Legislation targeting Backpage passes House, moves to Senate
The U.S. House has passed a bill that, if enacted, would take away what has been the main defense of the website Backpage against claims it has enabled prostitution.
The legislation clarifies that a 1996 law that allowed websites to edit or moderate user content without making them liable for it could not also be used as a shield against facilitating prostitution.
The measure, which passed Tuesday, will move to the Senate where a similar bill has already been introduced.
The bill was amended on Tuesday to include a retroactive provision, meaning the law would apply to previous acts of Backpage. The Senate version of the bill would apply to past acts if the sex trafficking induced by the ads involved minors.
The House bill was co-sponsored by 174 members, but only one from Arizona. That was Trent Franks, a Republican who resigned late last year after staff members complained about sexually inappropriate conversations.
Backpage, the website started by the founders of the Phoenix New
Times, shut down its "adult services" section in January 2017. Until then, it had become the leading website for adult-oriented ads and the target of Congressional investigations, criminal prosecutions, state statutes and civil lawsuits.
In defending the website’s operators, Michael Lacey and Jim Larkin, attorneys for Backpage have contended that it was immune from prosecution because the Communications Decency Act of 1996 limited liability for websites that posted words or ads written by others.
Under the act, websites could let users post content, such as an online review, without making the site owner liable for defamation.
It allowed for negative restaurant reviews on Yelp, for example. It also allowed a news website, like azcentral, to remove obscene or abusive comments under articles without leaving the impression it was endorsing all that remained.
Since Backpage did not write the adults ads on its site, judges in various states agreed that the law, as written, provided immunity for Backpage.
Measure would allow prosecution
The House bill removes that interpretation. It contains an introductory section that explains that the 1996 law was “never intended to provide legal protection to websites that unlawfully promote and facilitate prostitution.”
It would impose a maximum 25-year sentence for the operators of a website that promoted the prostitution of five or more persons, provided the operators had a “reckless disregard” that they were helping to engage in the trade of humans.
A law professor who has closely followed the cases against Backpage said he fears the House measure could have far-reaching implications.
“You can have a website that discusses knitting, but if it gets hijacked by sex traffickers, that site is affected by the law,” said Eric Goldman, a professor at Santa Clara University, during a phone interview on Wednesday.
A Senate subcommittee report concluded in January 2017 that the operators of Backpage knowingly allowed prostitution on its website.
That report, relying chiefly on internal emails, concluded the website’s managers actively edited ads in its adult section, becoming more or less permissive in language allowed depending on what it thought was the law enforcement atmosphere.
E-mails showed that moderators were given lists of terms that would be allowed on the site. The word “cheerleader” was not allowed, but “dirty slut” was. Prices could be listed so long as they didn’t accompany brief time periods.
One person employed as a moderator for Backpage told a subcommittee investigator that the policing of language was designed to allow prostitution ads without being obvious. The employee likened it to putting “lipstick on a pig,” the Senate report said.
Backpage has taken down its “adult” section, though similar ads began appearing on its dating section. Those ads cost $7, one of the few types of ads that Backpage charges to post.
Adult ads dominated Backpage
Backpage was started as an extension of the actual back page of classified ads that appeared in the New Times alternative weekly newspaper. New
Times, started by Lacey as a college student in the 1970s, grew into an empire that eventually bought out the venerated Village Voice in New York City.
But the classified website came to be dominated by adult advertising. It saw an opportunity, according to internal emails, after a competing classified site, Craigslist, closed its adult section under pressure from anti-trafficking advocates and lawmakers.
The Senate subcommittee report said the e-mails it obtained would provide a roadmap for potential criminal prosecution of the website’s operators.
Lacey and Larkin, according to a filing by their attorney in a civil case, are the targets of a grand jury investigation in Arizona.