The Fraud that is FOSTA

Recently congress passed a law named FOSTA (Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act). Now who could be against fighting online sex trafficking? That is where the details start to fade. The main point of FOSTA is to punish publishers who publish ads for sex, not just ones that place up ads for trafficking. This also includes if it was not intentional on the part of publishers. This means someone could cause havoc on forums and user generated media simply by posting a sex ad. This is not just Puritanism, this is authoritarianism at it's finest. And who supported it? Over ninety percent of congress and most tech companies. This is cartelization folks. This does not even get into other issues related to the bill.

 This bill also violates the anti  ex post facto section of the US Constitution, as well as violating the first amendment directly, as well as indirectly through creating compliance issues for sites such as Backpage and Craigslist. The other thing that is problematic is that user content based publishers cannot afford to police all their content, and thus will have to be on pins and needles. Further any user content based site will have to think long and hard about this issue. Perhaps the loss of the US will be a gain for Canada, Hong Kong, Chile , or other entrepreneurial countries. What is further disturbing is that Republicans, typically a pro-business party, is in line with this line of thinking. In addition to FOSTA, there is a bill being debated in congress which would prevent any venture capital firms with Chinese investment from investing in US companies. This insanity needs to stop. 

 In my opinion, I don't think they will just stop at sex work. I believe this crusade to end "human trafficking" will be cover to heavily regulate porn or anything that falls outside of sex within marriage. This is not about human trafficking, which also includes manual labor, maid services, among other things. If they wanted to end that, they would liberalize immigration so that people who are vulnerable do not have to hire a coyote to send them into trafficking situations. But that is not what this is about. It is about destroying what little sexual freedom the US does have and turn it into a theocratic state.

 The best way to to stop sex trafficking is to decriminalize prostitution and other forms of sex work. When sex work is decriminalized, sex workers can go to the police without fear of reprisal and also report any sex trafficking that has been occurring. But despite the effectiveness of this police in places like New Zealand, the US is way behind on this topic, or vices in general. It was only this week that a leader of one of the two major political parties called for decriminalization of marijuana. We have a long ways to go, but I believe that the US has potential.  Even with the negativity surrounding sex trafficking and sex work, a recent Marist poll revealed that people do not believe people should be locked up for sex work, but merely fined. While that is still a bit of distance from full decriminalization, I think it is a step in the right direction.