Banning sex ads in the press: too little, too late?

More than a year after it was first proposed, Congress is on track to pass a government bill banning newspapers and magazines from running advertisements for prostitutes. But while the new law will also apply to publications' digital editions, it does not affect the internet overall, nor television or radio.

The new law, which was put before Congress on Thursday, looks set to satisfy few. Print media groups have criticized it, pointing out that prostitution is not illegal, while some political parties and women's rights groups say that it does not go far enough, arguing that advertisements offering sexual services on television, and the internet particularly, should also be banned.

AEDE, the Spanish newspapers' association, has criticized the proposed legislation as a "smoke screen," saying that sex ads will simply migrate to the internet, where they cannot be regulated, potentially increasing the risks to sex workers.

Minority parties in Congress have welcomed the move, but say that the legislation is insufficient. "The simple fact that this issue is to be regulated by law is important, but it doesn't go far enough," says Joan Tardá, a deputy for the left-wing Catalan nationalist grouping Esquerra Republicana, who has campaigned actively for the ban. Tardá wants to see the law extended to cover television and radio. "We are prepared to leave aside for the moment the internet because it is a complicated area, but not to include television, where most of this kind of advertising is to be found, makes no sense at all. I don't know what kind of reasoning has been used here," he says

Gaspar Llamazares, the spokesman for the United Left grouping in Congress, also supports the ban, and also wonders why it is limited to print media. "The coherent thing to do would be to include all media, digital, television, although in the latter case, many say that this is already covered by laws to protect minors and young children that limit the type of advertising that can be shown at certain times," he says.

The government says there is time to make amendments to the draft law. "The doors are still open. This is simply a first proposal," says Laura Seara, the Secretary of State for Equality. She says the law was initially limited to the print media and digital editions of newspapers and magazines when the government first put forward its proposals in September 2010. "But we are not ruling out widening the ban to the internet and the television stations; it depends on Congress. It will decide," she says.

So far, the government has not talked to the television stations, says Jorge del Corral, Secretary General of UTECA, the union of commercial television channels. He points out that a separate law applies to what television stations can broadcast, for example pornography.

Seara says she welcomes discussion about the ban. "It is essential that the print media talk about this, because it affects them."

AEDE says that if the government is really interested in protecting the rights of men and women who work as prostitutes, a much wider debate has to take place in society "that comes up with real and adequate answers."

Esquerra Republicana has said it will recommend that the ban be extended to radio and television. The party, which has campaigned actively to ban prostitution, adds that sanctions for media that continue to run advertisements for prostitutes must be decided. "This needs to be clear, so that it doesn't turn out to be cheaper for media to pay the fines and continue to publish advertisements," says Tardá. He is also concerned that with the Congressional summer break, and then the possibility of elections in the fall, the law might be forgotten. "We are running out of time, and there is no point in continuing to argue about this," he says, recommending that the law be passed as it stands, and amendments made later. "There will be time to fine tune it."

Advertisements for prostitutes fill at least a page in most of Spain's dailies, and are estimated by AEDE to be worth 40 million euros a year to a newspaper industry where sales are in steady decline. AEDE says that if the government is serious about cracking down on prostitution, it should make it illegal. "If it were illegal, newspapers wouldn't carry the ads," a spokesman said.

Last summer, when the government's proposals were first mooted, police broke up a prostitution network in Madrid after following up advertisements in national dailies. It transpired that most of the newspaper adverts had not been placed by individual sex workers but by gangs from Romania, Nigeria and Latin America who exploit women. The police said that the victims were being forced to give half their earnings to pimps, and much of the rest went on paying for their lodgings, leaving them, the police said, "in a state of near slavery."

"The continued existence of contact advertisements contributes to the normalization of this activity; which is why they should be eliminated," said Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero in June 2010.

Before that, the government, through the then-minister for equality, Bibiana Aído, had tried to persuade the print media to apply a "best practice" code. In response, some newspapers removed photographs from advertisements. But this did not satisfy the government, which announced that it would explore "legal measures" to end prostitution ads.

This led to the decision for a ban. Spanish law is vague on prostitution. Selling sex is not illegal, but trafficking and living off the earnings of a prostitute are. The government's stated aim in banning the advertisements is to "protect women" from pimps and traffickers. That said, figures for 2009, the most recent, show that the State Attorney's Office was only able to bring charges against 96 of the 726 people arrested for trafficking and pimping. According to the United Nations, just 1 percent of prostitutes are prepared to bring charges against the gangs that control them.

The government says that as well as forming part of its efforts to protect women from being trafficked, the proposed legislation is also about preventing minors from exposure to advertisements for prostitutes. In which case, why limit it to the print media? "The print media, in general, is broadly distributed throughout society, and not limited to adults," says the government.

Given the extensive and growing reach of the internet, this argument seems increasingly out of touch with reality. In Spain, the word "contacts" is used 1.5 million times a month on search engines. The word "escort" comes up 823,000 a month, and 25 million times a month around the world.

Finding prostitutes on the internet has never been easier thanks, for example, to geolocalization, which identifies where a user is, and provides pages for services, sexual or otherwise, in that area or city. Google doesn't allow words like "escort," "contacts," or "dates" to be bought by advertisers of pornography sites, but it can do nothing to prevent sites hosting classified advertisements offering sexual services. The question is, for how long?