Craigslist to meet with state AGs over sex ads
Three state attorneys general plan to meet with Craigslist representatives to begin negotiations toward eliminating advertisements from the site for prostitution and other suspected illegal sexual activities.
State attorneys general from Missouri, Illinois, and Connecticut will represent a group of state attorneys general in a meeting Tuesday in New York City with representatives of the Web site.
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Missouri Attorney General Chris Koster said his office found several ads offering and seeking prostitution on Craigslist pages for the Kansas City, St. Louis, Columbia/Jefferson City, and Springfield areas.
"Craigslist is allowing advertisements for illegal activities like prostitution on its site," Koster said a statement. "It is blatant. It is irresponsible. It is illegal."
Craigslist CEO Jim Buckmaster expressed optimism toward the goal of reducing illegal activity on the site but stopped short of discussing the removal of the "erotic services" section.
"Craigslist looks forward to meeting with the attorneys general, and anticipates making further progress toward the common goal of eliminating illegal activity from Craigslist, while preserving its full utility and benefit for tens of millions of law-abiding Americans who value and depend on Craigslist's free local community services in their everyday lives," Buckmaster said in a statement.
The site's erotic services section was thrust into the national spotlight following the arrest last month of Philip H. Markoff, who is suspected of killing a 25-year-old masseuse he met through Craigslist at a Boston hotel. Markoff, a 22-year-old medical student at Boston University, was charged with murder, unlawful possession of a firearm, and kidnapping. He is also suspected of attacks on two other escorts at hotels.
However, even before the so-called "Craigslist killing," the site had worked with a group of 40 attorneys general to create new measures on the site designed to thwart ads for prostitution and other illegal sexual activities. Craigslist requires anyone posting ads to the erotic services section to submit an operational phone number and credit card, the site announced last year.
But those measures don't do enough to stem prostitution, according to a federal lawsuit filed in March against Craigslist by the sheriff of Illinois' Cook County, alleging that the Web's largest classifieds publication is "facilitating prostitution." Sheriff Tom Dart asked the court to force Craigslist to remove the erotic services section and for $100,000 in compensation for the man-hours the county paid police to investigate alleged criminal services being advertised on the site.
Buckmaster suggested at the time that the suit was a waste of time, saying that "Craigslist cannot be held liable, as a matter of clear federal law, for content submitted to the site by our users." Craigslist announced later that month that ads for such services were down 90 percent to 95 percent during the past 12 months on Craigslist sites that serve five major U.S. cities. However, many CNET News readers suggested that the reduction was due to the ads being relabeled and moved to another section.
While some portray Craigslist as the world's largest bordello, workers in the sex trade say the site helps reduce the risk of violence prostitutes often face.
"Craigslist is important to helping us avoid violence," a 35-year-old sex worker in San Francisco told CNET News last month before the murder in Boston occurred. "Craigslist is a way to filter out that kind of person...and with Craigslist there is no need for pimps."
Steven Musil is the night news editor at CNET News. Before joining CNET News in 2000, Steven spent 10 years at various Bay Area newspapers. E-mail Steven. 
But, hey, nice try on equating prostitution with those other things. It was a *really* effective arguing point.
It's time those right-wing, super-liberal, religious fanatics gave up on enforcing victimless crimes anyway. It's way beyond time to stop legislating morals.
I can't tell if you're trying to be funny.
PS. not many prostitutes would agree it's victimless, especially not all the ones with brain damage after all the beatings from their 'clients'.
I suppose because some people are OK base-jumping it should be legal despite all the ones who splat?
Nice non-thinking there.
how hard is it to catch people doing illegal things if the people post their phone number right on the website?
are the attorney generals so inept that they cannot try and convict people when the evidence is as they say "so blatant"?
did they not learn from previous shutdowns that if craigslist closed their erotic services section, then people would just go elsewhere?
why do they insist on not actually going after criminals?
imagine if they did this with guns, and went after the people who made guns available instead of the people who used them for crimes!
The fact is that I am SHOCKED that a prostitute hasn't sued the state on these laws violating their right to 'Life, Liberty and Pursuit of Happiness'. The fact is that government has NO right to dictate to someone what they do with their own bodies, as long as they are not physically harming someone else without their permission or spreading diseases. Fact is: most prostitutes are CLEAN of AIDS and other STD's.
If she runs for governor, I certainly will not be voting for her.
uh... WHAT??
A child is not in an equal power relationship with an adult: the adult is larger, older and (theoretically) smarter, therefore you can't call it "consent."
Ask a child of 7 how much a car costs - no idea! But you'd have no problem getting him to sign a contract for one. Do you think he knows what he's doing or why? No. He isn't old enough to understand any of it, but he'd do it if an adult asked him to! So to say that a child could understand emotional and physical ramifications of engaging in sex is ludicrous.
I realize I'm probably talking to a wall here - you're obviously dealing with your own experience in the best way you know how, but I hope you're still seeing a therapist.
... I hope you're still seeing a therapist.
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Lerianis has spent years at this site condoning child rape, so I seriously doubt he's ever seen a therapist.
One reason I will never pay for sex: I'm not _that_ ****ed up.
RaifTheDog. Yes! However, there are already successfully tested treatments for heroin addiction (that have all but ended it in some countries) that will not be used because it would generate a negative reaction in the gutter press. All that horse**** about being 'soft'.
South Carolina's top prosecutor says Craigslist could face prosecution if it doesn't take down ads about prostitution.
Attorney General Henry McMaster says Tuesday in a letter to CEO Jim Buckmaster that the classified ad Web site has until May 15 to take down sex-related ads on its South Carolina Web sites.
McMaster says Craigslist could be investigated if it doesn't comply.
How can you spend that many years in school to become a lawyer and yet still remain that stupid?
Meantime, the local newspapers all carry ads for erotic spas and massage parlors, and these places operate in local towns with impunity.
Maybe Craigslist should donate to their political campaigns.
Prostitution didn't kill that woman. She was killed by a mentally deranged man who's condition is partly the result of the screwed up, psycho-social-sexual environment we have in the United States. HIS behavior, and it's causes, should be what we are concentrating on; not her's and those like her.
Prostitution is the only personal service that is legal if given for free, and illegal if charged for. Which just goes to show how utterly stupid, illogical, and inconsistent most Americans really are when it comes to sex.
That's why one prostitute is murdered every month in the UK.
That's why prostitutes regularly have the same kind of brain damage as victims of domestic abuse.
That's why they need to be treated as victims and not criminals.
That's why if Lerianis3 had said that **** in the same room as me I'd have hit him with a chair by now, and I wouldn't be checking his breathing.
This action is possibly ill judged but it's just part of a framework that needs to be replaced with a solution based on facts and not tabloid hysteria and self-righteous judgementalism.
http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&safe=off&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-GB%3Aofficial&hs=TgT&q=lerianis3+pedosexual+site%3Anews.cnet.com&btnG=Search&meta=
Find a few ads that appear to have "larger" photos than the default sizes offerd by Craigslist. put your cursor over a photo and right-click. View the photo in a new tab or window and take not of the url. Go to the address bar and delete the part of the web address that pertains only to that individual photo and see what happens.
If you hit gold, then what you've done is exposed the photo hosting site of that individual advertiser. You see, pimps (often times street gang members) quite often have "stables" of ladies working for them. To make the advertising easier to manage, they create photobucket accounts and just paste the URLs of the respective girl's photos to the craigslist ad.
Repeat this little experiement enough times in a major prostitution market such as LA, SF, NYC, Chicago, Phoenix, etc, and sooner or later, you will stumble upon a pimp's photo collection. Notice that the photos are not all of the same girls, but rather collections of girls.
Craigslist is THE home of pimping, contrary to what the girl in the last paragraph says. She just can't see the world for what it really is yet
- by GlennAllen May 5, 2009 5:11 PM PDT
- Craigslist doesn't kill people; people kill people. And when you catch violent criminals, then don't coddle them. Execute the murderers and put the other in a dark hole till they die.
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(35 Comments)As far as prostitution and any other "illegal" activities are concerned where everyone involved is there by their own choice, I really don't care, and would prefer that my tax dollars not be spent trying to tell people how to live their own lives and what to do with their own bodies and property. The morality gestapo can all go shove it.