The state of Washington has abandoned its defense of legislation passed earlier this year that could have exposed website operators to legal liability if they inadvertently hosted advertisements for child prostitution. The Internet Archive, represented by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, challenged the legislation in June. They argued that the law was unconstitutionally broad and that it conflicted with Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which grants website providers broad immunity against liability for hosting material posted by third parties.

The legislation, known as SB 6251, was designed to fight the sexual exploitation of minors. But critics said language criminalizing the dissemination of advertisements which include "an explicit or implicit offer for a commercial sex act to occur in Washington" went too far. The Internet Archive worried that such ads could effectively make its archives of the Web illegal, since some websites included in the archives could fit the law's definition of material soliciting prostitution. So it joined a lawsuit by Backpage.com, which was also challenging the law.

A federal judge temporarily blocked enforcement of the law in July while litigation over the issue played out in the courts. Now Washington state officials have agreed to drop their defense of the law. They have asked the judge overseeing the case to permanently block the law's implementation.

And that's not all. The state will pay $200,000 to defray the plaintiffs' legal expenses, and Washington state attorney general Rob McKenna will "work with the Washington State Legislature to repeal the current unconstitutional version" of the law.

"Threatening to throw service providers in jail for what their users say or do is misguided, incredibly harmful to online free expression generally, and violates federal law," EFF lawyer Matt Zimmerman said in a Thursday blog post. "We are grateful that the state of Washington has agreed that this statute cannot and will not be enforced against the Internet Archive or anyone else."