Backpage.com, VVMH Helped FBI Catch Child Predator:

In response to the lawsuit filed against them by a victim of child trafficking Village Voice Media-owned Backpage.com released the following press release. Since it’s a press release I’m going to copy and paste the whole thing. I mean they want the press, right? I’m more than happy to give it to them.

PHOENIX, AZ–(Marketwire – September 19, 2010) – On Friday, an attorney attempted to milk a tragedy by suing Village Voice Media Holdings, LLC and its related entity Backpage.com in a child predator case in which Backpage.com’s records helped convict Latasha Jewell McFarland of pimping out a minor.

The lawsuit is riddled with errors. The claim that we knowingly assisted McFarland in committing criminal acts is a lie fabricated by a trial lawyer looking for a payday. The attorney seeks to redirect blame from a convicted predator to Backpage.com, which helped prosecute the criminal.

Without our knowledge, the predator violated our terms of use. Backpage.com has stringent safeguards in place to ensure that only adults use the site. We provided the FBI with the perpetrator’s I.P. address and credit-card information.

Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 recognized that the very nature of the Internet meant that vast traffic depended on the ability of citizens to post directly onto websites like Backpage.com, Facebook, MySpace or eBay, or to have search engines like Google and Yahoo find postings without pre-screening or censorship. The responsibility, under the law, rests with the person supplying the post.

In the last two years, Backpage.com has had 58 million posts, of which 6 million were adult. In this vast exchange of information, law enforcement agencies have asked for our testimony in precisely five underage cases.

Because one case is too many, we have, and we will continue to, cooperate willingly with authorities.

It seems that Backpage has the same conundrum that craigslist did. You can’t really pride yourself on helping put a child trafficker behind bars when it was your site that was used as the avenue to pimp out a 14-year-old girl. And they say that ‘without their knowledge’ the trafficker violated their TOS. What do they think everyone posting in their adult section is doing? Again just like craigslist in the past backpage is insulting the intelligence of people who actually care about human trafficking and not the almighty dollar.

Also just like craigslist, Backpage likes to throw around the Communications Decency Act of 1996. That was 14 years ago. Isn’t the internet a vastly different place then it was back in ’96? Hell, I wasn’t even on the internet back in ’96. When the law was written I’m sure the thought of human trafficking never even crossed their minds. That’s one law that is in desperate need of an overhaul so sites that make money off the backs of children and women forced into sexual slavery would get the repercussions that they’re due.

And again, like I need to say it, Backpage is emulating their older friend craigslist by claiming that they will continue to work with authorities. Yet they still won’t do anything to prevent law enforcement from being called in the first place.

Same song, different band.