(credit: Gilbert Mercier)
The battle between the US Senate and Backpage.com heated up again this week. Backpage demanded Wednesday that a federal appeals court continue blocking the online classified ad portal from having to comply with a Senate investigation and subpoena into how Backpage conducts its business, including providing the government with documents about the ins and outs of its editorial business model. The Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations contends that the site is littered with ads that amount to offering sex services by women and children forced into prostitution, and it wants to know what steps the website is taking, if any, to screen ads posted to its site by third parties.
“…this case is about nothing but editorial judgement,” attorneys for the site’s chief executive officer, Carl Ferrer, told (PDF) the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit on Wednesday.
The tug of war clearly implicates the site’s First Amendment rights, Backpage said. Backpage said the committee’s subpoena intrudes on its editorial judgement and that the government’s probe is “a limitless fishing expedition.” The government said it has a legitimate interest in cracking down on human exploitation, and it argued that the law provides the committee with subpoena power to investigate matters of public concern.
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Source: Ars Technica – Backpage demands that appeals court block Senate sex-trafficking subpoena