EARN IT ACT NOW. Let’s Protect Our Children.
We’ve included a special call-to-action for anyone who reads this. We need YOU your support, so this legislation will pass!
You walk into a bookstore. You are greeted with the familiar smell of fresh literature waiting to be discovered. However, something feels off today. It’s not the usual crowd combing through the aisle?
Your sense of peace and excitement begins to fade as you take in your full surroundings. Everyone has their face covered. Not by the traditional COVID masks, but more sinister. Dark hoods, ski masks, and even the occasional Halloween mask. You are confused. As you make your way back to the nonfiction biography section, you become confused. It’s no longer there?! You swing around to have another look. “Slam!” Magazines and DVDs burst into the air as you mistakenly crash into another customer. His dark hood flies back, exposing his distraught face.
You apologize and instinctively bend down to help pick up the merchandise he was carrying. You freeze in horror by what you see lying on the floor. The man quickly pulls his hood back over his head and races out the door. Child abuse images (aka pornography)!? The blood drains from your brain. The cloaked customers, the odd feeling you had about the store, and the disturbed look on the hooded man’s face when he was exposed, it all suddenly becomes clear. You grab the arm of a passing manager and demand an explanation. He shrugs his shoulders and continues walking.
In 2008, over 600,000 images/videos of CSAM (child pornography) were reported to the National Center on Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC), calling it an epidemic.
In 2021, NCMEC received more than 29.3 million (up 35% over 2020) CyberTipline reports containing over 84.9 million images, videos, and other content related to suspected child sexual exploitation (up 29.8% over 2020).
Could you ever imagine a world where businesses are granted legal immunity to knowingly host and profit from child sexual abuse material (CSAM)? This world exists! It’s called the United States of America, and Section 230 of the Communication Decency Act grants all internet platforms a legal shield to monetize these egregious human rights violations facing children across the globe.
History is watching us. At Wired Human, we want our grandchildren to know we fought! That we had the courage to say, “No! Not on my watch!” That is why we are endorsing the EARN IT act.
The EARN IT Act is the most important child protection legislation pending before Congress in 2022 to confront the rise of child sexual abuse material online.
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Give survivors of CSAM a path to justice by allowing them to restore the privacy they have lost when their rape, assault, and or sexual abuse was put online.
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Clarify that there is no immunity for social media and other digital platforms that knowingly facilitate the dissemination of CSAM (Child Sexual Abuse Material).
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Change the term “child pornography” in federal statute to “child sexual abuse material” to convey the seriousness of abuse and ensure this material is treated as evidence of a crime.
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Create a new Online Child Exploitation Prevention Commission made up of survivors, technology reps, privacy and civil rights experts, and other stakeholdersto create recommendations and voluntary best practices for tech companies to respond to the global pandemic of online sexual exploitation of children.
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Survivors and state attorneys will be able to sue and take legal action against tech companies that have facilitated their exploitation and victimization.
Our kids, grandchildren, and future generations are counting on us to write the pages of history in their favor. Big Tech must be held accountable for knowingly hosting child abuse on their platforms. America is the leader of the free world. It is time for us to return to the values that this country was built upon.
Values that protect the liberty, sanctity, and well-being of every human being, no matter how big or small, must be represented in legislative reform. Is it too much to ask that CSAM being monetized online be made illegal? We don’t think so. Click here to see how you can get involved to make legislative changes that protect families and childhood in the digital age possible. Find out more here.
THE FULL BILL: S.3538 – EARN IT Act of 2022& U.S. HR 6544