The FBI agent put a gun on me. He wore a flak jacket more appropriate to a raid on a terrorist’s bomb factory than on my suburban Phoenix home. He stood at the glass door to my office on the…
Michael Lacey has spent his entire professional life in the newspaper business. With his business partner, Jim Larkin, Lacey cofounded Phoenix New Times during the Vietnam War. The two men would go on to build Village Voice Media, a chain of weeklies…
In an in-depth profile by Elizabeth Nolan Brown published this week on the website Reason.com, veteran newspaper publishers and former Backpage.com co-owners Michael Lacey and Jim Larkin spoke out candidly about their arrests on federal charges of money laundering, conspiracy,…
FOSTA/SESTA: What Is It? The Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (FOSTA) is federal legislation that establishes new civil and criminal liabilities for interactive websites regarding content that involves sex work. Signed into law by President Donald Trump at a April…
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) filed a federal lawsuit on June 27 seeking to overturn FOSTA, a recently enacted federal law that makes it illegal to “facilitate” or “promote” prostitution online and expands civil and criminal liability for websites regarding sex…
Seated in a McDonald’s in Phoenix, picking at a burger and fries with long, nervous fingers, Raquel, a trans woman of 29, recounted the horror of street prostitution that has followed the demise of the online listings giant Backpage.com. “It’s…
You’re unlikely to find a photo online of U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill sporting a pussy hat (oh, how we tried!), but the Missouri Democrat, who’s seeking a third term, has done her best to harness the energy of the January…
Critics of H.R. 1865, the Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (FOSTA), which passed the U.S. Senate 97 to 2 on March 21, warned that the bill’s broad language targeting online adult ads would have a devastating effect on freedom of…
If you didn’t know that the Backpage case was about online classified advertising, you might think the U.S. Department of Justice was mounting a prosecution against the Mafia. Late on Thursday, the DOJ announced that it has turned Backpage CEO…
UPDATE 4/9/18, 2:43 PM: The indictment has just become available, and you can read it here. Along with Lacey and Larkin, other erstwhile Backpage execs are indicted. CEO Carl Ferrer’s name is not among the indicted, though a “C.F.” is…
