So, earlier today the Senate Commerce Committee held a two and a half hour hearing about SESTA -- the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act of 2017. The panelists were evenly split, with California Attorney General Xavier Becerra and Yiota Souras from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children being in support of the bill, and Professor Eric Goldman and Abigail Slater from the Internet Association worrying about the impacts of SESTA (notably, both highlighted that they're not against all changes to CDA 230, they just want to be quite careful and are worried about the language in this bill). I was actually somewhat surprised that the hearing wasn't as bad as it could have been. There certainly was some grandstanding, and some insistence that because SESTA says it will go after sex trafficking that it obviously will -- but many Senators did seem willing to listen to concerns about the bill and how it's written. Much attention was paid to the sketchy "knowledge" standard in the bill, which we wrote about this morning. And that's good -- but there was a fair bit of nonsense spewed as well.

Perhaps the most problematic comments were from the bill's co-author, Senator Richard Blumenthal, who has been attacking CDA 230 since his time as Connecticut's Attorney General. While you can watch the entire hearing, I created a short clip of Blumenthal's questions (which, oddly, C-SPAN won't let me embed here) so I'll transcribe it:

Blumenthal: I think I've said why I support this legislation, which I helped craft, and we've tried to do it carefully. And we tried to listen to the industry. We've tried to listen really closely to some of the concerns that have been raised this morning by Mr. Goldman. For example, the idea that this legislation will cause sex trafficking to -- I'm using your word -- proliferate. Hard to believe. Mr. Becerra, what do you think and will this measure cause sex trafficking to proliferate?

So... the idea that Blumenthal listened carefully is laughable on its face. He's been fighting this issue since at least 2010 when he went after Craigslist for ads he didn't think they should have on the site. And in Blumenthal's own testimony he admitted that forcing Craigslist to change how it worked only led to sex trafficking ads moving from Craigslist -- which cooperated very closely with law enforcement -- to Backpage and expanded their reach. I'm at a loss as to why we should take Blumenthal's words on what will happen when he admits his own actions targeted at sex trafficking in the past made the problem worse. To then mock Prof. Goldman for suggesting the same might happen here is... quite incredible.

Also, interesting that rather than asking Goldman to clarify his position first (he does later), Blumenthal starts by asking Becerra to back him up.

Becerra: I can't agree with what Professor Goldman has said. I think it's just the opposite. If we have a standard in place, then I believe the stakeholders within the internet community will come forward in ways we've seen before, but even more vigoroulsy, because they'll understand what the standard is, and I think that's so very important to make it clear for folks. The most important thing, Senator Booker sorta pointed this out, is we need to get the opponents of this measure to explain, in detail, what they would propose in place. Otherwise, it's always a moving target. It's Whac-a-mole. Someone needs to give us what a better bill looks like.

So, this is also bizarre and wrong. First, much of the discussion from Goldman and Slater (and us) was about the lack of any clarity around the "standard." The bill says that "knowing conduct" that "assists, supports or facilitates" sex trafficking can make a platform guilty of civil and criminal violations of the law. But "knowing conduct" is not clarified. And as we've seen in other contexts, including in the copyright realm, years-long fights can happen in court over what "knowledge" might mean. The famous YouTube/Viacom fight, that went on for nearly a decade, was almost entirely focused on whether or not YouTube had knowledge of infringement, and whether the law required "specific" knowledge or "general" knowledge. Nothing in this bill clarifies that.

Even worse, the term "knowing conduct" is dangerously vague. It could be read to mean that if the site does something that it knows that it is doing, and it leads to facilitating sex trafficking -- even if the site doesn't know about that outcome -- it would constitute "knowing conduct." Goldman had pointed this exact problem out earlier in the hearing, so for Becerra to insist that this is a clear standard is ludicrous.

Becerra is also confused if he thinks this will lead internet companies to "more vigorously" come forward. Coming forward with evidence of sex trafficking will then be turned around on them as proof of "knowledge." With this law in place, why would any internet company be more willing to come forward when that only increases liability?

Finally, the idea that opponents need to come forward with other language is similarly weird. SESTA's supporters are the one demanding a massive change in the underpinning of the internet. Shouldn't the burden be on them to prove that this will help and not hurt? And, on top of that, it also ignores the fact that many opponents have come forward with different language (which I know as a fact because someone ran some alternative language by me a few weeks ago, and again earlier this week). So either Becerra doesn't know that or he's being disingenuous.

I'll cut the next section where Blumenthal says (misleadingly) that a proposal put forth from tech companies was to curtail or "eliminate" the ability of State AGs to pursue violations of the law (the proposal I saw simply clarified when and how they could go after sites) and Becerra eagerly says that would be terrible, as you'd expect.

Blumenthal: Let me ask, Mr. Goldman, do you really believe that this law would cause sex trafficking to proliferate?

Goldman: Thank you, Senator, for the opportunity to clarify that. Indeed, my concern is that we already see a number of efforts on the part of legitimate players to reduce sex trafficking promotion. To the extent that any of those companies decide 'I am better off turning off my efforts across the board, to try to reduce the knowledge that I have,' then that creates a larger number of zones that the sites will not be taking the legitimate effort that we want them to take. It creates an environment where there's more places for that to occur.

This is an excellent and succinct explanation of the problem. Under SESTA, the "knowledge" standard is so vague and unclear, that actually doing what Congress wants -- policing sex trafficking -- creates "knowledge" and makes these companies liable under the law. Blumenthal, of course, doesn't seem to get it -- or doesn't care.

Blumenthal: You know, I have a higher opinion of the industry than you do. I really believe that this law will raise the bar, will increase consciousness, and that far from trying to evade, or, in fact, deny themselves knowledge, so as to avoid any accountability, they will be more energetic. I absolutely really believe that most of these companies want to do the right thing and that this law will give them an increased impetus and incentive to do so.

WHAT?!? First off, if the idea is to give companies a greater impetus and incentive to do what they already want to do (as Blumenthal claims...) then threatening them with criminal and civil penalties for simply "knowing" that their platforms are used for illegal activity seems like a totally fucked up way of doing so. If you want to encourage platforms to do the right thing, then why is the entire bill focused on punishing platforms for merely knowing that their platform was illegally used? Second, if Blumenthal truly had a higher opinion of tech companies, why is he falsely misrepresenting what Goldman said, and saying that companies would choose to avoid knowledge to "avoid accountability"? That's not the issue at all -- and is, indeed, self-contradictory with Blumenthal's own statements. Companies want to do the right thing to reduce sex trafficking, but this bill puts them in legal jeopardy for even researching if their platforms are used that way. That's the point that Goldman was trying to make and Blumenthal totally misrepresents.

And then it gets worse. Goldman points out a separate issue, noting that big companies like Google and Facebook may have the resources to "do more" but startups without those resources won't be able to take the steps necessary to avoid liability under the law:

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.

Okay, and here's where things get absolutely fucked up. Note what Goldman is clearly saying here: this bill will wreak havoc on startups who simply can't afford to monitor every thing that people do on their platforms. And then, Blumenthal's response is to say that those startups are criminals who should be prosecuted:

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

WHAT THE FUCK?!? Goldman was talking about tons and tons of smaller companies -- or anyone who operates any online service that enables user comments, where they can't monitor everything -- and under this law will have to make the choice of whether they do any monitoring at all or face the risk of that being used against them, and Blumenthal's response is that they should be prosecuted.

Senator Blumenthal: those companies are not outliers and they're not criminals. They're thousands upon thousands of smaller internet companies, many based in your home state of Connecticut, that you apparently want to see shut down.

That's messed up.

It's fairly stunning just how often the NY Times Opinion pages are just... wrong. Nick Kristof, one of the most well known of the NYT's columnists, has spent years, talking about stopping sex trafficking -- but with a history of being fast and loose with facts, and showing either little regard for verifying what he's saying, or a poor understanding of the consequences of what he says. I would hope that everyone reading this supports stopping illegal and coerced sex trafficking. But doing so shouldn't allow making up facts and ignoring how certain superficial actions might make the problems worse. Kristof, in particular, has been targeting Backpage.com for at least five years -- but has been caught vastly exaggerating claims about the site to the point of potentially misstating facts entirely (such as claiming Backpage existed before it actually did, and that it operated in cities where it did not). Kristof also has a history of being laughably credulous when someone comes along with a good story about sex trafficking, even when it's mostly made up. He's been accused of having a bit of a savior complex.

And that's on display with his recent, extraordinarily confused piece attacking Google for not supporting SESTA -- the "Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act." As we've explained in great detail, SESTA (despite its name) is unlikely to stop any sex trafficking and likely would make the problem worse. That's because the whole point of SESTA is to undermine CDA 230, the part of the law that creates incentives for tech companies to work with authorities and to help them track down sex trafficking on their sites. What the bill would do is make websites owners now both civilly and criminally liable for knowledge of any sex trafficking activity on their sites -- meaning that any proactive efforts by them to monitor their websites may be seen as "knowledge," thus making them liable. The new incentives will be not to help out at all -- not to monitor and not to search.

Meanwhile, by putting such a massive target on websites, it will inevitably be abused. We see how people abuse the DMCA to take down content all the time -- now add in the possibility of sites getting hit with criminal penalties, and you can see how quickly this "tool" will be abused to silence content online.

But, never mind all of that. To Kristof, because the bill says it's against sex trafficking, and he's against sex trafficking, it must be good. And, he's quite sure that the only people against the bill are Google, and that there's ill-intent there.

Why? Why would Google ally itself with Backpage, which is involved in 73 percent of cases of suspected child sex trafficking in the U.S., which advertised a 13-year-old whose pimp had tattooed his name on her eyelids?

First of all, Kristof is, again, playing fast and loose with the facts if he thinks Google is an "ally" of Backpage. Google has directly come out and said that it believes that Backpage should be criminally prosecuted by the DOJ (remember, CDA 230 does not apply to federal criminal charges).

I want to make our position on this clear. Google believes that Backpage.com can and should be held accountable for its crimes. We strongly applaud the work of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations in exposing Backpage's intentional promotion of child sex trafficking through ads. Based on those findings, Google believes that Backpage.com should be criminally prosecuted by the US Department of Justice for facilitating child sex trafficking, something they can do today without need to amend any laws. And years before the Senate's investigation and report, we prohibited Backpage from advertising on Google, and we have criticized Backpage publicly.

So, no, Google is not protecting Backpage. Kristoff, towards the end of his post, waves off Google's strong words about Backpage as proof that it has no reason not to support this legislation, without even once grappling with (a) what Google actually says or (b) why Google (and tons of others) would still oppose this legislation as being tremendously damaging. Even if you're not quite as convinced as Google that Backpage has broken the law (the Senate Report appeared to take a number of Backpage actions completely out of context), to argue that Google is supporting Backpage is clearly just wrong. But, Kristof, having set up his thesis, is going to go for it, no matter how wrong:

The answer has to do with Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which protects internet companies like Google (and The New York Times) from lawsuits — and also protects Backpage. Google seems to have a vague, poorly grounded fear that closing the loophole would open the way to frivolous lawsuits and investigations and lead to a slippery slope that will damage its interests and the freedom of the internet.

"Poorly grounded fear?" That's just wrong. Kristof seems totally ignorant of issues related to intermediary liability on the internet -- an issue that has been studied for quite some time. When you give people tools to put liability on online services for the actions of their users, the tools are abused. Every time. They get abused for censorship. We know this. You don't have to look any further than the intermediary liability setup we have in the copyright realm, where every year we see millions of false DMCA notices filed just to censor content, and not for any reason having to do with copyright.

How do you think things will turn out when you're able to not just threaten a website with civil copyright penalties with limited damages, but with potential criminal penalties, through a vaguely worded law where mere "knowledge" can get your entire site in trouble? But again, Kristof doesn't care.

That impresses few people outside the tech community, for the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act was crafted exceedingly narrowly to target only those intentionally engaged in trafficking children. Some tech companies, including Oracle, have endorsed the bill.

First, this is wrong. Lots of people outside the tech industry have raised concerns -- including free speech groups like the ACLU. But, even if it were only the tech community, why wouldn't you listen to the industry that actually has the experience in understanding how these kinds of laws are regularly abused to silence perfectly legitimate speech and to quash perfectly legitimate services? Wouldn't their input be valuable? Why does Kristof brush them off? As for the Oracle line -- let's be clear: Oracle and HP are the only "tech" companies that have come out in support of the bill, and neither run online services impacted by CDA 230. It's completely disingenuous to argue that Oracle represents "tech" when it's not an internet services provider who would be impacted by changes in CDA 230. Why even listen to them, rather than those who have the actual experience?

And the idea that this was "crafted exceedingly narrowly to only target those intentionally engaged in trafficking children" is just on its face, wrong. First off, the bill doesn't specifically just target trafficking having to do with children, but I think we can all agree that any trafficking is problematic. The issue is that it doesn't just punish those "intentionally engaged in trafficking." It specifically targets any website that is used in a way that "assists, supports or facilitates" trafficking and has broadly defined "knowledge" that the site is used that way. That's... not intentionally engaging in trafficking. It's much, much, much broader. Let's say you're Airbnb. SESTA makes it much riskier to be in business. If Airbnb hears that someone used Airbnb to traffic someone (which, unfortunately, is impossible to detect), now it risks criminal and civil lawsuits, because it "knew" of conduct that "assisted, supported, or facilitated." This is even if Airbnb doesn't know which accounts were used for this.

“This bill only impacts bad-actor websites,” notes Yiota Souras, general counsel at the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children. “You don’t inadvertently traffic a child.”

This is... just so misguided and wrong it's almost laughable. No, of course, no one "inadvertently" traffics a child. But that's not what this law is about. The law is about blaming websites if one of its users does anything related to trafficking someone via its services. And, that creates massive potential liability. Say someone wants to get our little site in trouble? They could just go and post links in comments to sex trafficking ads, and suddenly we're facing potential criminal charges. We're not Google. We can't hire staff to read every possible comment and recognize whether or not they're linking to illegal activity. And despite what some will say, even Google can't possibly hire enough staff, or get its AI good enough, to parse everything it touches to see whether or not it's linked to illegal activity. But under the current setup of SESTA, this leads you to a risk of massive liability.

The concerns here are real -- and Kristof is either ignorant or being purposely blind to the arguments here.

Senator Rob Portman, an Ohio Republican and lead sponsor of the legislation, says that it would clearly never affect Google. “We’ve tried to work with them,” Portman told me

This is laughable. The bill would impact basically every site, including Google. After all, it was just a few years ago, that a Mississippi Attorney General went on an illegal fishing expedition against Google -- put together by the MPAA's lawyers -- demanding all sorts of information from Google. Based on what? Well, Jim Hood said that because he could use Google to find sex trafficking ads, Google was breaking the law. A court tossed this out, and the two sides eventually settled, but under SESTA, Hood would now be able to go after Google criminally if any search turned up trafficking. And how the hell is Google supposed to make sure that no one ever uses any of its properties for sex trafficking?

But, never mind the facts. Kristof insists there's no issue here because the bill's sponsor says there's no issue.

Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, the lead Democratic sponsor, adds that “it’s truly baffling and perplexing” that some in the tech world (Google above all) have dug in their heels. He says the sex trafficking bill gathered 28 co-sponsors within a week, making it a rare piece of bipartisan legislation that seems likely to become law.

It's truly baffling that those with actual experience and knowledge in how weakening intermediary liability laws creates all sorts of problems are now telling you there will be all sorts of problems? And, really, isn't this the same Senator Richard Blumenthal who, when he was Connecticut Attorney General, was famous for campaigning against CDA 230 and blaming tech for basically everything? He's not exactly a credible voice. But, Kristof has his story and he apparently seems willing to believe anyone who says anything, no matter how little is based on facts, if it supports his version of the story.

I write about this issue because I’m haunted by the kids I’ve met who were pretty much enslaved, right here in the U.S. in the 21st century. I’ve been writing about Backpage for more than five years, ever since I came across a terrified 13-year-old girl, Baby Face, who had been forced to work for a pimp in New York City.

And you've been repeatedly called out and corrected for factual errors in your writing on this issue. Because you're quick to believe things that later turn out to be wrong. And, yes, stories like ones you've come across are awful and we should be doing everything possible to stop such exploitation. But blaming internet companies doesn't help. You blame the actual criminals, the ones trafficking the children. But, Kristof is clear: he doesn't care about blaming those actually responsible. He wants to take down internet companies. Because reasons.

But it’s not enough to send a few pimps to prison; we should also go after online marketplaces like Backpage. That’s why Google’s myopia is so sad.

Why? Why should we blame internet companies because people use them for illegal activity? What's wrong with blaming the people who actually break the laws? CDA 230, as currently written, encourages platforms to cooperate with law enforcement and to take down content. SESTA would undermine that and stop companies from working with law enforcement, because any admission of "knowledge" can be used against them.

In response to my inquiries, Google issued a statement: “Backpage acted criminally to facilitate child sex trafficking, and we strongly urge the Department of Justice to prosecute them for their egregious crimes against children. … Google will continue to work alongside Congress, antitrafficking organizations and other technology companies to combat sex trafficking.”

Fine, but then why oppose legislation? Why use intermediaries to defend Backpage? To me, all this reflects the tech world’s moral blindness about what’s happening outside its bubble.

Why oppose it? Because the legislation is a nuclear bomb on how the internet works and a direct attack on free speech. It's not "moral blindness" at all. In fact, SESTA would be a moral disaster because it removes incentives for companies to help stop trafficking, out of fear of creating "knowledge" for which they'll face civil and criminal lawsuits. This has been explained to Kristof -- and, in fact, people told him this on Twitter after his article was published, and he insisted that no one other than Google seemed concerned with SESTA.

That's also not true. As we've seen with our own letter, dozens of tech companies are worried about it. And we've talked to many more who admitted to us that they, too, think this is an awful law, but they're afraid of grandstanding folks like Kristof publishing misleading screeds against them falsely saying that worrying about SESTA is the same as supporting sex trafficking.

Incredibly, when an actual human trafficking expert and researcher, Dr. Kim Mehlman-Orozco, decided to challenge Kristof and point out that his opinions aren't backed up by the actual research, Kristof dismissed her views and data as not being as valuable as the few anecdotes he has.

Even if Google were right that ending the immunity for Backpage might lead to an occasional frivolous lawsuit, life requires some balancing.

Uh, what? This is basically Kristof first admitting that he's wrong that it won't impact sites other than Backpage, and then saying "meh, no biggie." But that's... really fucked up. We're not talking about the "occasional frivolous lawsuit." From what we've seen with the DMCA, it seems likely that there would be a rash of dangerous lawsuits, and companies being forced out of business -- not to mention tons of frivolous threats that never get to the lawsuit stage, but lead to widespread censorship just out of the fear of possible liability. How can Kristof just shrug that off as "balance"?

For example, websites must try to remove copyrighted material if it’s posted on their sites. That’s a constraint on internet freedom that makes sense, and it hasn’t proved a slippery slope. If we’re willing to protect copyrights, shouldn’t we do as much to protect children sold for sex?

HOLY SHIT. And here we learn that Kristof is so completely out of his depth that it's not even funny. Seriously, someone educate Nick Kristof a little on how the DMCA has been abused to silence speech, to kill companies and to create huge problems for free speech online? And that's with much lower penalties than what we're talking about with SESTA.

I asked Nacole, a mom in Washington State whose daughter was trafficked on Backpage at the age of 15, what she would say to Google.

“Our children can’t be the cost of doing business,” she said. Google understands so much about business, but apparently not that.

Ah, always close with a "for the children!" argument after making a bunch of statements that are just devoid of facts. No one is fighting this for the support of "business." They're doing it because they understand how important intermediary liability protections are against undermining how the internet works and how free speech works online. Kristof has a long history of not caring about facts so long as he gets a good story about just how concerned he is about trafficking. We're all concerned about trafficking -- but passing a law that will make the problem worse just to appear like you're a hero is not the solution, Nick.

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Earlier today, I wrote up a list of the many problems with SESTA and how it will be abused. Over and over again, we've seen defenders of the bill -- almost none of whom have much, if any, experience in managing services on the internet -- insist that the bill is "narrowly targeted" and wouldn't create any problems at all for smaller internet services. However, with the way the bill is worded, that seems unlikely. As stated in the last post, by opening up sites to facing both lawsuits from state Attorneys General and civil lawsuits, SESTA puts almost any site that offers services to the public at risk. The problematic language in the bill is that this is the "standard" for liability:

"The term 'participation in a venture' means knowing conduct by an individual or entity, by any means, that assists, supports, or facilitates a violation...."

And that could apply to just about anyone offering services online. So, let's dig into a few examples of companies and services potentially facing liability thanks to this nuclear bomb-sized hole in CDA 230.

• Airbnb: I did a whole post on this earlier. But there are multiple reports of how some people have used Airbnb for prostitution. I'm quite sure that Airbnb doesn't want its users to use the platform in this way, but under SESTA, it will face criminal and civil penalties -- and it has no way to prevent it. Prosecutors or civil litigants can easily point to these articles, and note that this demonstrates "knowledge" that Airbnb is "facilitating" sex trafficking, and, voila, no CDA 230 protections.
• Square: The popular payments processor that has made it easy for small businesses to accept credit cards... can also be used for prostitution/sex trafficking. Square can't specifically watch over what each of its customers is selling, but clearly, it wouldn't be difficult for prosecutors and/or civil litigants to argue that Square is knowingly facilitating trafficking by allowing traffickers to accept payments.
• Facebook: Obviously, tons of sex traffickers use Facebook to advertise their wares. There have been news stories about this. So clearly Facebook has "knowledge." If it can't magically eradicate it, it may also now have to deal with criminal and civil lawsuits lobbed its way.
• Snapchat: Last year there was a story of a teenager lured into a sex trafficking ring via Snapchat. So, clearly, lawyers might argue that Snapchat has "facilitated" sex trafficking.
• Wordpress/Automattic: Automattic hosts a significant portion of the entire internet with its powerful Wordpress.com platform. It's pretty damn likely that at least some sex traffickers use Wordpress to set up sites promoting what they're offering. Thus, it's "facilitating" sex trafficking.
• Wikipedia: You wouldn't think of Wikipedia as being a hub for sex trafficking, but the site gets hit with spam all the time, and people trying to promote stuff via its webpages -- and even when spam is edited out, it remains viewable in the history tabs. So, if a few links to trafficking advertisements show up, even if edited out, Wikipedia could face liability for facilitating such ads.
• Google Docs: Did sex traffickers use Google docs to create fliers or manage a spreadsheet? Is that "facilitating" sex trafficking? Well, we might not know until after a court goes through a long and involved process to figure it out.
• Cloudflare: Tons of websites use Cloudflare as a CDN to provide better uptime. What if one of them involves advertisements for sex trafficking. Is Cloudflare liable? After all, its CDN and anti-DDoS technology helped "facilitate" the service...
• Rackspace: Popular hosting company has millions of websites. If one of them hosts advertising for trafficking, it can be liable for facilitating sex trafficking.
• Amazon: Through its web services arm, Amazon hosts a large portion of the internet. Can you say for certain that Amazon S3 isn't used somewhere by some sex trafficking parties?
• YouTube: These days, almost anything can be found in videos, and while YouTube has a system to "notify" the company of abuse, that may be used against the company, claiming "knowledge." After all, in a case in Italy where Google execs were found criminally liable, the fact that some users clicked the "notify" button was used as evidence against the execs.
• Namecheap: Has Namecheap ever registered a domain that was then used by sex traffickers? Well, then it can be argued that it facilitated sex trafficking, and is not protected by CDA 230.
• Indeed: Basically any "job board" is at risk. There are stories of sex traffickers seeking victims via promises of summer jobs -- and while these stories are highly dubious at best, similar accusations against online job boards under SESTA would be easy to make.
• Reddit: As an open forum, certainly sex trafficking gets discussed in some corners of the site. Is it possible that some have used it to help facilitate trafficking? Absolutely.
• Any site that has comments: And that includes sites like Techdirt. Want to get a site in trouble? Why not spam its comments with links to sex trafficking ads? Voila, you've now put those sites at risk of criminal and civil liability...

The point of this is that this list can go on and on and on. Almost any internet service can be used in some way to "facilitate" sex trafficking. And rather than recognizing that the problem is those engaging in sex trafficking, SESTA now lets everyone go after the tools they use. But nearly all those tools are mostly used for perfectly legitimate, non-illegal activity. Yet, under SESTA, all face massive liability and the potential for criminal charges.

We've been talking quite a bit about SESTA -- the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act -- and why it's so problematic, but with hearings today, I wanted to dig in a bit more closely with the text to explain why it's so problematic. There are a large number of problems with the bill, so let's discuss them one by one.

Undermines the incentives to moderate content and to work with law enforcement:

This remains the biggest issue for me: the fact that the bill is clearly counterproductive to its own stated goals. When people talk about CDA 230, they often (mistakenly) only talk about CDA 230(c)(1) -- which is the part that says sites are immune from liability. This leads many people to (again, mistakenly) claim that the only thing CDA 230 is good for is absolving platforms from doing any moderation at all. But this actually ignores the equally important part of the same section: CDA 230(c)(2) which explicitly encourages platforms to moderate "objectionable" content, by noting that good faith efforts to moderate and police that content have no impact on your protection from liability in part (1).

In other words: as currently stated, CDA 230 says that you're encouraged to moderate your platform and takedown bad content, because there's no increase in legal liability if you do so. Indeed, it's difficult to find a single internet platform that does zero moderation. Most platforms do quite a bit of moderation, because otherwise their platforms would be overrun by spam. And, if they want people to actually use their platforms, nearly every site (even those like 4chan) tend to do significant moderation out of public pressure to keep certain content off. Yet, under SESTA you now face liability if you are shown to have any "knowledge" of violations of federal sex trafficking laws. But what do they mean by "knowledge"? It's not at all clear, as it just says "knowledge." Thus, now if a site, for example, discovers someone using its platform for trafficking and alerts authorities, that's evidence of "knowledge" and can be used against them both in criminal charges and in civil lawsuits.

In other words, somewhat incredibly, the incentive here is for platforms to stop looking for any illegal activity on their sites, out of fear of creating knowledge which would make them liable. How does that help? Indeed, platforms will be incentivized not to do any moderation at all, and that will create a mess on many sites.

The vague "knowledge" standard will be abused:

This is sort of a corollary to the first point. The problematic language in the bill is this:

The term ‘participation in a venture’ means knowing conduct by an individual or entity, by any means, that assists, supports, or facilitates a violation...

But what do they mean by "knowing conduct"? Who the hell knows. We already know that this is going to get litigated probably for decades in court. We have some similar problems in the DMCA's safe harbors, where there have been legal battles going on many years over whether the standard is "general knowledge" v. "specific knowledge" and what is meant by "red flag knowledge." And in SESTA the language is less clear. When people have attempted to pin down SESTA's sponsors on what the standard is for knowledge, they've received wildly varying answers, which just means there is no standard, and we'll be talking about lawsuits for probably decades before it's established what is meant by "knowledge." For companies, again, the best way to deal with this is to not even bother doing any moderation of your platform whatsoever, so you can avoid any claim of knowledge. That doesn't help at all.

The even vaguer "facilitation" language will be massively abused:

In that same definition of "participation in a venture" what may be even more problematic than the vague "knowledge" standard, is the vaguer claim that an entity "by any means, that assists, supports or facilitates a violation..." of sex trafficking laws, meets the standard of "participation in a venture." All three of those terms have potential problems. Assisting sounds like it requires proactive action -- but how do you define it here. Is correcting typos "assisting"? Is having an automated system suggesting keywords "assisting"? Is autocompleting search "assisting"? Because lots of sites do things like that, and it doesn't give them any actual knowledge of legal violations. How about "supporting"? Again, perfectly benign activities can be seen as "supporting" criminal behavior without the platform being aware of it. Maybe certain features are used in a way that can be seen as supporting. We've pointed out that Airbnb could be a target under SESTA if someone uses an Airbnb for sex trafficking. Would the fact that Airbnb handles payment and reviews be seen as "supporting"?

But the broadest of all is the term "facilitating." That covers basically anything. That's flat out saying "blame the tool for how it's used." Almost any service online can be used to "facilitate" sex trafficking in the hands of sex traffickers. I already discussed Airbnb above, but what about if someone uses Dropbox to host sex trafficking flyers? Or what if a sex trafficker creates advertisements in Google Docs? Or what if a pimp creates a blog on Wordpress? What if they use Skype for phone calls? What if they use Stripe or Square for payments? All of those things can be facilitation under this law, and the companies would have no actual knowledge of what's going on, but would face not only criminal liability but the ability of victims to sue them rather than the actual traffickers.

This is the core problem: this bill targets the tools rather than the law breakers.

Punching a hole in CDA 230 will be abused:

This is one that seems to confuse people who don't spend much time looking at intermediary liability protections, how they work and how they'll be abused. It's completely normal for people in that situation to not recognize how widely intermediary liability is used to stifle perfectly legitimate speech and activity. However, we know damn well from looking at the DMCA, in particular, that when you set up a process by which there might be liability on a platform, it's regularly abused by people angry about content online to demand censorship. Indeed, we've seen people regularly admit that if they see content they dislike, even if there's no legitimate copyright claim, they'll "DMCA it" to get it taken down.

Here, the potential problems are much, much worse. Because at least within the DMCA context, you have relatively limited damages (compared to SESTA at least -- the monetary damages in the DMCA can add up quickly, but at least its only monetary and it's limited to a ceiling of $150,000 per work infringed). With SESTA, criminal penalties are much more stringent (obviously) which will create massive incentives for platforms to cave immediately, rather than face the risk of criminal prosecution. Similarly, the civil penalties show no upper bound under the law -- meaning the potential monetary penalty may be significantly higher.

The chilling effects of criminal charges:

Combine all of this and you create massive chilling effects for any online platforms -- big or small. I already explained earlier why the new incentives will not be to help law enforcement or to moderate content at all, for fear of creating "knowledge" but it's even worse than that. Because, for many platforms, the massive potential liability from SESTA will mean they don't create any kind of platform at all. A comment feature on a website would become a huge liability. Any service that might conceivably be used by anyone to "facilitate" sex trafficking creates the potential for serious criminal and civil liability, which should be of great concern. It would likely lead to many platforms not being created at all, just because of the potential liability. For ones that already exist, some may shutter, and others may greatly curtail what the platform allows.

State Attorneys General have a terrible track record on these issues:

In response to the previous point, some may point out (correctly!) that the existing federal law already exempts federal criminal charges -- meaning that the DOJ can go after platforms if it finds that they're actively participating in sex trafficking. But, for as much as we rag on the DOJ, they tend not to be in the business of going after platforms just for the headlines. State AGs, on the other hand, have a fairly long history of doing exactly that -- including directly at the behest of companies looking to strangle competitors.

Back in 2010 we wrote about a fairly stunning and eye-opening account by Topix CEO Chris Tolles about what happened when a group of State Attorneys General decided that Topix was behaving badly. Despite the fact they had no legal basis for doing so, they completely ran Topix through the ringer, because it got them good headlines. Here's just a snippet:

The call with these guys was actually pretty cordial. We walked them through how we ran feedback at Topix, that how in January 2010, we posted 3.6M comments, had our Artificial Intelligence systems remove 390k worth before they were ever even put up, and how we had over 28k feedback emails and 210k user flags, resulting in over 45k posts being removed from the system. When we went through the various issues with them, we ended up coming to what I thought was a set of offers to resolve the issues at hand. The folks on the phone indicated that these were good steps, and that they would circle back with their respective Attorneys’ General and get back to us.

No good deed goes unpunished

So, after opening the kimono and giving these guys a whole lot of info on how we ran things, how big we were and that we dedicated 20% of our staff on these issues, what was the response. (You could probably see this one coming.)

That’s right. Another press release. This time from 23 states’ Attorney’s General.

This pile-on took much of what we had told them, and turned it against us. We had mentioned that we required three separate people to flag something before we would take action (mainly to prevent individuals from easily spiking things that they didn’t like). That was called out as a particular sin to be cleansed from our site. They also asked us to drop the priority review program in its entirety, drop the time it takes us to review posts from 7 days to 3 and “immediately revamp our AI technology to block more violative posts” amongst other things.

And, remember, this was done when the AGs had no legal leverage against Topix. Imagine what they would do if they could hold the threat of criminal and civil penalties over the company?

Similarly, remember how leaked Sony emails revealed that the MPAA deliberately set up Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood with the plan to attack Google (with the letter Hood sent actually being written by MPAA outside lawyers?). If you don't recall, Hood used claims that, because he was able to find illegal stuff via Google, it meant he could go on a total fishing expedition into how it handled much of its business.

In the Sony leak, it was revealed that the MPAA viewed a NY Times article about the value of lobbying state AGs as a sort of playbook to cultivate "anti-Google" Attorneys General, who it could then use to target and take down companies the MPAA didn't like (remember, this was what the MPAA referred to, unsubtly, as "Project Goliath").

Do we really want to empower that same group of AGs with the ability to drag down lots of other platforms with crazy fishing expeditions, just because some angry Hollywood (or other) companies say so?

Opening up civil lawsuits will be abused over and over again:

One of the big problems with SESTA is that it will open up internet companies to getting sued a lot. We already see a bunch of cases every year where people who are upset about certain content online, target lawsuits at those sites just out of anger. The lawsuits tend to get thrown out, thanks to CDA 230, but lawyers keep trying creative ideas to get around CDA 230, adding in all sorts of frivolous attempts. So, for example, after the decision in the Roommates case -- in which Roommates.com got dinged for activity not protected by CDA 230 (specifically its own actions that violated fair housing laws) -- lots of people cite the Roommates case as an example of why their own argument isn't killed off by CDA 230.

In other words, if you give private litigants a small loophole to get around CDA 230, they try to jump in and expand it to cover everything. So if SESTA becomes law, you can expect lots of these lawsuits where people will go to great lengths to argue just about any lawsuit is not protected by 230, because of supposed sex trafficking occuring via the site.

Small companies will be hurt most of all:

There's this weird talking point making the rounds, that the only one really resisting SESTA is Google. We've discussed a few times why this is wrong, but let's face it: of all the companies out there, Google is probably best positioned (along with Facebook) to weather any of this. Both Google and Facebook are used to massive moderation on their platforms. Both companies have built very expensive tools for moderating and filtering content, and both have built strong relationships with politicians and law enforcement. That's not true for just about everyone else. That means, SESTA would do the most damage to smaller companies and startups, who simply cannot invest the resources to deal with constant monitoring and/or threats from how people use their platform.

Given all of these reasons, it's immensely troubling that SESTA supporters keep running around insisting that the bill is narrowly tailored and won't really impact many sites at all. It suggests either a willful blindness to the actual way the internet works (and how people abuse these systems for censorship) or a fairly scary ignorance level, with little interest in getting educated.

You'll recall that earlier this year, AT&T, Verizon and Comcast successfully lobbied the GOP and Trump administration to kill consumer broadband privacy protections that were supposed to take effect last March. While big ISPs engaged in breathless hysteria about the "draconian" nature of the rules, the restrictions were quite modest -- simply requiring ISPs be transparent about what user data gets collected and sold. They also made it more difficult for big ISPs to charge users significantly more money just to opt out of private data collection, an idea both AT&T and Comcast have already flirted with.

But in quickly axing the rules, big ISPs --- and the regulators and lawmakers paid to love them -- got a bit more than they bargained for. The ham-fisted rush to kill the protections quickly resulted in more than a dozen states passing a patchwork collection of new state laws aimed at protecting broadband consumers. Among the most notable was California Assemblyman Ed Chau's AB 375 (pdf). The proposal largely mirrors the FCC's proposal, though it took an even harder stance against ISPs looking to abuse the lack of competition to effectively make privacy a paid, premium option.

The law quickly received praise from the EFF, which argued that the law would be a good template for other states moving forward, lessening the chance for over-reaching, inconsistent, and poorly written state measures. But large ISPs, Facebook and Google lobbyists quickly got to work demonizing Chau's proposal too, falsely claiming it would somehow weaken user security and magically increase pop ups all over the internet. These and other claims were recently picked apart in an EFF blog post:

"The prediction of "recurring pop-ups" is also false because if anything, the bill would "likely result in fewer pop-ups, not to mention fewer intrusive ads during your everyday browser experience," Gillula wrote. "That’s because A.B. 375 will prevent Internet providers from using your data to sell ads they target to you without your consent—which means they’ll be less likely to insert ads into your Web browsing, like some Internet providers have done in the past.."

But the lobbying had its intended effect, and California lawmakers voted to kill the effort in a night vote over the weekend:

"It is extremely disappointing that the California legislature failed to restore broadband privacy rights for residents in this state in response to the Trump Administration and Congressional efforts to roll back consumer protection,” EFF Legislative Counsel Ernesto Falcon said. “Californians will continue to be denied the legal right to say no to their cable or telephone company using their personal data for enhancing already high profits. Perhaps the legislature needs to spend more time talking to the 80% of voters that support the goal of A.B. 375 and less time with Comcast, AT&T, and Google's lobbyists in Sacramento.”

While the proposal can be reintroduced next year, fighting upstream against the collective lobbying firepower of massive ISPs and Silicon Valley giants like Facebook and Google has proven no easy task. And there have been some comments from FCC Commissioners that they may try and use FCC authority to hamstring these efforts as well. You see, it's a "states rights" issue if you try to prevent states from letting ISP lobbyists write protectionist law hamstringing competition, but those concerns magically disappear when states move to actually protect consumers from duopoly harm.

It's worth re-iterating that ISPs spent years arguing consumers didn't need added privacy protections because the sector would self-regulate. Of course, Verizon subsequently highlighted the folly of such claims when it was busted modifying user packets to track users around the internet without telling them. AT&T similarly did the same when it began charging users $400 to $550 more per year to opt out of behavioral advertising. And other, smaller cable companies like CableONE joined the fun when they proclaimed they'd be using consumer financial data to provide worse customer service to bad credit customers.

The origins of this aggressively bad behavior? The lack of competition in the broadband space. And with the Trump administration looking to effectively gut all oversight of one of the least-competitive and least-liked sectors in American industry, anybody thinking these privacy issues will magically resolve themselves (instead of say, just getting progressively worse) hasn't been paying attention.

This is not a huge surprise, but it's still disappointing to find out that the W3C has officially approved putting DRM into HTML 5 in the form of Encrypted Media Extensions (EME). Some will insist that EME is not technically DRM, but it is the standardizing of how DRM will work in HTML going forward. As we've covered for years, there was significant concern over this plan, but when it was made clear that the MPAA (a relatively new W3C member) required DRM in HTML, and Netflix backed it up strongly, the W3C made it fairly clear that there was no real debate to be had on the issue. Recognizing that DRM was unavoidable, EFF proposed a fairly straightforward covenant, that those participating agree not to use the anti-circumvention provisions of the DMCA (DMCA 1201) to go after security researchers, who cracked DRM in EME. The W3C already has similar covenants regarding patents, so this didn't seem like a heavy lift. Unfortunately, this proposal was more or less dismissed by the pro-DRM crowd as being an attempt to relitigate the question of DRM itself (which was not true).

Earlier this year, Tim Berners-Lee, who had the final say on things, officially put his stamp of approval on EME without a covenant, leading the EFF to appeal the decision. That appeal has now failed. Unfortunately, the votes on this were kept entirely secret:

So much for transparency.

In Bryan Lunduke's article about this at Network World, he notes that despite the W3C saying that it had asked members if they wanted their votes to be public, with all declining, Cory Doctorow (representing EFF) says that actually EFF was slapped on the wrist for asking W3C members if they would record their votes publicly:

“The W3C did not, to my knowledge as [Advisory Committee] rep, ask members whether they would be OK with having their votes disclosed in this latest poll, and if they had, EFF would certainly have been happy to have its vote in the public record. We feel that this is a minimal step towards transparency in the standards-setting that affects billions of users and will redound for decades to come.”

“By default, all W3C Advisory Committee votes are ‘member-confidential.’ Previously, EFF has secured permission from members to disclose their votes. We have also been censured by the W3C leadership for disclosing even vague sense of a vote (for example, approximate proportions).”

It was eventually revealed that out of 185 members participating in the vote, 108 voted for DRM, 57 voted against, and 20 abstained.

And while the W3C insisted it couldn't reveal who voted for or against the proposal... it had no problem posting "testimonials" from the MPAA, the RIAA, NBCUniversal, Netflix, Microsoft and a few others talking about just how awesome DRM in HTML will be. Incredibly, Netflix even forgot the bullshit talking point that "EME is not DRM" and directly emphasized how "integration of DRM into web browsers delivers improved performance, battery life, reliability, security and privacy." Right, but during this debate we kept getting yelled at by people who said EME is not DRM. So nice of you to admit that was all a lie.

In response to all of this, Cory Doctorow has authored a scathing letter, having the EFF resign from the W3C. It's worth reading.

The W3C is a body that ostensibly operates on consensus. Nevertheless, as the coalition in support of a DRM compromise grew and grew — and the large corporate members continued to reject any meaningful compromise — the W3C leadership persisted in treating EME as topic that could be decided by one side of the debate. In essence, a core of EME proponents was able to impose its will on the Consortium, over the wishes of a sizeable group of objectors — and every person who uses the web. The Director decided to personally override every single objection raised by the members, articulating several benefits that EME offered over the DRM that HTML5 had made impossible.

But those very benefits (such as improvements to accessibility and privacy) depend on the public being able to exercise rights they lose under DRM law — which meant that without the compromise the Director was overriding, none of those benefits could be realized, either. That rejection prompted the first appeal against the Director in W3C history.

In our campaigning on this issue, we have spoken to many, many members' representatives who privately confided their belief that the EME was a terrible idea (generally they used stronger language) and their sincere desire that their employer wasn't on the wrong side of this issue. This is unsurprising. You have to search long and hard to find an independent technologist who believes that DRM is possible, let alone a good idea. Yet, somewhere along the way, the business values of those outside the web got important enough, and the values of technologists who built it got disposable enough, that even the wise elders who make our standards voted for something they know to be a fool's errand.

We believe they will regret that choice. Today, the W3C bequeaths an legally unauditable attack-surface to browsers used by billions of people. They give media companies the power to sue or intimidate away those who might re-purpose video for people with disabilities. They side against the archivists who are scrambling to preserve the public record of our era. The W3C process has been abused by companies that made their fortunes by upsetting the established order, and now, thanks to EME, they’ll be able to ensure no one ever subjects them to the same innovative pressures.

This is a disappointing day for the web, and a black mark on Tim Berners-Lee's reputation and legacy of stewardship over it.

You may recall that a few years ago, Valve attempted to rollout a platform for video game modders to make money from their efforts. It was an altogether messy attempt for any number of reasons, but chief among them was that the modding community and ecosystem has long operated as a labor of love and not one in which money is exchanged past the point of asking for donations. What Valve attempted to do was fundamentally change that ecosystem without providing a great deal of transparency as to why. One of the primary early adopters of this system in the game publishing community was Bethesda, which opened up Skyrim, a game both wildly popular and one with a robust modding community, to this paid mods platform. In the wake of the backlash, Bethesda ended up refunding all of the mod purchases gamers had made.

But then it much more quietly rolled out its Creation Club, which was something of a paid mods 2.0 attempt. For Fallout 4 in particular, the Creation Club platform was one in which both Bethesda and outside modders could have additional content published for the game in a way codified and supported by Bethesda itself. Outside modding groups would be paid for this work and, in turn, gamers would pay for the content through Creation Club rather than buying the more traditional DLC. It was something of a trade, in other words. No annoying DLC, but pay for the mods of choice through Creation Club.

So, how is that going? Well, the Creation Club community is still there, but relative to most modding communities there isn't a whole lot being offered up, nor purchased. Despite a huge portion of the game's title screen now dedicated to a window for "Creation Club News", gamers don't seem to be adopting it en masse. Unlike, say, Nexus Mods, long the go-to site to find game mods for Bethesda titles. In fact, one of the site's most popular mods for Fallout 4 is a simple mod that gets rid of the title screen crawl for Creation Club.

Enter the “No More Creation Club News” mod by a modder named InAComaDial999. It’s currently the second most popular file of the month on Nexus Mods’ Fallout 4 page. It gets rid of the ad. That’s it.

I imagine, though, that people aren’t downloading this mod because they’re aesthetic purists. They want to stick it to the man, and this feels like a tiny middle finger they can deploy at will.

Look, there may be a way to make paying modders for their work a reality that doesn't almost universally piss off gamers. I personally am skeptical, because the modding scene has always thrived outside of the profit motive as a community. But whatever the answer to that open question is, it should be clear by now that paid mods 3.0 better have a significant amount of thought put into it compared to the first two versions.

Motel 6 sure seems to love handing over guest info to law enforcement. A couple of years ago, a Rhode Island branch decided to start faxing its guest list to local police every night -- something the PD had never asked it to do. This pleased the mayor, who proudly noted he knew everyone who was staying at the motel every night. Backlash followed and the police chief announced he would no longer accept Motel 6's guest list faxes.

Two years later, Motel 6 branches in Arizona are doing pretty much the same thing. This time, however, the info appears to be going straight to Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Free ICE in motel rooms never goes out of style. An undocumented motel guest detained under suspicious circumstances led to local journalists digging into public records.

A Phoenix New Times review of court records found that between February and August, ICE agents made at least 20 arrests at Motel 6s, showing up roughly every two weeks. (Since many of the documents we reviewed contained only vague details about where ICE encountered an individual, the actual number is likely even higher.)

All took place at one of two Motel 6 locations: 4130 North Black Canyon Highway or 1530 North 52nd Drive. Both are in predominantly Latino neighborhoods. New Times was unable to find records indicating that ICE conducted arrests at other local motels during this same time period.

So far, nothing all that conclusive. Some things can be inferred from the New Times' investigation of public records, but there's nothing specifically noting ICE agents are working from motel guest lists. However, nothing in the records indicates how ICE is locating these undocumented motel guests. The only thing stated in the documents is agents were "following up on tips."

The New Times decided to go right to the source -- motel employees -- and got some very straightforward answers.

“We send a report every morning to ICE — all the names of everybody that comes in,” one front-desk clerk explained. “Every morning at about 5 o’clock, we do the audit and we push a button and it sends it to ICE.”

[...]

[F]ront desk staff at multiple Motel 6 locations in the Valley said that they regularly share guest information with local police.

“I don’t know how it works, but if you check in and you have a warrant, you’re going to get picked up,” one young woman explained.

ICE has refused to comment on the veracity of these employees' claims, saying doing so would compromise investigative techniques. However, if this is what's happening, it's neither "investigative" nor much of a "technique." It's just someone running a list against DHS/ICE databases and hoping for a hit. The motel is doing all the legwork, and there's precious little of that being done.

Even if you consider the employees' statements to be unreliable hearsay, there's the corporate response to the New Times story, which makes it explicitly clear sending guest lists to ICE was exactly what was happening:

Regarding your media story on the Phoenix-area location, this was implemented at the local level without the knowledge of senior management. When we became aware of it last week, it was discontinued. We are currently further investigating and will provide more information shortly.

This is better but far from completely comforting. ICE can't demand any motel hand over guest lists in perpetuity, but there's nothing in the law (or even on-point Supreme Court decisions) that forbids agents from popping in and checking out lists in person. The same goes for local law enforcement, which may take its own look-see and pass that on to the feds if anything catches their eye. Motel 6's corporate rollback of an extremely localized unofficial policy may return a little privacy to its guests, but the law and the courts see very little that's protected in information turned over to third parties.

Protecting children from harm is a laudable goal. But, as we've noted for many years, grandstanding politicians have a fairly long history of doing a lot of really dangerous stuff by insisting it needs to be done "for the children." That doesn't mean that all "for the children" laws are bad, but they do deserve scrutiny, especially when they appear to be reactive to news events, and rushed out with little understanding or discussion. And that's a big part of our concern with SESTA -- the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act -- a "for the children" bill. With a name like that, it's difficult to oppose, because we're all in favor of stopping sex trafficking. But if you actually look at the bill with any understanding of how the internet works, you quickly realize that it will be tremendously counterproductive and would likely do a lot more to harm trafficking victims by making it much more risky for internet services to moderate their own sites, and to cooperate with law enforcement in nabbing sex traffickers using their platforms.

There's a hearing tomorrow morning about SESTA, and the bill is quickly moving forward, with very few Senators expressing any real concern about the impact it might have on free speech or the internet -- despite the fact that a ton of tech companies and free speech advocates have spoken out about their concerns. Instead, over and over again, we're hearing false claims about how it's just Google that's concerned. Last month, we'd put up a page on our Copia site about the bill with a letter to Congress signed by a few dozen tech companies. Today we're offiically announcing a standalone site, 230Matters.com, that explains why CDA 230 is so important, highlighting the many different parties concerned with the bill, from the ACLU and EFF to tech companies to think tanks and more. The site also hosts the letter that we sent to Congress with our concerns about the bill, put together with the group Engine Advocacy and signed by over 40 companies including Kickstarter, Reddit, Tucows, NVCA, Github, Automattic, Cloudflare, Rackspace, Medium and more.

That's not "just Backpage" or "just Google". The letter was signed by internet companies big and small that know just how damaging SESTA will be -- not just to their ability to operate online, but to their own efforts to proactively moderate their own sites, or even to work with law enforcement to help stop trafficking online. In other words, this bill is a double whammy: (1) it will greatly harm innovation and free speech online and (2) do so in a way that is likely to make trafficking worse. Unfortunately, supporters of the bill are falsely claiming that being against this bill is the equivalent of supporting sex trafficking. That's dangerous and leaves no room for actual discussion about why the bill will be so counterproductive.

The letter is still open for more signatures -- so if you represent a company that is concerned about this bill, please consider signing on.

With Congress paying attention to SESTA this week, you can expect more posts from us exploring the problems with the bill and with the arguments in its favor. We already had one post earlier today debunking the attacks on EFF and CDT, and more are forthcoming...