Internet firms fight Portman bill

people for sex online.

The 1996 Communications Decency Act, meant to regulate pornography on the Internet, included a provision that aimed to protect website operators from third parties that might post harmful or illegal material on their site.

Backpage, Portman said, used that 26-word provision in the law to protect itself from litigation, even as victim after victim tried to sue the site for selling them online. Portman’s bill would change that, allowing sex traffick-

Local emergency room nurse Maria Striemer witnessed a child nearly die in her care after being left in a hot car. Jolted by the experience, she set out find a way to make sure routine car trips don’t end at the ER.

Working with her husband Grant, Striemer invented and patented the result: The Backseet Buddy.

“I’m the nursing side of it and he’s the engineer,” said Maria Striemer, of Fairfield Twp. “We worked on it for about two and a half years and got the patent back in February.”

The couple now wants to license their product to an investor or company able to manufacture the Backseet Buddy, so named in hopes that parents “see” children in the car.

Thirty-nine children died of heat stroke, and one died of hypothermia, in cars in the U.S. last year, according to KidsAndCars.org, a group that tracks such »

How dog lovers sparked laws that could save kids in hot cars,

CONTINUING COVERAGE

This newspaper has provided indepth coverage of hot car deaths and of efforts to prevent them. For complete coverage, go to MyDaytonDailyNews.com