Watch and other plaintiffs filed a lawsuit in federal court seeking to invalidate the new law, arguing that it’s vague, broad restrictions violate the First and Fifth
Amendments.

Pretty big article.

[AtomicSans]

Drugs and sex work can both be pretty much fixed this way.

[Borealis]

The evangelical base of the GOP would never allow it, the second either one of those are legalized the GOP would win all elections for the next half-decade and criminalize it again.

[Maestra Fénix]

You would get like here in Germany or Netherlands, increasing the human traffic due "supply and demand", plus the pimps continue harming the people ( as they control the "syndicates" as well ).

The only way is to punish the pimps and the clients, while freeing the slaves with real help so they can stay safe and leave that world. And at the same way, fight these behaviours at the society in order to get rid of the idea that humans are sexual objects that can be bought.

[Crumpets]

Ideally the government would preside over those markets, the government or a very heavily regulated private approach to force out as much black market as possible. We tried a "legal " approach over here in a small area of Leeds but the lack of oversight and the fact that it was essentially a 'turn a blind eye' kind of thing just meant that the situation didn't improve and the criminals still have their hands in it.