Craigslist Kills Erotic Services Ads, Will Launch Adult Section

CWmike writes "Submitting to mounting legal pressure, Craigslist has announced that it will remove the Erotic Services category from its classified advertising Web site within seven days. The move comes just two and a half weeks after Jim Buckmaster, CEO of Craigslist, told Computerworld that the company had no intention of removing the category. While it's taking down the category, it will be launching a new category called Adult Services, for which each posting will be manually reviewed before it appears. 'Unsurprisingly, but completely contrary to some of the sensationalistic journalism we've seen these past few weeks, the record is clear that use of Craigslist classifieds is associated with far lower rates of violent crime than print classifieds, let alone rates of violent crime pertaining to American society as a whole,' said Buckmaster in a blog post today. 'We are optimistic that the new balance struck today will be an acceptable compromise from the perspective of the constituencies, and for the diverse US communities that value and rely upon Craigslist.'"

Comments

Not like it's going to make a difference

[XxtraLarGe]

They'll just use some other website instead. If there's one thing the authorities should learn it's that you can't win the game of whack-a-mole.

Re:Not like it's going to make a difference

[DrLang21]

They'll probably just move back into the personals ads on Craigslist.

Re:Not like it's going to make a difference

[plague3106]

Of course because you're outlawing something you have no business outlawing, you drive it underground and force up prices (thus enticing more people into the act you want to ban) and make it dangerous for all involved. Instead of blasting CL for allowing the ads, they should be rethinking the law making the ads illegal in the first place. It's not like legalizing this would lead to the collapse of society... even the Church at one point allowed it.

Re:Not like it's going to make a difference

[DrLang21]

Regulate and tax I say.

Re:Not like it's going to make a difference

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

That is what I'd don't understand about law enforcement antipathy to the project.

"Hey guys! There's this site where you can, like, look at pictures of hookers all day, and set up stings, all from the comfort of your desk!" "Wow, we'd better shut that one down." Srsly? Why?

Re:Not like it's going to make a difference

[PCM2]

It's not like legalizing this would lead to the collapse of society... even the Church at one point allowed it.

If by "this" you mean prostitution, rather than the posting of ads, then I venture that the collapse of society isn't the whole issue here.

Does society collapse when a hooker gets beaten up by a weirdo? Does society collapse when a bunch of Chinese girls get brought over in a shipping crate to work in a brothel? Does society collapse when a college girl's boyfriend tells her that if she wants to keep the coke coming she needs to turn a few tricks, and it will only be just once or twice? Or, when these things happen, does society just keep on humming the way it always has and nobody needs to give a damn, yet alone raise a finger?

The problem I have is not with prostitution per se, but with half-assed attempts to decriminalize prostitution that contribute to making the situation worse. There's a lot of human misery involved in the sex trade right now. Maybe legalizing prostitution will do away with all of it -- for the sake of argument, let's assume that it will. But until prostitution is really and honestly legalized, for Craigslist to allow posting of prostitution ads now is to support the sex trade as it exists right now, and I can't say I'm really for that.

Re:Not like it's going to make a difference

[jalefkowit]

Protestants generally consider Catholics not to be Christians.

[Citation needed]

Re:Not like it's going to make a difference

[XxtraLarGe]

And yet if you do your history, the Roman Catholic church did (this was before ML).

Catholic priests participating in prostitution is far different from the Roman Catholic Church having a policy approving it. BTW, I wasn't trolling above, I was hoping that someone could supply any support for that argument.

Re:Not like it's going to make a difference

[JWSmythe]

    Actually, there were already quite a few services like Craigslist for escorts before Craigslist got big.

    In many areas, the erotic services section isn't used. I've browsed around it for giggles.

    I've known a few people in the industry (no, not by soliciting their services). Craigslist is generally considered a newbie trashy way to advertise. Good escorts already have better methods.

    And no, I won't post any links. :) Go find them yourselves you pervs.

    By forcing Craigslist to shut down their ads, it's really sent all of those providers off to other means of advertising, which means law enforcement will have to go hunting again. It was a stupid logistics idea. Law enforcement will never stop prostitution, but it looks good to the public to have a decent number of busts. Why kill your easy method of facilitating busts. It's a freakin' list of "we can arrest these people tonight", rather than really hunting them down.

    It'd be like if there was a "Drug Services" section, that crack dealers were listing in. They could brag that they've increased their drug related arrests by 1000%. People will still buy and sell illegal drugs, all they can hope to do is encourage a few people out of the business, and keep the public believing that they're doing all they can do.

    I don't like the idea of going to jail, so I don't deal with any industries that would put me there. I do know people who do though, so I can learn second hand of what happens. If you sit down and listen to some of these people, you'd be amazed at how well thought out some parts are. Then again, other parts are handled stupidly, and those are the people you hear about getting arrested. Some busts are just dumb luck.

Re:Not like it's going to make a difference

[ClosedSource]

The truth is despite all their "concern" about craigslist, law enforcement isn't really interested in any major effort to investigate and prosecute prostitutes, they just want to hide it.

Re:Not like it's going to make a difference

[MickyTheIdiot]

This is true. The crazier bible-belt folks (like the kind that create recordings for us plebeians to listen to after the rapture because they ARE SO RIGHTEOUS that they are sure to be taken) often do believe Catholicism to be a cult or worse. There are even stories of certain book stores in the south shelving books written by a Pope under the "occult" section.

The more sane Protestants don't teach that. As a matter of fact, IIRC from Methodist confirmation classes long ago the Pastor taught me that all the branches of Christianity had more in common than they had differences and that they were getting closer in their beliefs all the time.

Like the difference between Republicans and Democrats a certain number of blowhards like to put wedges in the differences and push as hard as they can.

Re:Not like it's going to make a difference

[PCM2]

Yeah, but you missed my point. Prostitution isn't legal and you can't get coke at a pharmacy. So let's lobby for the right things here. Lobby for legalized prostitution, lobby for free cocaine for everybody for all I care -- but don't lobby for Craigslist to be allowed to support the existing black markets for coke and women. Whether you consider vice crimes to be victimless crimes or not, right now there are a lot of really rotten people who profit from those markets, and some of the profits go towards other things that you might like a lot less than you like hookers n' blow.

Re:Not like it's going to make a difference

[eyrieowl]

A statement as broad as yours requires more than a couple of anecdotal links to back it up. All your links prove is that *some* Protestants don't believe Catholics are Christians. You imply it's the general rule, which I'll be generous and assume means a simple majority. FYI, I've also attended well over a dozen churches across the spectrum on a regular basis over the years. I would agree that some of the fundamentalist Protestants might believe a statement as strongly worded as that. However, I suspect even in those communities that if you gave them a choice between "Catholics aren't Christian" and "Catholics have lots of wrong beliefs but are Christians if they believe Jesus is Lord" you'd get a lot of people picking the second statement. That said, it would be a mistake to assume that Protestants are "generally" fundamentalist, there are a *lot* of mainstream Protestant denominations across the world which get along just fine with Catholics.

Re:Not like it's going to make a difference

[jcr]

Regulate and tax I say.

You know, I constantly hear this about all of the victimless crimes we have on the books today, and it really pisses me off. Why in the hell is the government entitled to tribute for refraining from interfering in something that's none of their business in the first place?

I want the drug war to end. I don't want the end of the drug war to mean that governments get billions in new tax revenues, in fact I want the taxpayers to get back the money we waste on the drug war now.

-jcr

Re:Not like it's going to make a difference

[lawpoop]

Why in the hell is the government entitled to tribute for refraining from interfering in something that's none of their business in the first place?

Does the government have a right to tax at all? Do they have a right to tax some things, but not this? Why would this be none of their business? Is anything their business to tax?

If you want things ( maybe one day recreational drugs and prostitution ) to stay safe and enjoyable , we need taxes for police, courts, FDAs, and public infrastructure like roads, electricity, and sewers, etc.

For all their self-righteousness, I never have heard of any libertarians moving to the middle of the Amazon or Somalia. Somalia has been free of the tyranny of government and taxes going on twenty years now.

Re:Not like it's going to make a difference

[jcr]

anyone who would argue for the legalization of cocaine is either ignorant or stupid.

Let me stop you right there, and point out your own ignorance and stupidity. Cocaine was an over-the-counter drug once, and we didn't have anyone getting shot over it. An addict needs treatment, not prosecution.

Try googling for "portugal drug decriminalization", read and learn.

-jcr

one word... splat!

[skathe]

What's really going to suck is when all those ads start showing up in other sections of craigslist, cluttering it even futher. They actually made the problem worse. Whack-a-mole, yes, but in this case, after you whacked the mole, it just splattered all over the place and it's even more of a mess than it was before. At least with the "Erotic Services" section, the problem was condensed and confined to one single section, at least for the most part.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Justification

[Bruce Perens]

I don't think this is going to have any serious effect on Craigslist. They are just changing the name of the service and putting reviewers in place.

We should look at why these sorts of services run into trouble with the law. The reasons run from good to terrible.

• These ads lead to exploitation of children by pimps? If so, good reason.
• These ads lead to exploitation of women by pimps? I had heard the internet had largely done away with pimps because sex workers can market themselves. Is that so?
• These ads lead to murder and mayhem. But then again, that has been happening with Craigslist used-car ads - what better way to lure a victim to bring a roll of cash?
• These ads lead to disease?
• A supernatural being postulated by your religion has given you rules about sex that you feel should apply to everyone. Bad reason.

Re:Justification

[Bruce Perens]

Rather than think of it as protecting people from themselves, think of it as protecting the weak from the powerful. Women are in some cases subjugated by men. And then there's the whole poverty, addiction, prostitution cycle.

All of that said, some of the reason we're running into this is because of problems that society isn't willing to handle. You can start with the horribly bungled handling of poverty in the U.S., which seems to have been designed to promote bad social values and create a perpetual client class.

Doesn't this open them up to liability and suits?

[Bellegante]

Before, craigslist could easily claim they were not responsible for content, and that has been the line for quite some time. Now they are going to -manually- review every entry in a particular section? That seems insane to me. They are giving up the most important protection that they have, for no gain at all and a lot of extra work.

Re:Unemployment Rates

[cayenne8]

Damn..I was really hoping they'd fight this one.

From what I read of CL's lawyers earlier releases, it seemed that they could indeed have withstood and won any court battles that would have come their way. I was hoping some good precedents would have been set....

Re:Unemployment Rates

[jcr]

I was really hoping they'd fight this one.

That's a bit unrealistic. Not many businesses would try to fight for their rights under the first amendment when they're facing an opponent with a limitless tax-funded litigation budget.

The practical effect of this will be nil; anyone who wants to advertise prostitution will just find another web site, probably one located outside the USA.

-jcr

Re:Mounting Legal Pressure?

[HTH NE1]

* "You wanna buy some weed?"

Got any dandelions?

* "If you'll give me $20, I'll give you head."

Already got the head. I just need to decide between a body or a frameset.

* "If you can come up with a porno starring a 6 year old, I'll pay you $250."

I'll see if Jennifer Lien will reprise her role as Kes.

* "If you'll shoot my wife, I'll give you $500."

Will that be with a regular or a telephoto lens?

Re:Unemployment Rates

[mrsteele]

Not to mention I'm completely baffled how the AGs are up in arms about these sections, calling them 'dangerous', when the Casual Encounter sections are the real ones filled with scary people.