The internet is not a place. A website is not a brothel. Data is not prostitution. At least one court now agrees.
In the matter of a New Mexico man’s website for discussing and arranging appointments with escorts, a state judge ruled this week that “an online message board nor a computer amount to a ‘house of prostitution or a place where prostitution is practiced, encouraged or allowed'” (Albuquerque Journal), and so therefore, his website was legal.
The prosecution could still appeal, or try to argue that, as the Journal quoted their attorney, “if the website itself is not a place where prostitution is practiced, encouraged or allowed, and neither is a computer, is the room where the computer is stored?”
So the creation, collection, or transmission of data about prostitution in a room constitutes enough of an act of prostitution to render the room itself a house of prostitution?
What server room, hotel, or high rise isn’t a brothel, then?
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