Internet Censorship Bill Could Spell Disaster for Speech and Innovation | Hacker News Reader

Internet Censorship Bill Could Spell Disaster for Speech and Innovation

eff.org

235 pointssnsr74 comments

The Act is as bad as the EFF says it is. 18 U.S.C. 1591 makes illegal "participation in a venture" which financially benefits from trafficking. This bill defines "participation in a venture" to include "knowing conduct by an individual or entity, by any means, that assists, supports, or facilitates the violation."

That language vastly expands potential liability. If a website knows that its services are being used to somehow assist in sex trafficking,[1] the website could be as culpable as the persons getting paid to coordinate the shipping of sex slaves. It's completely bananas.

Here are the sponsors:

Rob Portman (R, Ohio) Richard Blumenthal (D, Connecticut) John McCain (R, Arizona) Claire McCaskill (D, Missouri) John Cornyn (R, Texas) Heidi Heitkamp (D, North Dakota)

[1] It's pretty much impossible to run a website that allows people to communicate that isn't used for illegal purposes. For example, GMail is definitely used to facilitate a wide variety of illegal conduct. Up to now, for criminal liability to exist, you had to go beyond knowing that your service was used to assist criminal activity to taking special measures to assist that criminal activity. This bill basically lowers the standard from "having intent to assist the illegal activity" to "knowing that what you're doing will somehow assist the illegal activity."

It might be a possible minor win for privacy - if collecting certain information might mean that you know that your service somehow assists illegal activity, then one defense against it is not collecting that information.

As noted below, this bill would be an absolute (much deserved?) disaster for websites that police content. Such websites can't hope to avoid the "knowing" prong.

It's more serious than that.

Legally speaking, if the cops show up and tell you that a user is using your site for X, or Y, or Z, then from that point on... you know that your site can be used for X, or Y, or Z. How that knowledge impacts your liability in the event there are others using your service for similar ends, is not at all clear to me given the wording of the Act in question.

It's kind of a "Notice, Knowledge, and Privilege" thing. And that gets really tricky in federal court.

Knowing may come from a user complaint. After a single valid complaint, one may argue that the site is on notice.

I just wrote to Blumenthal and shared some info from your post. He's my senator, and I agree with most of his policies, but this is seriously misguided. Thanks for helping me to understand the chilling effect this bill would potentially have on every popular online communications service.

I seriously cannot imagine how this would not put Facebook, Google, Reddit, and every other online communications platform out of business overnight.

The law can and will be selectively enforced to the betterment of those in power.

Facebook will be fine giving the government unlimited access to their deeply mined data. Diaspora, Mastodon, those are the sites that will get crushed.

If Facebook's and Google's future is at risk, why haven't they done anything to stop this bill?

Because like almost all laws of this nature, the costs of compliance will harm upstart competitors greatly while being a rounding error on the books of the major incumbent players.

Agreed. Joe will end up in jail because his blog had a comment section. What about Facebook? Are they going to put Facebook in jail?

Since cable internet companies are not under Title II, wouldn't that make them de facto illegal under this law?

I know nothing about US politics, but I feel like John McCain has spent his career trying to either ban things or remove free speech. He keeps popping up in some of the books I read, the most recent he was trying to ban Voilent Video Games (Doom).

This is completely bananas then, yes. A car or a truck is essential to enable human trafficking, as are public roads. Should car makers, oil companies (because fuel), and state governments (who finance the roads) be held liable?

I swear, you can predict the quality of a law as the inverse of how good the name sounds.

If this law were going to limit sex trafficking, it would have a name like "Revisions to the Prosecution of Certain Interstate Crimes". But no, it's got a big, gaudy name that poisons the well on any opposition whatsoever. So, predictably, it will either endanger innocents or restrict basic rights. It's like god damn clockwork.

Because if you have a cool name you can sell it solely based on the name. A bill with a boring name must stand on its own two feet to pass.

Also, nobody wants to be the guy who opposed the “Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act”.

I recall as a child a teacher telling our class, "he is a good representative. He is trying to create a law that would give hospitals and police priority to have faster internet."

'The devil doesn't come to you dressed in horns and a cape.'

This is not some covert attack on Internet businesses, it is a well-intentioned but misguided attempt by these senators to prevent adult service websites (namely backpage.com) from enabling pimps and organized crime to traffic victims with impunity under Section 230. Backpage actively helps buyers and sellers remain anonymous specifically for adult services, and provides the means to avoid detection by law enforcement - Bitcoin payments, encouraging prepaid credit cards, not requiring phone numbers for verification, stripping metadata from images, etc. Interestingly, it requires phone number verification for other classified sections on its website like cars and boats, but for adult services it even offers a 10% discount for using Bitcoin.

There could be a legal argument made that Backpage induces trafficking on its website by not requiring verification for adult services, and is therefore involved in the creation of its content and thus not protected under Section 230. Section 230 could also be amended specifically for adult content to require verification and restrict anonymous payment methods. But the EFF is absolutely correct that in its current form, this would be terrible for anyone hosting content on the Internet because this amendment could be broadly applied to illegal content posted on any content providers website, and creates an incentive to have no filtering of content.

One recent development is this Washington Post article that uncovered evidence that Backpage has actually been actively promoting sex trafficking posts to its site [1]. This would make Backpage unequivocally the publisher of its content, and therefore criminally liable. So it is entirely possible that this amendment will not be needed to bring down the human filth that operate on backpage, but some legal remedy is certainly needed to combat the many existing and future websites that will enable sex trafficking.

1. https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/public-safety/backpage-...

What the law actually says is important, not just its impetus.

If those same said senators wanted to actually make a dent in sex trafficking in this country, they would take a look at legalization and regulation in a controlled environment, not unlike Nevada. This is another Band Aid to help make themselves look/feel better by exerting more control on a populace and ignoring the ways this bill will be misused, rather than taking a look at taking real steps to solve a problem. Unfortunately, the American public seems more than ready to eat a ton of BS sprinkled with a little sugar and false hope. Same way Guantanamo was pit in to make it's way against trial laws, PRISM was implemented while directly opposing constititional law and invasions of sovereign countries have taken place by using drones instead of soldiers. The road to Hell is, was and always will be paved with good intentions and politicians promises.

"Legalize and regulate" doesn't work when you're dealing with criminals that are enslaving and trafficking underage women. I highly recommend that you learn more about backpage.com and understand why there is great emotional resolve to fix the problem, even if the solution presented here is misguided.

Perhaps the reason trafficking is incentivized is because this is a black market in the first place. We don't have the same levels of criminality with alcohol that we experience in the U.S. during prohibition precisely because a legitimized industry crowded out the ability to do most egregious criminal activity.

That would be a much stronger argument if trafficking wasn't such a significant issue in countries with legal prostitution.

This is another conflation between legal prostitution and the exploitation and trafficking of underaged girls to customers (technically paedophiles) who are actively searching for underage sex. I recommend reading about backpage and understanding the difference between criminally exploiting underage girls and the debate around legalized prostitution.

The real way to fight trafficking is legalization and regulation, including interviews with sex workers to detect coercion, then followups to help them.

Since fixing the laws is going to take a while, we've taken it upon ourselves. We're building such a superior solution for both sex providers and clients, it'll hurt trafficking like iTunes hurt music piracy.

Not that I don't support legalization, but I'm skeptical as to how much legalization would help. Put simply, can we expect new sex workers to come out of the woodwork to create the supply needed to make sex trafficking substantially less profitable? Are women and men suddenly and substantially going to start selling that service if it became legalized?

Moving it out of the black market itself is an effective price decrease - Johns can be expected to be willing to pay a premium to avoid the risk of prison.

Take a look at Rhode Island for an example of how this works in reality. The results were overwhelmingly positive: http://www.businessinsider.com/how-rhode-island-accidentally...

Legalization and regulation. Require a license and periodic reviews. Just having easy, legal, sex available means a lot of the revenue dries up, which makes it harder to run the illegal operations.

Don't the UK, Germany, Austria and the Netherlands have fairly significant trafficking problems?

Without having read the bill, I suspect the titular “sex trafficking” is just a code word for sex work in general, as is often the case with such initiatives. It's very easy to crack down on sex worker rights by claiming all of them are trafficked. Which helps nobody: driving sex work further underground only makes the women working in it more vulnerable.

Oh crap -- not again!

Holding the line against censorship is very, very nerve-wracking.

I've got a certain painful sympathy for Lovecraft characters these days. There's nothing quite like the feeling of having to win every battle ad infinitum, against an opponent whose every gain will be permanent.

Fortunately there are no immortals here.

non corporal entities (.inc) are

long-lived != immortal! I still take the essence of your point though.

it's only permanent until it goes too far, and then the cycle starts over...

What politician is going to vote against cracking down on sex trafficing though?

Once they named this bill the way they did, this was a lost cause. We're well-fucked here, I imagine.

> What politician is going to vote against cracking down on sex trafficing though?

A good one that doesn't vote on a law based on it's always-misleading title.

You've seen how campaign ads work, right?

"Congressmen X voted to enable sex trafficking online. Congressment X wants sex trafficking in your community. Vote Y and end sex trafficking for good."

And the only way to combat that is to disregard it. Meaning that you have to be aware of both sides doing it and that you expect it to be misleading. Kind of like how you combat clickbait by teaching people to not click.

"My opponent supports sneaking a bill through that would harm you, your family, and the freedoms of true patriots by wrapping it falsely as a cure for sex trafficking, like a snake oil salesman trying to sell you sewage with perfume to cure your ills. What other things will this charlatan support?"

Good luck with that...

This is exactly the kind of rhetoric trump used to win

Its a proven winner these days.

Its a constant pain in the butt. We really need a lobbying effort that makes Senators and Congresspeople afraid to even suggest something this stupid.

On a side note, at least one of the Senators won't be a problem after the 2018 election.

> The two choices facing platforms would seem to be to put extremely restrictive measures in place compromising their users’ free speech and privacy, or to do nothing at all.

So where is the problem again? "Do nothing at all" sounds good to me. Be the dumb pipe or host you're supposed to be.

> So where is the problem again?

Third-party liability for content hosts is a problem for all online platforms. Platforms are not dumb pipes in the way that an ISP should be.

Do the same Republicans did with ACA, give it another name (Obamacare) to lessen it in the eyes of the people, I suggest "Internet Censorship Act" or "Destroy Internet Act"

Kryptonite Internet Legislation Lowlifes

It's another KILL bill.

Unfortunately, in the desire to show that they do not support Nazis, the tech companies have already ceded the high moral ground on free speech. They have also given up the argument that they are just a neutral platform or dumb pipe. One thing that can get broad agreement from both sides of the political aisle is that actual human sex traffickers( especially if they traffic children) are more evil than neo-Nazis who go around marching and chanting hateful slogans. I see a good chance of this bill passing. After all, who wants to go on record as enabling human sex traffickers.

>more evil than neo-Nazis who go around marching and chanting hateful slogans

They also are known for killing and brutalizing people.

I don’t think you can use a website to kill people, but I’m not up with the latest W3C proposals.

You can't use a web site to traffic people either.

You don't have to shove a human into the internet tube to use the internet tube to help move the human.

Or do we want to ignore all of the sites facilitating prostitution, human trafficking's BFF?

Likewise you don't need to invent a knife-over-IP protocol to use the internet to help kill people.

You can order bullets on the internet.

Does this fall under the banner of 'use the internet to help kill people'? Your facetious post and response seem to imply that you had something more specific in mind, or perhaps something by a specific group.

My point is just that "you can't directly do it over the internet" applies equally to both examples, so you need something else if you want to distinguish them.

Sites that facilitate sex trade / crime are direct actions in the trafficking chain. It happens on the internet. No, the john doesn't come through the tubes, but his order does. Directly over the internet.

What was your example again? You keep referring to it, but I can't find it in the comments, which makes i thard to see how your point applies equally.

The other example was Nazis getting together and beating/murdering people.

Well you can induce a stroke via GIF if you know the victim has epileptic seizures. The FBI went after someone for just that earlier this year: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/kurt-eichenwald-case-te...

(snow crash anyone?)

Probably good for the incumbent social networks. They have the resources to patrol their territory and no small startups will raise to threaten their status. The extra work is a premium they pay to be safe.

Probably bad for everybody else living on comments. Disqus, but also for the mid sized blog platforms that want people to post comments and talk each other, example: Medium. And how about Slack?

If that part of the internet shrinks, all the products and services ecosystem will shrink too.

I wish I hadn't gotten so conditioned to think that free speech is nazi speech. Every time I hear someone defending free speech on the internet, they always seem to be defending the most vile opinions or someone's right to be unsympathetic or uncaring. The EFF doesn't seem to be doing that here, though, yet reading the headline puts me on guard.

Why isn't anyone ever defending free speech for good, positive things? I like free speech, but the positive associations I have with it, like allowing individuals to criticise politicians or the government, never seem to be what people on the internet are trying to defend. Free speech should be used by the disenfranchised to defend against those in power, but people want to defend it being used to attack the powerless too.

Positive speech is rarely threatened before negative speech. The attacks on the fringes of free speech gradually enable the ability to curtail speech in any form.

I'm really skeptical of this slippery slope argument. Germany has very rigidly enforced anti-nazi-speech laws and it doesn't strike me as being a totalitarian dystopia.

Germany has been a totalitarian dystopia, though - 30 years ago. I don't think you can say anything about a society that is less than a generation or two old.

It's not about a totalitarian dystopia, though. It's about limiting some people's rights in favor of other people in general. We believe that this is wrong to do, not just harmful to society.

It's funny how things go -- when I was growing up, free speech was seen as more of a left-wing issue.

The classic defense of free speech is http://www.econlib.org/library/Mill/mlLbty1.html and I recommend it. Steven Pinker has a book coming out next year that sounds like it'll tackle some of the same themes.

If you claim to support free speech, you have to support the right of others to speak things you disagree with. We have ceeded some limits (e.g. you generally cannot directly incite people to harm others) but every additional limit you allow on speech you oppose can eventually be used against speech you support.

This is the same slope argument I'm skeptical about.

Nazi speech isn't something I merely disagree with. It's not a simple difference of opinion. It's not a perfectly valid alternative viewpoint we should respect. It's an ideology that caused a world war that we should never repeat. It's not something that should ever be protected.

Communism caused countless wars, and more deaths than WWII. Should communism be an exception to your free speech laws?

I think the intent of the lawmakers here is to make a law to put people in jail or out of business who are running human trafficking websites that advertise services from victims. How exactly do they do it without trashing the whole internet?

Free speech doesn't exist online. I learned this when Brendan Eich was fired from Mozilla (even though his speech was private, non-vocal, and offline).

The conclusion for me is to never use social media. Online everything is business. The most political I get is heated opinions about programming and developer incompetence. For everything else you will have to meet me in person and buy me dinner.

I'm not a lawyer but what does this mean for apps like Signal?

I'm not a lawyer either, but it would seem Signal would have less culpability operating a network of users knowing that they do not have any access to the contents of the messages and thus have an implicit impetus to do nothing. Then again, they could be held in contempt of court (maybe?) because sticking your fingers in your ears and shouting La La La isn't really a good defense for ignorance of a fact, if they were to be given evidence that illegal pornography was being transmitted through their servers.

Basically, it seems like it probably would have less effect on them than say Tumblr, which does in fact host a lot of pornographic material in the clear, but they could still be thrown into the mix depending on circumstances.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com