Congress is trying to pass Bill H.R.1856 that removes protections of site owners for what their users post

by Kannibal

Link to the bill itself
www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/1865
This enables one troll or spammer with CP to effectively kill any website they don’t like for any petty reason. Smaller sites don’t have the resources or manpower to maintain surveillance over their websites unlike Reddit. This will kill smaller content creators internet wide and lose tons of great smaller communities.
Spread this around and call your congressman to vote NO on the “Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act of 2017” (FOSTA)
The Electronic Frontier Foundation goes into even more detail on how that hurts smaller websites from sustaining themselves and even hurts the victims of Sex Trafficking as well
www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/02/fosta-would-be-disaster-online-communities
This is tied into an attempt to stop sex trafficking by changing section 230 of Communications act of 1934, the Communications Decency Act of 1996. This will punish site owners for what their users post by fine or potential jail time of 20 years.
The bill amends the federal criminal code to specify that the violation for benefiting from “participation in a venture” engaged in sex trafficking of children, or by force, fraud, or coercion, includes knowing or reckless conduct by any person or entity and by any means that furthers or in any way aids or abets the violation.

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A provider of an interactive computer service that publishes information provided by an information content provider with reckless disregard that the information is in furtherance of a sex trafficking offense shall be subject to a criminal fine or imprisonment for not more than 20 years.

Contact your Representative here
act.eff.org/action/stop-fosta
Also they will vote on the amendments tomorrow
rules.house.gov/bill/115/hr-1865
Then they will have a full vote the next day
Unknown when the Senate will vote on it.

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4 thoughts on “Congress is trying to pass Bill H.R.1856 that removes protections of site owners for what their users post”

  1. Then Congress must take Personal Responsibility for actions of everyone of IT’S supporters.
    The “Sanctuary City/State Financial and Criminal Accountability Law”
    Every politician that votes for or endorses the mythical “sanctuary” from Federal Immigration Law shall be subject to obtaining and providing a Surety Bond to secure 100% Reparations to any Legal Citizen injured, murdered, raped, robbed, or in any way harmed, including mental distress, by said Illegal persons in the area. By their refusal to honor their oath to uphold the Constitution and the Law of the land the said politicians have negated any “governmental immunity”. Said politicians are Personally Criminal Accomplices to any crimes committed by the Criminals they are Harboring. Said politicians are Personally Financially Liable for damages, reparations, and to “make whole” any Legal Citizen harmed by the Criminals they are Harboring.

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  2. Knowing how our Federal government is “bought & paid for”, rest assured there is an exclusion clause for Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Google, etc., etc. etc., in it.

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  3. Given this law very specifically refers to promoting and arranging for the action of human trafficking, in particular for sexual purposes, you need to explain how that would allow “a single troll” to shut down a website for a single comment. Because if your “small website” is allowing people to prostitute other human beings via your comments section, that very much is your responsibility. And that excuse that “we don’t have the resources to police our site” is getting old. There are automated ways to at the very least hold material for moderation.
    Considering the number of bills Congress is considering that have real, immediate consequences for many people, blowing one’s mind over this one because, in some alternate reality, some website owner might have to explain why they allowed other people to use their site to engage in prostitution strikes me as a little self-centered.

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