https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/1865
(Sec. 2) This bill expresses the sense of Congress that section 230 of the Communications Act of 1934 was not intended to provide legal protection to websites that unlawfully promote and facilitate prostitution and websites that facilitate traffickers in advertising the sale of unlawful sex acts with sex trafficking victims. Section 230 limits the legal liability of interactive computer service providers or users for content they publish that was created by others.
(Sec. 3) The bill amends the federal criminal code to add a new section that imposes penalties—a fine, a prison term of up to 10 years, or both—on a person who, using a facility or means of interstate or foreign commerce, owns, manages, or operates an interactive computer service (or attempts or conspires to do so) to promote or facilitate the prostitution of another person.
Websites have long been protected from liability for what its users do. The fact that this law allows criminal and civil penalties against a website that “facilitates” is problematic, if one cares about the internet remaining as open as it has been. Craigslist has closed its personals section in response to passage of this bill.
Now that there is a crack in the dam, how long before big copyright holders convince the government there should be liability for a website that “facilitates” copyright infringement? What other issues are important enough that the websites themselves should face criminal and civil claims?
Most of the sexual exploitation crimes like human trafficking and child pornography trade don’t actually take place on legitimate websites, and it is already illegal to operate a website that exists for the purposes of those sex crimes. This is just the government’s way of trying to get a tighter grip on the internet and they’re doing it, like they always have done, by pretending to care about the victims of sex crimes. They’ve been trying this shit since the 1990s. Also, think about it, if two people are organizing a prostitution meet-up through Facebook messenger (meaning private messages) does that mean that Facebook is liable?
No doubt, many would like to restrict the internet in a variety of ways. If you get the right set of facts together any site might be liable. Find one executive was aware it was happening and did nothing about it because they didn’t want to lose any revenue and maybe that’s enough to bring a case, if not enough to win it.
Each little step will seem reasonable to some and at the end of it, the internet will be a very different place. Speaking of copyright concerns, the site keepvid (allowing downloads of videos from sites like youtube) recently shutdown due to copyright complaints.