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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]
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Monday November 13 2017, @05:02PM (6 children)
Sad to say there is no place to run. There is no safe space on this planet. Our only hope is to make censorship technically impractical right here and everywhere.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 3, Interesting) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday November 13 2017, @05:40PM (3 children)
It's not censorship that concerns me about SESTA, it's putting liability on us no matter what we do if anyone ever posts anything (or even a link to anything) running afoul of SESTA. We can't afford to defend ourselves in a lawsuit without having to ratchet up the beg-o-meter's numbers rather drastically.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by fustakrakich on Monday November 13 2017, @06:30PM (2 children)
It is a form of censorship, designed explicitly to shut you(collective) down via litigation. You still have no place to go if the law passes. I'm not expecting much from this supreme court to strike it down, even though it is direct violation of the 1st amendment. So, how do we defeat it, make it unenforceable? In what country can we install our invincible servers that can't be identified, tracked, and shutdown? There isn't one. And the real problem is that there is no resistance. The majority continues to vote for it. How do we deal with that kind of tyranny?
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 3, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday November 13 2017, @07:39PM (1 child)
Not necessarily true. Russia and China, off the top of my head, don't give a flying fuck about US laws as a general rule. Granted they're not especially free speech friendly either, which is why I'm looking around.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 14 2017, @12:15AM
The places you named would take over your site for different sorts of criticisms.
On the other hand, your site and *not* your person or livelihood would be at risk if you hosted in those countries, i.e., "Come and get me, Russkies and Chicoms."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 14 2017, @12:31AM (1 child)
But they start with people being willing to renounce their current citizenship without gaining another to provide the legal latitude necessary to enact them.
I won't go into specifics here, but the short term answer would be to look into 3rd world nation with a decent backbone running through it and lax internet regulations. Another alternative might be overtures to Sealand about hosting there, but the upfront infrastructure costs would be a few hundred grand. It is close enough that a dedicated fiber or cluster of wifi/microwave links could be run to Britain for not that much money, but in addition to ongoing hosting costs there would be the need to convince them to deploy solar/wind/battery sufficient to provide redundant failover access, plus say a microwave uplink to france or the netherlands as a redundant internet link.
Assuming SESTA passes, it might be enough to get a crowdfunding campaign going to refurbish sealand for that purpose, Prince Michael Bates willing of course.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 14 2017, @07:30AM
https://web.archive.org/web/https://www.defcon.org/images/defcon-11/dc-11-presentations/dc-11-Lackey/dc11-havenco.pdf [archive.org]
Page 10-18 sums it up. Less a Banana Republic, more a 'Fishing (Vacation) Republic.'