Senate and House bills which became law on April 11, They clarify the country's sex trafficking law to make it illegal to knowingly assist, facilitate, or support sex trafficking , and amend the Section safe harbors of the Communications Decency Act which make online services immune from civil liability for the actions of their users to exclude enforcement of federal or state sex trafficking laws from its immunity.
Senate sponsor Rob Portman had previously led an investigation into the online classifieds service Backpage which had been accused of facilitating child sex trafficking , and argued that Section was protecting its "unscrupulous business practices" and was not designed to provide immunity to websites that facilitate sex trafficking.
SESTA was criticized by pro- free speech groups for weakening section safe harbors, alleging that it would make providers become liable for any usage of their platforms that facilitates sex trafficking, knowingly if they moderate for such content, and with reckless disregard if they do not proactively take steps to prevent such usage.
The Section safe harbor was established in , making the providers of "interactive computer services" immune from liability under civil laws for the actions of their users if they publish objectionable content such as defamatory and obscene content.
Section has been considered a key piece of Internet legislation, as operators of online services that handle user-generated content are not liable for civil wrongs committed by their users, if the service was not directly involved in the offending content. These provisions do not apply to criminal or intellectual property law. He attributed this largely to Backpage , an online classifieds service that had been accused of knowingly accepting ads which facilitated child sex trafficking, and filtered specific keywords in order to obfuscate it.
