SESTA Is Signed Into Law by President Trump
April 11, 2018:
In the weeks following the passage of the law, the federal government seizes Backpage.com, where many sexual service advertisements have migrated to different sections of the site. Sex workers are forced back onto the street, facing violence and increasing the power of exploitive third parties. Law enforcement is forced to abandon hundreds of open trafficking investigations that relied upon online evidence removed by the seizures.
Why Internet Advocates Are Against the Anti–Sex Trafficking Bill | Slate
Congress Passes SESTA/FOSTA
February/March 2018:
A package of bills, entitled Stop Enabling Sex Trafficking Act (SESTA), incorporating the House version, Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (FOSTA), passed the House and the Senate. SESTA/FOSTA modifies Section 230 to remove services providers’ immunity when dealing with civil or criminal crimes related to sex trafficking.
SESTA/FOSTA passed despite testimony from the Department of Justice, submitted to Congress in written form, that the act would make it more difficult for law enforcement to prosecute traffickers.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation filed a one-pager against the amendment.
The Federal Government Wages an Investigation Into Backpage.com
January 2017:
The Federal Government Wages an Investigation Into Backpage.com, the Largest Remaining Platform of Internet Advertisements for Sexual Services
Instead of Undergoing Investigation, Backpage Shutters Its Adult Services Page After Years of Resistance
The final report, published on January 8, 2017, was entitled “Backpage.com’s Knowing Facilitation of Online Sex Trafficking.” The findings of this investigation have been referenced as the primary impetus for the passage of SESTA/FOSTA.
The investigation led to the arrests of Backpage founders James Larkin and Michael Lacey, as well as Carl Ferrer, who had purchased the website during the inquiry. The federal government has since seized Lacey and Larkin’s publishing assets. Read the full story, as featured in Wired.
A legal brief that challenges the federal government's claims in the case can be accessed here.
ERS Shuts Its Doors
September 2010:
A lawsuit against Craigslist was filed by Thomas Dart, a sheriff in Cook County, Illinois, in 2009. Dart charged the site with facilitating prostitution. The case was rejected on the grounds of Section 230.
Facing increased pressure to shut down their ERS page, the company initially argued that it had a right to allow the ads under Section 230 and continued to run them with increased oversight. Following letters of complaint issued by attorneys general in 17 states, Craigslist eventually blocked access to the page, replacing its link with a black ‘censored’ icon. The closure of ERS prompted much debate. Many internet law specialists came to the defense of Craigslist, agreeing that the ads were protected by Section 230.
In their congressional testimony, executives from the company warned that with the closure of its Erotic Services page, law enforcement would lose a valuable partner in the fight against trafficking.
Craigslist Opens Its Erotic Services (ERS) Page
From 2002 to 2010, Craigslist provided an Erotic Services section on its front page, effected with several other specialized advertisement sections like housing, cars, childcare, etc. ERS initially provided free advertising to legal sex workers, such as private dancers. It was quickly utilized by those participating in prostitution to match with clients and coordinate appointments. ERS was also used as a mode of communication between sex workers to vet those clients and ensure safety.
A study conducted at Baylor University following the passage of SESTA/FOSTA found that ERS decreased the female homicide rate by an average of 10-17% nationwide. This staggering impact is the result of street prostitution moving indoors, allowing sex workers access to screening mechanisms and safer working conditions.
University of Pennsylvania Publishes a Study on Commercial Child Sexual Exploitation
September 2001:
Professors at the University of Pennsylvania published a widely cited study in which they estimated that some 326,000 children were “at risk of commercial sexual exploitation” in the United States. The role of the internet was not specified, but it was stated that the online victimization of children had reached “epic proportions.” Importantly, the nature of the exploitation was not defined. As the internet reached an ever-growing number of people, it would logically follow that the use of the internet to exploit children would also grow. This phenomenon does not take away from the heinous nature of child victimization, but merely points out a logical fallacy in blaming the internet platforms themselves for this perceived epidemic.
The study had a significant political and social response and pressure mounted for sites like Facebook and MySpace to remove sexual content from their pages. As mainstream websites increased their auditing mechanisms in reaction to such pressure, sexual advertisements moved to specialized sites like Backpage.com and Craigslist’s Erotic Services Page. Lawsuits brought against online platforms for allowing such content repeatedly upheld Section 230.
In response, a coalition of internet regulators formed, led by the National Association of Attorneys General, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, the Christian right, and prohibitionist groups. They were ostensibly an anti-trafficking coalition, but they also adopted rhetorical and policy strategies that sought to abolish prostitution and some elements of sexual freedom.
Reno v. ACLU
June 1997:
In this landmark case, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously in favor of the ACLU. The anti-indecency provisions of the CDA are an unconstitutional violation of First Amendment rights. The ACLU argued that the censorship provisions criminalized expression protected by the Constitution because the terms “indecent” and “patently offensive” are overbroad and vague.
Importantly, the decision did not strike down Section 230 but upheld it as a constitutional exception to the rest of the CDA. In one of the first major Supreme Court cases related to internet censorship, the Supreme Court ruled explicitly in favor of upholding freedom of expression online.
Stratton Oakmont, Inc. v. Prodigy Services Co.
May 25, 1995:
This was the second of two contradicting Supreme Court cases in the 1990s relating to the liability of online platforms for user-generated content published on their sites. This legal discrepancy was the impetus for Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996. In Stratton Oakmont v. Prodigy, the courts ruled that if an online platform was actively censoring or editing user-generated content, they could be held liable for that content since they were, in effect, acting as a publisher. The courts had previously ruled in Cubby, Inc. v. CompuServe Inc. (1991) that they would not consider online platforms to be publishers if they did not audit user-generated content. In this case, servers would be regarded as digital libraries and could not be held liable. The inconsistencies in these two cases required clarification of Section 230.