Free Speech Coalition, the trade and advocacy association for the adult industry, has joined civil rights and sex worker rights groups in filing “friend-of-the-court” briefs defending three platforms against FOSTA-enabled civil litigation. In each case, civil litigants are seeking damages from platforms — Twitter, Craigslist and Omegle — who they allege profited from sex trafficking.
No matter how you feel about abortion, the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization overturning Roe v. Wade is a threat to our industry’s continued existence. The right to sexual privacy and bodily autonomy rests on the very same foundations as the right to terminate a pregnancy and the constitutional protections that we’ve come to take for granted are very much in the crosshairs.
As an industry, we’re pretty good at calling out fictions about our industry. When the New Yorker published an attack on Pornhub this week, members of the industry rushed after the author and the outlet — calling out the misinformation, misquotes and straight-up antiporn propaganda.
I hate to say it, but the sex censors are eating our lunch — from France and Germany, to the UK and Australia, to Canada and the United States, drastic new laws and unworkable regulations drafted to push adult businesses off the internet are advancing at a record pace.
The Biden Administration’s plan to focus on passing scaled-back portions of his domestic agenda were quickly sidelined by the announced retirement of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Despite this rapid reordering of government’s priorities, the Senate Judiciary Committee slipped in markup and passage of The EARN IT Act (S. 3538).
Free Speech Coalition will host a town hall discussion this Thursday, February 24, addressing the EARN IT Act, which recently passed out of the Senate Judiciary Committee and is potentially headed toward a full vote in the Senate. FSC invites all industry stakeholders who want to learn more about the bill itself, what’s being done by FSC and allies, and what can be done on an individual level to fight back.
The EARN IT Act, reintroduced into the Senate on Jan 31, looks to be one of the most dangerous censorship bills in recent history.
The EARN IT Act allows federal and state governments to prosecute, and victims to sue, a site or service if CSAM is uploaded onto the platform. While the prevention of CSAM is a worthy goal, under the EARN IT Act, a platform may become legally liable for any uploads of illegal content, no matter how aggressively they work to block it.
Though Democrat leadership is putting on a brave face concerning the two primary pieces of President Biden’s domestic policy agenda – the Build Back Better (BBB) package and legislation federalizing much of the national voting regime – it is difficult to see a path forward in an evenly-divided Senate under existing parliamentary rules. Without changing the Senate filibuster – i.e. the requirement that 60 votes are required to end debate and move to a vote on final passage – nine Republicans would have to break ranks and vote with the Dem caucus. This is extremely unlikely.