The Communications Decency Act of 1996 (CDA) was the United States Congress's first notable attempt to regulate pornographic material on the Internet. In the 1997 landmark case Reno v. ACLU, the United States Supreme Court unanimously struck the act's anti-indecency provisions.
Robert Sylvester Kelly is an American former singer, songwriter, record producer and sex offender convicted of racketeering and multiple sex offenses.
Lea Katherine Thompson is an American actress and director.
Mary Mazzio is an American documentary filmmaker, attorney, and a rower for the United States in the 1992 Olympics. She founded the independent film company 50 Eggs.
Dakota Mayi Johnson is an American actress. The daughter of actors Don Johnson and Melanie Griffith, she made her film debut at age ten with a minor role in the dark comedy film Crazy in Alabama (1999) with her mother. After graduating high school, she began auditioning for roles in Los Angeles and was cast in a minor part in The Social Network (2010). Johnson had her breakthrough playing Anastasia Steele in the erotic romantic drama film series Fifty Shades (2015–2018), and received a BAFTA Rising Star Award nomination in 2016.
Section 230 is a section of Title 47 of the United States Code that was enacted as part of the United States Communications Decency Act and generally provides immunity for website platforms with respect to third-party content. At its core, Section 230(c)(1) provides immunity from liability for providers and users of an "interactive computer service" who publish information provided by third-party users:
No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.
In the United States, human trafficking tends to occur around international travel hubs with large immigrant populations, notably in California, Texas, and Georgia. The U.S. Justice Department estimates that 35,500–170,500 people enter illegally into the country every year. The 2016 Global Slavery Index estimates that, including U.S. citizens and immigrants, 57,700 people worldwide are victims of human trafficking. Those trafficked include young children, teenagers, men, and women and can be domestic citizens or foreign nationals.
Backpage.com was a classified advertising website founded in 2004 by the alternative newspaper chain New Times Inc./New Times Media as a rival to Craigslist.
Benjamin Nolot is an American filmmaker and the CEO and founder of Exodus Cry, a Christian social activist group focused on the issue of human trafficking which has expressed opposition to the "entire global sex industry, including prostitution, pornography, and stripping". Nolot has also been involved with an International House of Prayer ministry which is based in Sacramento, California.
Sheila White is an African-American anti–sex trafficking activist, and a former human trafficking victim herself, from The Bronx, New York City.
Tricked: The Documentary is a 2013 American documentary film directed by John-Keith Wasson and Jane Wells. It documents human sex trafficking, and its presence within the United States, from the perspectives of the victims involved in sex trafficking, the “johns” who pay for the sex and the pimps responsible for instigating the illegal business. It was produced by 3 Generations and distributed by First Run Features in Canada and the United States.
Sex trafficking in the United States is a form of human trafficking which involves reproductive slavery or commercial sexual exploitation as it occurs in the United States. Sex trafficking includes the transportation of persons by means of coercion, deception and/or force into exploitative and slavery-like conditions. It is commonly associated with organized crime.
Stopping Traffic is a 2017 American documentary film directed by Sadhvi Siddhali Shree and produced by the team of monks at Siddhayatan Tirth.
13th Street is a German pay television channel owned by the NBCUniversal subsidiary of Comcast through its NBCUniversal International Networks division. The channel is devoted to the genres thriller & crime and shows series, feature films as well as short films.
The FOSTA and SESTA are the U.S. Senate and House bills that became law on April 11, 2018. They clarify the country's sex trafficking law to make it illegal to knowingly assist, facilitate, or support sex trafficking, and amend the Section 230 safe harbors of the Communications Decency Act 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, and argued that Section 230 was protecting its "unscrupulous business practices" and was not designed to provide immunity to websites that facilitate sex trafficking.
Michael G. Lacey is an Arizona-based journalist, editor, publisher and First Amendment advocate. He is the founder and former executive editor of the Phoenix New Times, which he and his business partner, publisher Jim Larkin, expanded into a nationwide chain of 17 alternative weeklies, known as Village Voice Media (VVM).
James "Jim" Anthony Larkin is a Phoenix publisher and journalist, known for his influence in the alternative newspaper industry. He is largely responsible, along with business partner Michael Lacey, for expanding the Phoenix New Times from its origins as an anti-Vietnam War weekly begun in Tempe, Arizona in 1970 into what became the nation's largest chain of alternative weeklies. Known as New Times Inc. and eventually, Village Voice Media (VVM), the 17-paper chain included the Village Voice in New York, the LA Weekly, and the Miami New Times, among others.
Vanessa McNeal-Atadoga is an American social activist, public speaker, and documentary filmmaker. She directed the documentary that features stories of five male survivors of sexual violence titled The Voiceless, and We Are Survivors, a documentary that examines the experiences of eight victims of sexual abuse.
GirlsDoPorn was an American pornographic website active from 2009 to 2020, when six people involved were charged on counts of sex trafficking by force, fraud, and coercion in November 2019. In December 2019, two more individuals were charged with obstruction of sex trafficking enforcement. The website was removed in January 2020. According to the United States Department of Justice, the website and its sister website GirlsDoToys generated over $17 million in revenue. Videos were featured on GirlsDoPorn.com as well as pornography aggregate websites such as Pornhub, where the channel reached the top 20 most viewed, with approximately 680 million views.
