I mentioned earlier that while SISEA "died" with the end of the 116th Congress, they could still reintroduce it into the 117th since they didn't vote either way before it ended.
Not only does that seem to be the case, but it seems they're planning on reintroducing SISEA sooner rather than later.
Edit: Okay, here's some explanation of what SISEA is and what the issues are with it, might be kinda repeated from the last time I explained:
>SISEA claims that its goal is to help fight back against revenge porn and such. Actors/subjects need to give consent to be featured, and victims are meant to be given an easier avenue to report nonconsensual content.
>However, the way that they are trying to do this, along with some wording of the bill, introduces far more problems than it does solutions, and doesn't necessarily even solve the issue of nonconsensual porn, and in fact may even make some of it easier to get away with (see the loophole in a bit).
>The measures they are trying to take to achieve their supposed goal, sound like such a pain in the ass to implement and comply with, that sites which allow porn but are not exclusively for it, such as Twitter, may give up and stop hosting any NSFW content altogether (think Tumblr). This would mean that sex workers and porn artists alike would lose platforms to host their content on.
>Some SWers operate exclusively online to reduce the risk of disease, being attacked [physically], and having things forced on them they never agreed to. If SWers lose online platforms, they may have to resort to doing in-person work again, which would open them up to all of these things. Covid is still an issue as well. If SISEA goes through and sites stop hosting NSFW, SWers might have to put themselves at risk of all these things, or potentially go broke or worse.
>Uploaders have to give their personal information to a database and the individual site(s) they are posting on in order to post content. Victims have to give their personal information to the database and sites in order to report anything. This is obviously a huge privacy violation considering hackers, or even just website moderators with malicious intent, can get ahold of that info and wreak havoc.
Not to mention this sounds to me like they could just be collecting SWers info to arrest them. Sex work is not decriminalized.
I've heard stories of trafficking victims getting opportunities to come forward and get help, only to be arrested despite being an unwilling victim. So that makes me worry that, if they are going to use SWers info to arrest them, they might go after victims who report content, as well.
>The uploading/reporting thing is all or nothing. Either all content of yours is consensual or none of it is. You can't have some be consensual and some not. SWers obviously don't give up all rights to consent just because they went into sex work, but SISEA will treat it like such. Say a SWer takes a photo for their SO, meant for their eyes only. Their SO turns out to be a prick and posts the photo online. This is still revenge porn, even if it was a SWer. Except with SISEA, if that happens to them they can do fuck all about it. Their only choices would be to let the revenge porn stay up, or report the rp and let all of their consenting work be purged as well. Or maybe a NSFW artist has IRL revenge porn posted of them, they'd either have to leave it be or they wouldn't be able to post art again.
>There's an incredibly fucked up loophole. The bill operates on the age of consent in the state. There's something called "child brides" who can be younger than the age of consent. An adult performing sexual acts on their "child bride" does not legally count as statutory rape (what the fuck). I'm not a legal expert, but if the victim being the pedo's "child bride" overrides both age of consent AND statutory rape, and SISEA does not operate on a strict 18+ rule, then it seems as if sick fucks could potentially use this to get away with child porn because courts could accept it as "consensual". If APAG is to be believed, some lawyers have even confirmed this to be the case.
>This shit makes me wonder if the loophole is perhaps on purpose to keep their buddies out of trouble...
>Lindsey Graham flat out says he wants to "work with [his] colleagues in Congress to limit society's exposure to inappropriate material," hm... that doesn't sound like just nonconsensual material... Sounds like a potential freedom of expression violation as well...
>Part of me worries about how LGBT+ content would fare with this. Society as a whole hasn't even come to a consensus of whether our existence is appropriate for children or not. Many people seem to see being queer or trans as inherently NSFW.
I don't think it's been officially reintroduced just yet, but I have heard confirmation that it will soon, pay attention and contact your representatives if you can. Let them know the problems and tell them [politely] to reject SISEA, that you won't support or vote for them again if they approve SISEA.
It would be a good idea to know what ideals your reps stand for, so you know what parts if this they would care about and the parts they would not. Lead with, or maybe only say, the things they would care about.
Like, if a rep is a puritan, you probably don't want to get too defensive of SWers or porn itself- you'd have to think of something else, like emphasizing the loophole, or I've heard some people trying the violation of freedom of expression angle? Or maybe bring up the privacy violations that arise from it, maybe they'd care about that?
But if a rep is more progressive, you could bring up not only the loophole and the privacy issues, but you could bring up the concerns about LGBT+ content or even SWers. I know AOC in particular cares about SWers, I saw her post something condemning a dude for harassing a woman that went into sex work. AOC said Sex Work Is Work.
Hopefully nobody tries to claim that picking and choosing what to tell your rep to convince them is "manipulative" or anything.
Even if it is, I feel like it is entirely justified to "manipulate" your reps into rejecting a bill when that bill could cause all sorts of major issues such as effectively legalizing child porn.
As long as what you are saying is true, say whatever you want/need, and leave out whatever you want/need, in order to convince your reps to say No to SISEA.
American abuse victims, SWers, and artists alike, possibly even more people, are all at risk if SISEA succeeds.