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Sheriff Sues Craiglist For Prostitution Ads
Amerika writes "Craigslist is 'the single largest source of prostitution in the nation,' according to Cook County, Illinois Sheriff Thomas Dart. He has announced that he's filing a lawsuit against the popular classifieds site. Craigslist says it's determined to prevent criminal activity." NewYorkCountryLawyer adds a link to the 28-page complaint (PDF), which "alleges that Craigslist maintains 21 classifications of sex-for-hire, coded as 'w4m,' 'm4m,' 'm4w,' etc." and that it has facilitated child prostitution and kidnapping and human trafficking.
I like this game
Last week I ordered a hit out on a professor through craigslist. Sure the interface was ugly but service was delivered on time so I really shouldn't be complaining.
This is Illinois again I see we are talking about, after all. Maybe the sheriff in question is just upset because he can't get a cut of the local "action" if it's all happens online...
Sheriff Dart has taken a stance against mortgage companies that are evicting renter's from homes that property owners are allowing to go into eviction. Sheriff Dart says, "Too many renters are being evicted for landlords' problems".
FreeBSD bounties
Not all, but many are, yes. It's a double standard in our society that bugs me. Expecting your date to put out because you bought her a nice dinner is OK, but paying her cash for sex isn't. Go figure.
"16MB (fuck off, MiB fascists)" - The Mighty Buzzard
I think he's more referring to the erotic services section, which are actually mostly legitimate legal services. Just because there's no sex doesn't mean that a service isn't erotic. Massages, BDSM (doesn't require sex), and Kama Sutra classes are some of the more frequent offerings on there.
I see the glass as full with a FoS of 2.
I agree. Imagine if you just dropped 150 bucks on a hooker and she says, "Na, I've got a headache.".
He didn't sue the mortgage banks, he instead refused to execute eviction notices for renters that were paying rent on time.
SirWired
What's the point of erotic services without sex? That's like going to a restaurant just to smell the food.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Yet people flock to strip clubs to watch women dance and take off their clothes. Erotic Services with no sex are quite common.
I see the glass as full with a FoS of 2.
Its as if Ebay had a specific areas for weed, cocaine, and heroin.
Ahh, I found my new Happy Thought ;)
Let me guess. You don't get laid much.
Little aftertought, after reading the ars technica update I believe this is about money.
The Cook County Sheriff's Department is asking a federal judge to close the Erotic Services section of Craigslist, as well as reimburse the department $100,000 it has cost to pursue Craigslist-related prostitution investigations over the past year,
Umm...Shouldn't the police force be paying craigslist? Craigslist didn't create the prostitution. They stuck it all in one spot. The only way they could have helped the cops more is if they placed a big red arrow that says "hooker" over the prostitute's heads.
One more 'm', and that would have been funny.
The CB App. What's your 20?
... adults with imaginary friends are given free psychiatric help.
In the US, we give them political power.
OK, I'll bite.
What are you talking about? This is a story about a lawsuit. A strange lawsuit that seems to be trying to enforce criminal statutes on a tort-like theory of public nuisance. It likely won't go anywhere, since it's hard from the complaint to even make out who the aggrieved party is supposed to be. (Is the Sheriff himself harmed in some way by Craigslist's practices? I think he'll have to show that if he wants an injunction. Otherwise, if he thinks something cognizably criminal is going on he could maybe investigate and prosecute. Which he can't, so this whole thing is largely symbolic.)
Now you come in babbling about political power for imaginary friends. I guess it's OK, though, as there seem to be enough like-minded schizophrenics to get you modded insightful. Perhaps you could move overseas, and avail yourself of some of those marvelous free services...
I hear the spectre of child prostitution ads being raised many times in this thread.
cite one example. I peruse my local craigslist on occasion, and have even used the erotic services section quite a few times. I've never seen any child prostitution ads in there.
If they're so prevalent, there must be some posted today? something in cache somewhere? an actual ad someone could link to and say "look, a child prostitution ad! take it off!"
Unless I see some evidence, I'm inclined to think that the children are not as prevalent on craigslist as some would like us to think, and it's just a moral panic excuse to shut down a business run by adults, and only adults.
So you have some kind of evidence of child abuse (be it sexual or otherwise), then you have a prosecution. Congratulations, where does shutting down a section of craigslist come into this? Oh, you have no evidence of this actually happening, no actually damaged or hurt children? Then you're just another scare monger trying to stop the bleeding by covering it with a curtain.
If you really want to think of the children, maybe you ought to take all this evidence you have of child abuse to a DA's office and see if you can get the ball rolling there.
An intelligent person would want this stuff on craigslist, where it is all made into a nice easy searchable electronic database that can be easily monitored, logged, and used in court with a minimum of fuss. It looks to me like this sherrif simply doesn't understand the technology and his lawyers told him he might be able to make a quick buck suing craigslist.
The world you experience is only a close approximation of reality.
Is the Sheriff himself harmed in some way by Craigslist's practices? I think he'll have to show that if he wants an injunction....... Which he can't, so this whole thing is largely symbolic.
I don't know about that.....maybe his wife keeps showing up in the w4m category....
"City hall" in German is "Rathaus" Kinda explains a few things......
Craigslist isn't just a truck you can dump a bunch of hookers on.
And for when we're feeling adventurous and little dirty, we have STDERR. :-)
I have always found it highly questionable that something one can give away for free should be illegal to sell.. (free is relative; everyone pays for it somehow) If they regulated it (and taxed the hell out of it) it would do away with some thugs who want to be big time pimps, and through health regulations it could help reduce the spread of STD's. Just to go ahead and answer the inevitable, no it will not fix everything and there will always be those that operate outside of an established/legal system.
BDSM (doesn't require sex)
... shouldn't it get worse?
You should tip more, it gets better.
The stereotype annoys me too. I go to the clubs, and I'm personal friends with a quite a few dancers, and I've dated dancers. These girls aren't whores, and I've seen idiot customers make that mistake on many occasions. If you want to mistreat and mishandle the girls, it's not the bouncers you need to worry about. They're only going to toss you out on your ass; it's that dancer looking at you with the "fuck me" eyes, sexy smile, and the steel posted stilettos -- cause she's the one who's going to show you what she learned in kickboxing.
Sex doesn't happen in the champagne/VIP room. And the expenses for getting back into the room *is* for house fee + champagne + whatever the girl charges for her time. It's a risky proposition for the club owners and workers to have sex on the premise. Not only that, it ruins the girls' legitimate hustle, and so it's not tolerated. A good customer can spend nearly a grand or more on a favorite girl. A $200 sex act by another girl risks that. Now, there are some clubs there sex happens on-premise. In my experience they have always been "one-on-one clubs" which aren't strip clubs in the traditional sense; or real dives -- the kinds of places where the two drink minimum comes with a free STD and you might get stabbed and robbed by one of the hookers working the crowd. Are there exceptions? Of course, but I've gone through more clubs than the typical slashdotter has linux distributions.
And of course, there are some dancers who do "extras" but they take that business outside the club for the reasons I gave before. Strip clubs sell fantasy, and for most sensible people, fantasy is enough. Incidentally, I know more business school and law school grads who have done "extras" to make it at their workplace than dancers who have. And my former dancer girlfriend is an amazing woman with a better moral compass than most people I've met.