(C) Common Dreams
This story was originally published by Common Dreams and is unaltered.
. . . . . . . . . .
How a war on porn is endangering US sex workers [1]
[]
Date: 2024-03
An ‘anti-trafficking’ US law that has been accused of endangering sex workers faces a crucial hearing this week.
The Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act and Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act (FOSTA/SESTA), which became law in 2018, claims to hold websites liable for promoting or facilitating prostitution or sex trafficking.
But critics say it has actually increased trafficking, as well as threatening sex workers and free speech.
Under the law, a website can be sued if a user discusses prostitution or sex trafficking – and the site’s owner can be sentenced to up to 25 years in prison. This means some platforms have introduced bans on all content relating to sex work.
Get our free Daily Email Get one whole story, direct to your inbox every weekday. Sign up now
Former sex worker and sex-trafficking survivor Justice Rivera told openDemocracy that this is “pushing people to more risky forms of work, like full-service sex work, or something that’s on the street”.
Woodhull Freedom Foundation, an organisation that defends sexual freedom as a fundamental right, first sued the federal government over the law in June 2018.
The foundation argued that FOSTA/SESTA violates the first amendment, which protects freedom of speech. But a court dismissed the case months later, ruling that Woodhull and its co-plaintiffs, Human Rights Watch and online civil liberties group Electronic Frontier Foundation, had no legal standing.
This decision was overturned by the Court of Appeals in January 2020, and last March a court ruled in the government’s favour. Woodhull is now appealing that decision, and the Court of Appeals will hear the case on 11 January.
‘Getting porn off the internet’
A 2020 study of the effects of FOSTA/SESTA found that 72.5% of sex workers had faced economic instability since the law’s introduction.
In San Francisco, the number of street-based sex workers tripled in 2018 and there was a 170% increase in human trafficking cases. CBS said both spikes appeared “to be connected to the federal shutdown of sex-for-sale websites”.
This increased hardship is because websites that sex workers previously advertised on have been shut down, including Craigslist personals, as have websites that were used to verify clients’ identities.
Similarly, in July 2018, police in Indianapolis admitted they were having more trouble finding sex trafficking victims because sites used by pimps have been taken down.
Sex workers’ groups say they were not given a chance to present their views on FOSTA-SESTA before it became law.
Mike Stabile of the Free Speech Coalition, an adult industry trade group, told openDemocracy that “the adult industry would love to work with the government to find solutions”.
In passing the legislation, Congress also overlooked a letter from US assistant attorney general Stephen E Boyd, who raised a “serious constitutional concern” over the fact that FOSTA/SESTA retroactively criminalises actions that weren’t illegal when committed. Boyd also warned the law would make it harder to prosecute traffickers.
[END]
---
[1] Url:
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/5050/sex-workers-endangered-fosta-sesta-porn-us-free-speech-woodhull/
Published and (C) by Common Dreams
Content appears here under this condition or license: Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND 3.0..
via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/commondreams/
