• by Wendy Davis  @wendyndavis, August 1, 2017

The Silicon Valley trade group Internet Association is warning against a proposed law aimed at curbing sex trafficking, warning that the measure "jeopardizes bedrock principles of a free and open internet."

"This bill is overly broad and will be counterproductive in the fight to combat human trafficking," the Internet Association states.

The "Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act of 2017" would make it a crime to knowingly assist or facilitate violations of federal laws prohibiting the sex trafficking of children, as well as sex trafficking by force or coercion. The measure also would allow victims to pursue lawsuits against websites that "knowingly or recklessly" facilitated victimization.

The bipartisan bill, introduced Tuesday by Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) and 19 other senators, is clearly aimed at Backpage, which has previously fought off lawsuits by victims, as well as state laws aimed at curbing the site. The classifieds company has successfully argued that the federal Communications Decency Act protects sites from liability for illegal ads posted by users.

In January, Backpage shuttered its "adult" ads section, which observers said mainly contained prostitution ads. But since then, many of those ads since appear to have migrated to other sections of the site. The lawmakers who unveiled the measure refer specifically to Backpage, stating, "For too long, courts around the country have ruled that websites like Backpage.com can continue to facilitate illegal sex trafficking online with no repercussions."

But if passed, the law likely will affect many sites other than Backpage, according to Internet law expert Eric Goldman, a professor at Santa Clara University.

"Is this law only about making sure a single company, Backpage, is dead dead dead? Or will the bill reach other online services? If so, who?" he writes. "The most likely answer is that this law potentially implicates every online service that deals with user-generated content, which would make this an unusually wide-ranging bill."

Goldman adds that it's not clear that the measure will actually help victims. "That's such a fundamental question, that this bill doesn't even purport to answer," he tells MediaPost.

The Internet Association, whose members include Google, Facebook, Amazon and eBay, says the bill "would create a new wave of frivolous and unpredictable actions against legitimate companies rather than addressing underlying criminal behavior."

Digital rights groups including the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Center for Democracy & Technology have supported Backpage in its some of its court battles, arguing that web companies won't be able to offer interactive platforms if they're going to be held liable for users' posts. Those groups and others have argued that imposing liability for users' posts could require online service providers to approve user-created content in advance -- which could be prohibitively expensive and time-consuming for some web platforms.

“If online service providers were required to engage in protracted and expensive litigation whenever plaintiffs alleged that they were harmed by user-generated content hosted or transmitted by intermediaries, these online platforms for users’ speech would inevitably become more expensive, more restrictive, and ultimately less available for individual expression,” digital rights advocates argued in an earlier lawsuit involving Backpage.