 After a dozen years of legal fights, seven years in the crosshairs of ambitious prosecutors and five and a half years of a federal case that saw his company forcibly shut down, his bank accounts frozen, his ankle monitored, and his longtime partner commits suicide, Michael Lacy, the alt-weekly newspaper impresario, has at long last been found guilty of exactly one of the 86 criminal charges levied against him in connection with the online advertising platform Backpage. But if you think the government's fanatical pursuit of Lacy and four other Backpage co-dependence is over, then, like almost every journalist in this country, you haven't been following one of the biggest free speech trials in modern history. Lacy, an award-winning investigative journalist, was found guilty of international concealment money laundering, which could land him in prison for up to 20 years, and he was also found not guilty on another count. But the jury, after a week of deliberation, could not come to agreement on the other 84 charges, prompting Judge Diane Humitua to declare a second mistrial in this case. So yes, Mike Lacy might be forced to stand trial for a third time, essentially for the crime of running a classified ads company that knowingly enabled and profited from illegal, if consensual, transactions involving sex. Normally, the speech and conduct of users in the comments sections of websites is considered to be the legal responsibility of the speakers themselves, and not the owners of the platform. That was built into Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act, known by its admirers as the Internet's First Amendment. But Backpage, in particular, has been the tip of the federal spear in forcing those online freedoms back. Kamala Harris and 46 other state attorneys general just over a decade ago sent a joint letter to Congress urging the rollback of Section 230. Here's how that letter began. Every day, children in the United States are sold for sex. In instance after instance, state and local authorities discover that the vehicles for advertising the victims of the child's sex trade to the world are online classified ad services such as Backpage.com. It's here I should point out that at no point in all the various prosecutions of Backpage has the company ever been formally accused of contributing to the child's sex trade. In fact, that's why the first case in 2021 ended in a mistrial. Prosecutors refused to stop using the lurid-sounding phrase sex trafficking. Just seven weeks before her election to the Senate, Harris, along with her Texas counterpart Ken Paxton, brought the first case against Mike Lacy, his partner Jim Larkin, and other executives at Backpage. Putting the senior citizen defendants in orange jumpsuits in a courtroom cage in Sacramento as if they might otherwise go full Hannibal Lecter on innocent bystanders. That case was tossed out by a judge who pointed out Congress did not wish to hold liable online publishers for the action of publishing third-party speech. It is for Congress not this court to revisit. No matter. Three days before leaving the AG's office for the Senate, Harris filed yet another case against Backpage for pimping and money laundering. The pimping charge was promptly thrown out because of section 230. Once in Congress, meanwhile, Harris helped push through the Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act or FOSTA that indeed peels back section 230 to make websites liable for the facilitation or promotion of prostitution by their users, even though prostitution itself is not a federal crime. This latest retrial did not rely on FOSTA, but also the defense was barred by the judge from even bringing up section 230 on grounds that it's somehow only applicable to state crimes. Prostitution between consenting adults should be legal, straight up. But even if you believe the opposite is true, the persecution of Backpage has been a disaster. Back when the company was still around, the federal government praised it repeatedly for assisting law enforcement in identifying sex traffickers and other criminals. Now that it's gone, according to the Government Accountability Office, the FBI's ability to identify victims and sex traffickers has decreased significantly. In the meantime, publishers of any kind of website that features user-generated content are considerably more vulnerable to being held criminally liable for the conduct of their customers. Those are the kinds of free speech stakes that news organizations used to care about. Yet the Backpage trial got barely any national coverage or attention. People's brains shut off when you scare them about child sex trafficking on the internet, regardless of whether there's any evidence. And too often, those who are supposed to be skeptical of power become deferential when it's politicians making the fantastical accusations. Two of the Backpage defendants were convicted on dozens of counts and could face life in prison. But even the two defendants who were exonerated said their lives have been, quote, ruined. Mike Lacy's partner, friend, and co-defendant committed suicide rather than subject himself and his family to more pain. All of this is being done in your name, using your tax dollars in a process that has made you less free. Journalists no longer seem to care about this. Will you?