Hereâ??s how an anti-prostitution campaign could threaten free speech online

[fortunateone 156618]

It's a difficult thing, because frankly I think that websites need to be held criminally responsible for the content users post on it, but alot of that has to do with the fact that I was a victim of a defamatory post by another sp last year. Attempts to get it removed and/or locked were ignored by the site admin, until a complete investigation by a team was done, and proven to be falsified. The problem with this is that the thread should have been removed as soon as it appeared because it failed to provide any evidence to back it up.

 

And this is something that is common on different sites for sps as well as other types of sites all the time, but maybe especially relevant to mention regarding sps. If the site admin allows derogatory remarks, the poster needs to back up the claims with real evidence, or the posts need to be deleted, and possibly returned if the evidence is provided. otherwise people can and do say anything they please, without repercussions. Just as often the real victim is silenced, or comments removed.

 

So i do have a real hard time with people who want to defend the right to post whatever they want to, even though obviously i don't want this to include the right to shut down legitimate advertisers just because once in a while someone who is underage also posts an advertisement. There were about 100 underage sps found through a nationwide sting action in the US recently. After all that work, thru the cooperation of bp, they were successful to find that many. 100 is a very very small fraction of all the ads placed on that or any other site in a day across the US, certainly not enough to justify shutting down the entire section imo.

 

Maybe these legal experts should spend more time on legalizing prostitution in the US so that then instead of targeting all sps advertising, they can focus on just the obvious underagers. Because during that sting, what they don't want to mention, is that a LOT of over 18s sps and clients got caught and charged as well.

[Phaedrus 209521]

It's a difficult thing, because frankly I think that websites need to be held criminally responsible for the content users post on it

 

I have to say, I disagree completely.

 

The problem is that there's simply no way a website can police everything that's posted to it. They don't even have the resources to do a proper validation of things that are reported to them as contravening some law or other; there's just too much content being posted by too many people too fast. That really only leaves them with two viable options when handling complaints.

 

First, they can simply pull down anything that anyone complains about. This is the safe option, but it means that anyone who wants to can effectively censor another poster by complaining (illegitimately) about the things they post.

 

Secondly, they can ignore complaints until they pass some sort of threshold (maybe a lot of users complain, or the complaint comes from some sort of official source). This is the way most sites operate today, but this approach simply isn't viable if you make the site owner legally responsible for what's posted; eventually, you're bound to miss something and get utterly screwed over.

 

I think it's fair to say that making online publishers legally responsible for user-generated content would destroy much of the Internet as we know it today. Sites like Facebook and Twitter would have to either shut down entirely, or limit themselves to accounts that were firmly verified as belonging to a real, known individual. Many blogs would go down for the same reason. Discussion boards where users have relatively anonymous handles (such as this one) would vanish entirely. The concept of commenting on things like news stories or Youtube videos or anything else would vanish.

 

I quite like the Internet the way it is, free speech and all. I'd prefer to see it stay that way.

[fortunateone 156618]

I would agree content would have to be reported first so admin knows about problem posts, but at that point then they are 100% responsible for dealing with it immediately. Because there is no legislation that compels them to do this, sites that are run by those with an immature mentality or lack of knowledge of even basic laws will continue to allow defamatory or criminal posts stay up. And at that point, i think that it is fair to allow someone to charge both the poster and the site itself for actual crimes against the person who reports it to LE or seeks legal assistance.

 

And probably as sps who are subject to being discussed on sites that are often run by immature and legally ignorant people, that would be why i have this particular POV. IF sites were run responsibly, like cerb, then defamatory posts would not be allowed to stay up in the first place (after being reported), and that is really the way it should be. Newpapers don't report stories without fact checking, because they know they can be legally responsible for any false information in a story written by one of their reporters. It isn't just the writer of the story held responsible, but the entire publication, and that is exactly how forums and internet sites need to be handled.

[Phaedrus 209521]

I would agree content would have to be reported first so admin knows about problem posts, but at that point then they are 100% responsible for dealing with it immediately. Because there is no legislation that compels them to do this, sites that are run by those with an immature mentality or lack of knowledge of even basic laws will continue to allow defamatory or criminal posts stay up. And at that point, i think that it is fair to allow someone to charge both the poster and the site itself for actual crimes against the person who reports it to LE or seeks legal assistance.

 

Er... which law, precisely?

 

If a poster in BC using an Ontario-based ISP posts a comment on a website that uses a British domain, is hosted on servers in California by a Texan company and run by a guy in Ireland, and a German who's on holiday in Spain decides he's going to complain that the comment is somehow illegal... which law applies?

 

And no, this is not just a hypothetical example. It happens all the time. Many of the people reading this are doing so via an ISP that's based in another province. People - especially those know know they may be subject to attempts at censorship - do things like making sure their website, hosting company and hosting servers are all in different jurisdictions as a matter of course (bloggers who make a point of pissing off the powers that be are particularly good at this). And Germans do sometimes take vacations in Spain.

 

The point here is that there really isn't such a thing as "basic" law in this area, because some of the most basic questions of law - such as jurisdiction - are completely unresolved. Even if there were, it's utterly unreasonable to expect someone running a website to keep on top of it.

 

And probably as sps who are subject to being discussed on sites that are often run by immature and legally ignorant people, that would be why i have this particular POV. IF sites were run responsibly, like cerb, then defamatory posts would not be allowed to stay up in the first place (after being reported), and that is really the way it should be.

 

So... imagine, if you will, that a client posts on one of the other boards that he visited a SP and she ripped him off. She contends that YMMV, because hygiene. They can't both be right. One of them is almost certainly defaming the other. Both complain and ask for the other's post to be taken down.

 

Now, tell me... who's telling the truth? Who's lying? Whose post stays up, and whose post is removed? What do you do when someone goes to the lawyers? If you play safe and take everything down, what do you do when users work out that they can get everything taken down by complaining?

 

The consequences of this aren't hard to see: if you're running a website where you might get sued at the drop of a hat, you just shut the whole thing down. And that doesn't just go for sites like this one: it applies to every interactive site on the entire Internet. No more Facebook. No more Twitter. No CERB, no blogs, no websites with any content that might offend anybody.

 

In short, oblivion for most of the online world as we know it.

 

Newpapers don't report stories without fact checking, because they know they can be legally responsible for any false information in a story written by one of their reporters. It isn't just the writer of the story held responsible, but the entire publication, and that is exactly how forums and internet sites need to be handled.

 

Newspapers DO report stories without fact-checking, all the time. That's why they also print apologies and corrections and letters to the editor that point out their mistakes on a regular basis. Yes, they have legal teams that look at some stuff in more detail... but even then, they sometimes screw up and lose a huge libel case. And they have the advantage that they're generally only published in a limited number of jurisdictions - frequently, only one.

 

And if newspapers, with their huge budgets and in-house lawyers can't get it right in a single jurisdiction, how the hell is a website run by one guy in his spare time supposed to get it right in every jurisdiction where a reader or commenter resides? It's utterly unreasonable to expect this.