Advertising for Adult Services

Outside the Village Voice's New York headquarters, hundreds of protesters have demanded the online publication end its adult section called Backpage.com.

The protesters delivered more than 200,000 online signatures on a Change.org petition, Tell Village Voice Media to Stop Child Sex Trafficking on Backpage.com.

According to the National Association of Attorneys General, Backpage is the top website for human trafficking in the U.S., citing cases in 22 states.

19 U.S. Senators, 51 attorneys general and 53 anti-trafficking experts and organizations have called for the Village Voice to shut down the site.

A new censorship law in Washington state was first proposed on February 2, fast-tracked through the state legislature and signed into law by Gov. Christine Gregoire on March 29,

Senate Bill 6251 makes it a crime if a person (or company) knowingly publishes, disseminates, or displays, or causes directly or indirectly, to be published, disseminated, or displayed, any advertisement for a commercial sex act, which is to take place in the state of Washington and that includes the depiction of a minor.

Not much of a problem, right? But the devil here is in the details. Section 2 of the new law reads:

In a prosecution under this statute, it is not a defense that the defendant did not know the age of the minor depicted in the advertisement. It is a defense, which the defendant must prove by a preponderance of the evidence, that the defendant made a reasonable bona fide attempt to ascertain the true age of the minor depicted in the advertisement by requiring, prior to publication, dissemination, or display of the advertisement, production of a driver's license, marriage license, birth certificate, or other governmental or educational identification card or paper of the minor depicted in the advertisement and did not rely solely on oral or written representations of the minor's age, or the apparent age of the minor as depicted. In order to invoke the defense, the defendant must produce for inspection by law enforcement a record of the identification used to verify the age of the person depicted in the advertisement.

One might be tempted to think of this section as a requirement for a sort of 2257 recordkeeping for people who advertise themselves or others as escorts, but in reality, it's a real Catch-22. Prostitution is still a crime in Washington state, so any person who'd like to engage in that profession and place ads online or in one of the local tabloids will have to reveal---and provide proof of---his/her true identity to the company placing the ad online or in print, thus risking having the police subpoena such material from the publication/website owner... or simply seize it in a raid ostensibly looking for evidence of underage sex trafficking.

A federal judge has sided with Backpage.com against a Washington state law targeting small ads that would require online publishers to verify the age of those shown in the ads.

U.S. District Judge Ricardo Martinez granted a temporary restraining order to put a halt to the statute, ruling that he'd hear arguments over it at a preliminary injunction hearing June 15.

SB 6251 would force websites to censor user content on the grounds that it would be unviable to actually check the ages of pictures featuring in adverts. The bill threatens five years imprisonment and a $10,000 fine per violation should publishers be caught out by an underage picture.

Backpage explained in the law suit:

The law expressly states that it is not a defense that the defendant did not know that the image was of a minor,  Instead, to avoid prosecution, the defendant must obtain governmental or educational identification for the person depicted in the post.

This means that every service provider, no matter where headquartered or operated, must review each and every piece of third-party content posted on or through its service to determine whether it is an 'implicit' ad for a commercial sex act in Washington, and whether it includes a depiction of a person, and, if so, must obtain and maintain a record of the person's ID.

Backpage said that SB 6251 contravenes Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which prohibits Internet service providers from being treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by a third party.

Backpage counsel noted that other states are poised to follow Washington's lead. A similar law will soon take effect in Tennessee, and the legislatures in New York and New Jersey are considering analogous bills.

Universal Studios has completed a settlement with the makers of Fifty Shades of Grey: A XXX Adaptation .

According to a court filing, Smash Pictures will make a payment of a confidential sum to payoff the lawsuit and will also consent to a permanent injunction that will prohibit the distribution of the XXX Adaptation.

Smash Pictures and James Lane (aka Jim Powers) thought the story was a natural adult movie, so they made one. Smash exec Stuart Wall told a newspaper, Since they are going to make a mainstream [film] of the books too, dabbling in the adult world, we're choosing to go with a XXX adaption which will stay very true to the book and its S&M-themed romance.

Slapping a parody tag onto the title wasn't enough to keep Universal from protecting its rights. Along with Fifty Shades Ltd., the copyright owner of the original material, a lawsuit was filed in November that called the XXX Adaptation a willful attempt to capitalize on the reputation of the book.