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posted by takyon on Monday November 13 2017, @12:33PM   Printer-friendly
from the tech-industry-siesta dept.

Internet Giants Support SESTA

Tech companies are cheering on a bill that guts internet protections

In a unanimous vote, the Senate Commerce Committee approved the Stop Enabling Sex Trafficking Act (or SESTA), clearing the way for a full vote by the House and Senate. As Congress wrestles over tax reform and the debt ceiling, it's still unclear when SESTA will reach a larger vote, and it still faces stern opposition from tech policy organizations and even some anti-trafficking groups. But with more than 30 senators already signed on, the bill seems primed to pass whenever it reaches the floor.

The biggest twist has come from the industry itself. After weeks of debate, a string of tech companies and industry groups have come around to supporting SESTA, leaving critics with few allies and narrowing options. It's an unusual stance for the tech industry to take on a bill that some say would strike at some of the internet's most fundamental protections. But as Google and Facebook face mounting pressure for regulation, SESTA increasingly seems like a workable compromise, giving prosecutors a new tool while fending off more onerous regulation. For anyone dealing with user-generated content, the result could be a dangerous new source of legal risk, one that only the largest companies are fully equipped to handle.

Also at EFF and Marketplace. Wikipedia.

SESTA Could Destroy Wikipedia

Wikipedia Warns That SESTA Could Destroy Wikipedia

For many people supporting SESTA, the discussion seems to start and end with "sex trafficking is bad, this bill says it targets sex trafficking and therefore it's good" (and maybe with a touch of "if it hurts big internet companies, that's fine, they deserve it.") But, the impact of SESTA goes way beyond that (not to mention it doesn't actually do anything to stop sex trafficking and could make the problem worse). It's good to see Wikimedia speak up -- and hopefully someone in Congress will finally start to understand why SESTA is such a bad bill.

[Update: With thanks to lgsoynews, Here is the link to the text of the bill: https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/senate-bill/1693/text and, another link, from the EFF, with some IMPORTANT context in the beginning (missing from the official link) :
https://www.eff.org/files/2017/08/02/sesta2017.pdf (pdf)

--martyb]


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 13 2017, @05:02PM (4 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 13 2017, @05:02PM (#596301)

    This is the first I've heard of this legislation, and my 15-second skimming of the bill (summary?) suggests it's just some superficial language changes. So what is the bill doing that's so bad?

  • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 13 2017, @06:27PM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 13 2017, @06:27PM (#596358)

    > This is the first I've heard of this legislation

    You should really read more tech-related news. SESTA has been dissected and criticized for months.

    > So what is the bill doing that's so bad?

    There's like half a dozen links in the summary that elaborate on that :/

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 13 2017, @08:36PM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 13 2017, @08:36PM (#596441)

      Apparently I haven't been keeping up the news and I've been living under a proverbial rock. So you could either spend 2 minutes and quickly explain the high-level bullet-points to somebody (who has and does call his Senators and Representatives with opinions, for the little good it does... albeit little is better than no good). Or you can tell me to RTFM and hope I spend the time to do the research.

      As a hint, I skimmed the EFF article in PDF linked before I posted this because they are usually fairly cogent, but this one didn't say anything which I found obviously bad, hence my posting.

      I guess I will be yet another uninformed sheep in this situation because I'm a busy person, my representative will not be informed of what a member of their constituency think, and we can all go back to ranting about how broken the American political system is. Yes, that works too.

  • (Score: 3, Informative) by maxwell demon on Monday November 13 2017, @07:49PM

    by maxwell demon (1608) on Monday November 13 2017, @07:49PM (#596407) Journal

    Well, what sounds like a simple edit can turn out as a major change.

    For example, imagine a law proposes the following changes to the Ninth Amendment:

    • After "be" add "."
    • Before "construed", add "They are"

    That's just some superficial language changes, right?

    Well, let's look at the text:

    The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

    And here's what the above edits would make of it:

    The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be. They are construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

    That would be a pretty big change, wouldn't it?

    --
    The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.