The House of Representatives passed the Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (or FOSTA), a measure closely related to the SESTA bill introduced in the Senate last year. The measure passed on a 388-25 vote, enjoying overwhelming majorities from both parties.
The bill would make websites criminally liable for hosting ads and other content linked to a sex-trafficking enterprise. The result would be a major exception to existing Safe Harbor provisions, and has been opposed by web freedom groups like EFF as “disastrous for free speech online.”
The proposed law has split the tech world, with Oracle, IBM and the Internet Association cheering on the new measures. Notably, companies like Google and Facebook have largely remained silent, although they would be significantly impacted if the bill became law. Shortly after SESTA was introduced, the Wikimedia Foundation argued that user-submission projects like Wikipedia simply couldn’t exist without Section 230’s strong Safe Harbor provisions.
The latest version of the bill also ran into some unexpected constitutional problems. Shortly before the House vote, the Department of Justice sent a letter to the bill’s sponsors raising concern that the retroactive measures in FOSTA — which allows for prosecutions based on conduct before the date of the bill’s enactment — might violate the constitution’s Ex Post Facto clause. It’s unclear if the language of the bill has been altered to accommodate the objection, but it could provide grounds for a legal challenge in the future absent corrective action by the Senate.
from The Verge - All Posts http://ift.tt/2ove3AC
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