EFF: How Congress Censored the Internet

[Hermit-The-Prog]

By Elliot Harmon
March 21, 2018

In Passing SESTA/FOSTA, Lawmakers Failed to Separate Their Good Intentions from Bad Law

Today was a dark day for the Internet.

The U.S. Senate just voted 97-2 to pass the Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (FOSTA, H.R. 1865), a bill that silences online speech by forcing Internet platforms to censor their users. As lobbyists and members of Congress applaud themselves for enacting a law tackling the problem of trafficking, let’s be clear: Congress just made trafficking victims less safe, not more.

The version of FOSTA that just passed the Senate combined an earlier version of FOSTA (what we call FOSTA 2.0) with the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act (SESTA, S. 1693). The history of SESTA/FOSTA—a bad bill that turned into a worse bill and then was rushed through votes in both houses of Congress—is a story about Congress’ failure to see that its good intentions can result in bad law. It’s a story of Congress’ failure to listen to the constituents who’d be most affected by the laws it passed. It’s also the story of some players in the tech sector choosing to settle for compromises and half-wins that will put ordinary people in danger.

Silencing Internet Users Doesn’t Make Us Safer

SESTA/FOSTA undermines Section 230, the most important law protecting free speech online. Section 230 protects online platforms from liability for some types of speech by their users. Without Section 230, the Internet would look very different. It’s likely that many of today’s online platforms would never have formed or received the investment they needed to grow and scale—the risk of litigation would have simply been too high. Similarly, in absence of Section 230 protections, noncommercial platforms like Wikipedia and the Internet Archive likely wouldn’t have been founded given the high level of legal risk involved with hosting third-party content.

[...]

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/03/how-congress-censored-internet

[Blue_Tires]

1. EFF can fuckin' chew on it

Trevor Timm and Ed Snowden whored for Trump as hard as anybody so they can live with the consequences....

[Hermit-The-Prog]

2. huh?

I can't find either of those names in the article.

This is about Congress ignoring voters, experts and even the DOJ, to pass a law that removes some of the protection from civil liability that web site administrators had before.

From the article:

Thousands of you picked up your phone and called your senators, urging them to oppose the new Frankenstein bill. And you weren’t alone: EFF, the American Civil Liberties Union, the Center for Democracy and Technology, and many other experts pleaded with Congress to recognize the dangers to free speech and online communities that the bill presented.

Even the Department of Justice wrote a letter urging Congress not to go forward with the hybrid bill [.pdf]. The DOJ said that the expansion of federal criminal law in SESTA/FOSTA was simply unnecessary, and could possibly undermine criminal investigations. When the Department of Justice is the group urging Congress not to expand criminal law and Congress does it anyway, something is very wrong.

[Blue_Tires]

4. EFF board of directors...

[Hermit-The-Prog]

3. Righthaven v. Democratic Underground

EFF defended DU against the infamous copyright troll Righthaven.
https://www.eff.org/cases/righthaven-v-democratic-underground

The only thing I can figure out from your comment is that you don't like the EFF.
Does the above help with that?

[Blue_Tires]

5. I was here for all that and saw it firsthand...

and yes, that aside I can still have a huge ass problem with their behavior since then, i.e., getting in bed with that fraud Snowden...

[Blue_Tires]

6. Like I said, Timm is still a cowardly piece of shit...

Case in point....

Link to tweet

[dalton99a]

7. DOJ Tells Congress SESTA/FOSTA Will Make It MORE DIFFICULT To Catch Traffickers; House Votes For It

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20180227/15314039324/doj-tells-congress-sesta-fosta-will-make-it-more-difficult-to-catch-traffickers-house-votes-it-anyway.shtml
DOJ Tells Congress SESTA/FOSTA Will Make It MORE DIFFICULT To Catch Traffickers; House Votes For It Anyway

As we've been discussing, this afternoon, the House voted both on Rep. Mimi Walters' bad amendment to attach SESTA to FOSTA, and then on the combined bill -- and both sailed through Congress. Somewhat incredibly, this happened even though the Justice Department weighed in with a last minute letter saying that the language in the combined SESTA/FOSTA is so poorly drafted that it would actually make it more difficult to prosecute sex traffickers, and also calling into question whether or not the bill was even Constitutional.

You would think that with the DOJ pointing out these fairly fatal flaws with the bill, that perhaps (just perhaps), the House would delay voting on this. As noted last week, bringing the amendment to the floor without having it go through the House Judiciary Committee (as is supposed to happen), seemed to be the House's way of washing its hands of the bill, and tossing the issue back to the Senate. But rushing through a bill with huge implications is no way to make law. As Rep. Lofgren noted on the floor:

The justice department says in this letter that they believe any revision to define “participation in a venture” is unnecessary and in fact that the new language would impact prosecutions by effectively creating additional elements in fact they say the amendment will make it harder to prosecute…There’s a thing we get told in law school: Bad cases make bad law. One of the ways to avoid that is to have the committee process work through it. That didn’t happen....

And thus, Walters' amendment prevailed 308 to 107 and then the combined (terrible) bill sailed through the whole House 388 to 25. Kudos the to the 25 Representatives who actually understand how CDA 230 works and why this bill is so bad, but it's depressing to think that it was just 25.