In a September 27 Techdirt post, contributor Tim Cushing lays waste to the myth of a U.S. sex-trafficking “epidemic,” methodically puncturing the bogus stats floated by fearmongering proponents of the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act (SESTA) of 2017. Earlier this month, the…
Erwin Chemerinsky is a tough sheriff when it comes to enforcing the First Amendment, and that’s a good thing. The venerable dean of First Amendment scholars in this country is the literal dean of the University of California, Berkeley’s School…
Many are familiar with this quote, often wrongly attributed to Voltaire: “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” According to a new poll of American undergraduates by a Brookings…
The defenders of digital freedom at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) have joined forces with the ACLU in a lawsuit aimed at ending the warrantless searches and seizures of laptops, cell phones, and other electronic devices at the nation’s ports…
This just in from the rip-’em-a-new-one department: Techdirt’s Mike Masnick has administered an online atomic wedgie to Nicholas Kristof in response to the self-righteous scribe’s recent column, “Google and Sex Traffickers Like Backpage.com.” Kristof’s McCarthy-esque guilt-by-association reasoning works this way:…
Supporters of Section 230 of the federal Communications Decency Act (CDA) played defense on Capitol Hill Tuesday during a two-and-a-half-hour hearing before the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee on proposed legislation to amend the federal statute. The bill under consideration…
Talk about scary. Reason.com’s Elizabeth Nolan Brown‘s recent report on two bills that the U.S. Senate passed by unanimous consent on September 11 makes The Walking Dead seem like the Captain Underpants movie by comparison. Brown calls out both bills —…
As the U.S. Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee prepares to discuss the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act (SESTA) this Tuesday, September 19, it’s a safe bet that few of the bill’s 27 co-sponsors are familiar with the work of legal scholar…
Today’s moral panic over the much-hyped issue of sex trafficking echoes the ludicrous “white slavery” hysteria of the early 1900s: That’s the conclusion legal scholar Alexandra F. Levy draws in “The Virtues of Unvirtuous Spaces,” a provocative article published this past spring…
In the Not Everyone Is Stomping All Over the First Amendment department, the scrappy internet-watchdog site Techdirt.com notched a massive win in a libel suit last week. The suit had been filed in federal court in Massachusetts by V.A. Shiva Ayyadurai,…
