California Attorney General Kamala Harris, who will be resigning soon prior to joining Congress as a U.S. Senator, has filed new "pimping" charges against the CEO and other executives of Backpage. The previous set of charges were dismissed by a judge less than two weeks ago. Backpage is an online classified advertising website known for its listings of escort services:
Harris said the new charges were based on new evidence. A Sacramento County judge threw out pimping charges against the men on 9 December, citing federal free-speech laws. In the latest case, filed in Sacramento County superior court, Harris claims Backpage illegally funnelled money through multiple companies and created various websites to get around banks that refused to process transactions. She also alleged that the company used photos of women from Backpage on other sites without their permission in order to increase revenue and knowingly profited from the proceeds of prostitution.
"By creating an online brothel – a hotbed of illicit and exploitative activity – Carl Ferrer, Michael Lacey, and James Larkin preyed on vulnerable victims, including children, and profited from their exploitation," Harris said in a statement.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by MrGuy on Monday December 26 2016, @10:48PM
The previous charges were dismissed because the Communications Decency Act specifically exempted website owners from legal responsibility of the actions of their third-party users. For example, Craigslist isn't guilty of a crime just because someone tries to sell stolen goods via a Craigslist Ad.
To get around that defense, it appears the prosecution is alleging that the owners of Backpage weren't simply providing a neutral service that was used by others to facilitate a crime, but rather that Backpage executives were active participants in the crime itself.
It appears they're taking two approaches on this. If Backpage actively and knowingly helped facilitate payment activity for illegal activities, they can't claim to be just an unknowing communication service provider. That could potentially defeat the shield from the Communications Decency Act.
Second, if the owners of the site used the illegal content to privately profit from it, it would be hard to argue they didn't know about anything illegal going on. And if they actively created some of the offending content, it's not third parties who did the bad actions. The Communications Decency Act only protects platform providers, not content creators.
It's not clear what, if any, evidence there is to back up either of these claims. Allegations are not evidence. The previous dismissal made it pretty clear that the court won't hold Backpage liable for user-created content, so they need to have something substantial to prove Backpage execs were more actively involved in the illegal activity. Whether they have enough evidence to convince a court is something that we'll have to see.