The new Texas law is stupid.
It's too broad.
A person commits an offense if the person owns, manages, or operates an interactive computer service with the intent to promote the prostitution of another person or facilitate another person to engage in prostitution.
A person commits an offense if the person owns, manages, or operates an interactive computer service with the intent to promote the prostitution of five or more persons or facilitate five or more persons to engage in prostitution.
The law not just includes websites, also the mean and technology for those websites and information to transmit.
Specifically, Texas Penal Code §43.01 expands to include new subdivisions as follows:
“Access software provider” means “a provider of software, including client or server software, or enabling tools that perform one or more of the following functions: (A) filter, screen, allow, or disallow content; (B) select, analyze, or digest content; or (C) transmit, receive, display, forward, cache, search, subset, organize, reorganize, or translate content.”
“Interactive computer service” means “any: information service, system, or access software provider that provides or enables computer access to a computer server by multiple users, including a service or system that provides access to the Internet or a system operated or service offered by a library or educational institution.”
“Information content provider” means “any person or entity that is wholly or partly responsible for the creation or development of information provided through the Internet or any other interactive computer service.”
“Internet” means “the international computer network of both federal and nonfederal interoperable packet switched data networks.”
It pretty much say for example I have an online blog talking about restaurants.
Anyone can sign up and post replies and start a thread.
Here comes Joe and he posts ads advertising women for sex.
We all been to forums for other things:
movies, video games, yahoo groups, etc etc
where someone joins and spam the site with one thread after another advertising porn or sex website or merchandise or how they earn gazillion money in 24 hours and so on.
There is no control over it. The control comes after where the poster gets banned and all their posts are removed.
So here Joe posts this ads one after another and me, the owner of the blog, gets prosecuted for it?
It's BS!
The internet is wide open.
You can't police it 24/7.
They will have to prosecute all the social media since sex ads are on social media too.
The social media I speak of are Snapchat, OnlyFans, Facebook, Twitter, they have sex ads.
Even them with all their technology and money, they can't monitor every single post every second of every day 24/7/365.
Is the Texas AG going to prosecute them too?
That brings us to another thing:
is the Texas AG also going to go after the companies who make those technology?
The computer makers, the laptop makers, the smartphone makers, the tablet makers, the companies who make servers and anything that makes the internet and the wireless network as we know it work.
Then that will start to include telecommunication companies like Verizon, T-Mobile, AT&T and internet providers like Comcast, Time Warner Cable, AT&T and so on.
Or are they going to prosecute GOOGLE or AMAZON since many websites now use GOOGLE and AMAZON as their hosts and technology to make their websites run?