
Google Will Survive SESTA – Startups Might Not - smokielad
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/09/google-will-survive-sesta-your-startup-might-not
======
cromwellian
Remember the Communication Decency Act I and II from the 90s? Or the Clipper
Chip? Back then it was child porn online and the like which justified web
publishing regulation.

This time it's sex trafficking as the excuse.

It seems whenever it's time to try internet regulation again, dip deep into
the jar of sex related justifications.

~~~
Iv
The rationale is simple: opposing this makes you a defender of pedoporn or of
sex trafficking. Fortunately serious NPOs have protested being used as excuses
for inefficient regulations.

I wish we made a constitutional amendment to protect online freedoms. Every
two years there is a new attack on those, it gets tiring.

~~~
philipov
Are you suggesting we should tell the people who are attacking online freedoms
to make an amendment to protect them? Who do you think would get to be in
charge of writing and passing such an amendment?

------
sitkack
If one wanted to uncover criminal wrongdoing on the internet, the last thing
one would want to do is lose the signal.

It won't stop the activity, it will push it to a place that is harder to
detect.

~~~
philipov
At which point the authorities will demand access to even more invasive
techniques. All part of the plan...

------
adventured
The US Government has been trying to get here, to this regulatory point, for
two decades. They're going to get what they're after.

The barriers to entry for building online will go up dramatically, as they
have in every industry in the US over time. People mistakenly think the US is
a Capitalist nation, with few economic regulations, when in fact the opposite
is true, the US economy is very regulated. That borderline psychotic power
addiction that emanates out of Washington DC, has its sights set squarely on
the Internet as its next conquest. Why? It threatens their conventions - their
understanding of how things do or should work - when it comes to political
power and what they've always known. This latest election turned most of them
inside out and they'll do anything to bring the Internet to heel if that helps
to return their idea of political normalcy. The $100,000 Facebook-Russia media
performance going on right now is all about that, finding an angle to launch
from to begin heavily regulating politics online. SESTA is similarly about
using a convenient angle to launch a regulation assault, to acquire vastly
greater control.

The only good thing I can say about the powermongers currently on the move, is
they're extremely obvious in what they're doing and why.

~~~
g00gler
Why can't we just host our sites in Somalia or something?

May seem facetious but in all seriousness I was watching vice a few weeks ago
and the Somali disapora is returning and building infrastructure and high
quality housing with absolutely no government regulations or taxes.

------
cft
Can someone explain why the reporting requirements of 18 US 2258A aren't
sufficient?
[https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2258A](https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2258A)

Why cannot they be simply amended to include sex trafficking?

~~~
adventured
They have vast means to prosecute sites like Backpage. As other articles have
noted [1], the DOJ has refused to get involved in going after Backpage for
years, which should be an outrage given the context.

The obvious conclusion is, it's all intentional. The DOJ has been told to
stand down, so the SESTA pushers can build up a case for the need for new
legislation, new levers of power & control over the Internet.

[1] "CDA 230 does not shield platforms from federal prosecution. The law very
clearly outlines that exception to the liability shield, anticipating that
crimes like child pornography and child exploitation would be prosecuted by
the federal authorities. The US Department of Justice, for whatever reason,
has not shown any inclination to pursue sites like Backpage."

[https://www.theverge.com/2017/9/14/16308066/sex-
trafficking-...](https://www.theverge.com/2017/9/14/16308066/sex-trafficking-
bill-sesta-google-cda-230)

~~~
cft
By the way, Backpage has shut down their adult services section. Their traffic
did not drop to zero however, as seen at [1].

That means that Backpages has had other substantial legitimate uses, besides
adult services. Craigslist also had adult services section, that it
voluntarily shut down [2]. This begs the question: why is Backpage prosecuted,
but Craigslist was not? What has changed between 2009 and now?

1\.
[https://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/backpage.com#trafficstats](https://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/backpage.com#trafficstats)

2\. [https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2009/05/craigslist-
gives...](https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2009/05/craigslist-gives-in-
will-shut-down-erotic-services-section/)

~~~
adventured
Or of course consider how they went after Kim Dotcom, the effort that was put
into crushing Megaupload and Kim over common media piracy.

Are we to believe that the DOJ & Co couldn't have smashed Backpage for
knowingly allowing trafficking years ago? They couldn't have scooped up proof
that the operators knew about that activity, a dozen different ways given the
tools at their disposal? They could destroy Silk Road and get Ross Ulbricht,
but they couldn't get the Backpage guys on anything? Bullshit of course, it's
beyond obvious those guys knew what their site was facilitating, they were
making a vast fortune off of it.

It all reeks of being allowed to continue as an enemy number one to facilitate
legislation like SESTA.

------
foobarchu
Maybe I just don't fully understand the bill...but how is this not an open and
shut violation of the first amendment? Not in the usual "i can say what i want
and nobody can stop me" kind of way, but in the "government cannot directly
censor its citizens" kind of way. Particularly with the inclusion of automated
filtering, it sounds like the government mandating that _all_ internet
companies disallow anyone from posting content matching a set of parameters.
The target (sex trafficking content) doesn't matter, the important thing here
is that its sweeping government mandated censorship, with legal ramifications.

Am I missing something that makes this constitutionally allowable?

------
quuquuquu
If we are talking about legislation to regulate communication platforms that
"enable sex trafficking" [needs disambiguation]...

... then why aren't we talking about hotels, where victims are sex trafficked,

and cars, where victims are sex trafficked,

and cash, which facilitates anonymous sex trafficking

and planes, which facilitates international sex trafficking

Why stop at the internet? Let's go after every company on Earth.

/s

------
lazulicurio
While I agree that SESTA is a bad idea, does anyone have the full context for
this quote from Blumenthal?

> Goldman: There's no doubt that the legitimate players will do everything
> they can to not only work with the law enforcement and other advocates to
> address sex trafficking and will do more than they even do today. At the
> same time, the industry is not just the big players. There is a large number
> of smaller players who don't have the same kind of infrastructure. And for
> them they have to make the choice: can I afford to do the work that you're
> hoping they will do.

> Blumenthal: And I believe that those outliers -- and they are outliers --
> will be successfully prosecuted, civilly and criminally under this law.

I'd like to believe a more charitable interpretation he misunderstood the
point of Goldman's question and the "outliers" he's referring to are the
"illegitimate players" (as opposed to the "legitimate players" that Goldman
references). I personally doubt that he was saying that the "smaller players"
are the outliers who will be prosecuted.

IMO, saying "But in that unusual moment of candor, Sen. Blumenthal seemed to
lay bare his opinions about Internet startups—he thinks of them as unimportant
outliers _and would prefer that the new law put them out of business_ " is
quite disingenuous. The zinger at the end weakens the quote with its trite
outrage. Just having the first part of the quote -- "But in that unusual
moment of candor, Sen. Blumenthal seemed to lay bare his opinions about
Internet startups—he thinks of them as unimportant outliers" \-- would be a
more accurate characterization, and is just as powerful.

~~~
alloyed
I don't see a transcript anywhere, but here is the full hearing (I just
googled the quote and found a link in another article)

[https://www.commerce.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/2017/9/comm...](https://www.commerce.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/2017/9/committee-
announces-legislative-hearing-s-1693-the-stop-enabling-sex-traffickers-act-
of-2017)

------
dreamcompiler
I just saw the new Kingsman movie. Minor spoiler alert:

In the movie, the US President is complicit in a scheme that would kill all
the recreational drug users in the world. Blumenthal's comment reminds me of
this. The guy's an idiot.

------
rdiddly
This makes the point that SESTA would disproportionately harm small/new
businesses compared to big/existing ones. Which gets me thinking, there are
some people (those involved with the big/existing businesses) for whom that is
a feature, not a bug. Less competition for them to spend time crushing. Which
means there's a chance this isn't actually about sex trafficking at all, but
just another big-business power-grab on behalf of Blumenthal's backers. My
cynicism knows no bounds.

------
nfriedly
I wonder if this will do anything to encourage a more decentralized web?

------
featherverse
but google will die under the mountain of lawsuits and justice for their
various crooked enterprises, not to mention people are going to (again) get
sick and tired of being spied on by f'ing corporations.

so that part of the headline is irrelevant.

Also SESTA is bad. booo SESTA.

