[makosdv]

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." - First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America (1789)

[everdev]

> since 1996 federal law has provided broad protections for online publishers of third-party content. Backpage has successfully argued that it can’t be held legally responsible for the criminal conduct of others—no matter how reprehensible.

They're not arguing that they have the right to publish ads for illegal services. They're saying they're not liable for what 3rd parties post on their site.

They're saying they're more like journalists, simply reporting what other people are saying (which happens to be promoting illegal services). While it sounds like they are pro-decriminalizing sex work, no one is arguing that it's legal to advertise criminal behavior (selling drugs, weapons, sex, etc.). They're just telling the courts to go after those advertisers individually rather than Backpage.

[DanBC]

Backpage's case would be stronger if they hadn't set themselves up to profit from this type of illegal advert, and if they hadn't hampered law enforcement at every opportunity.

[everdev]

Yeah it's a dubious case IMO. The 1st amendment is incredibly important and even more so in journalism, but this seems like a retroactive last ditch defense.

They clearly wanted to profit off of the sex industry in places where it was still illegal to do so.

[craftyguy]

That stopped being taken at face value a long time ago when SCOTUS decided to weaponize the Commerce Clause...

[ailideex]

Mind elaborating?

[ryanlol]

the United States Congress shall have power "To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes."

The courts and the congress have a very strange interpretation of this, for example in: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gonzales_v._Raich

[ailideex]

I meant more on how that is relevant to free speech. The case you cited seems to be about cannabis.

[craftyguy]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heart_of_Atlanta_Motel_v._Unit...

(note: I am not saying I disagree with a decision to outlaw discrimination, just pointing out the absurdity that the Commerce Clause was 'interpreted' as being the only way to do this [which ultimately resulted in government limiting free speech])

[ryanlol]

I'm not really sure. But the ever-expanding scope of the commerce clause is presumably what he refers to as weaponization.

[sbuttgereit]

This is my favorite example of this overreach...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wickard_v._Filburn

In hand-wavy terms... in this case the commerce clause was used to prevent a farmer from growing wheat on his own land for use in feeding his own livestock. The federal government had established limits on wheat production at the time as part of the "New Deal".

[gamblor956]

That was not overreach. At the time, laws limited how much wheat a farmer could grow so as to maintain the national price of wheat. (Wheat hasn't been a purely local product in more than a century.) The farmer in the case grew more than his allotment. He sold the allowed amount but then used the excess to feed his own cows, rather than buying it from the market (or taking it out of his original allotment). If allowed, at scale this would render the crop controls meaningless and would have destroyed the price of wheat during a time of war, driving thousands of farmers into destitution and eliminating a potential resource needed for the war effort.

[sbuttgereit]

Of course it was overreach and a tortured interpretation of the commerce clause to get there.

The "time of war" argument is completely bogus. The word "war" doesn't appear anywhere in the decision itself nor are its consequences limited to wartime in any way. The law in question was a 1938 law that was trying to increase government management of agriculture economic activity. While progressive are happy to use any crisis that comes along to further this sort of overreach into economic activity, including war, one could equally say that the courts decision was probably at least as influenced by the fact that Roosevelt had appointed 8 of the Justices that heard the case and the court was ideologically aligned with him... since the 1938 law was part of his disastrous economic program (http://newsroom.ucla.edu/releases/FDR-s-Policies-Prolonged-D...), it's little wonder they sided with the government.

[pwned1]

Just a correction, the First Amendment was adopted in 1791.

[bdhess]

After having been written in 1789...

[waterphone]

"Except in all these situations…" —Courts