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Craigslist Fires Back Over Adult Services Accusations
Craigslist has fired back at South Carolina Attorney General Henry McMaster in an open letter defending the company's policies and procedures surrounding the much debated "adult services." Stating not only the measures that have been taken to minimize illegal behavior, CEO Jim Buckmaster suggests that Craigslist is doing much better at minimizing questionable ads than other major competitors like Yahoo!, Google, and others. "Mr McMaster, I strongly recommend you reconsider and retract your remarks, and positively affirm that you have no intention of launching criminal investigations aimed at any of these upstanding companies, because in truth none of them are deserving of such treatment. [...] We're willing to accept our share of criticism, but wrongfully accusing craigslist of criminal misconduct is simply beyond the pale. We would very much appreciate an apology at your very earliest convenience. As I'm sure would all of the other fine companies whose executives you've called out as criminals."
The problem with politicians is, well, that they exist as a profession.
Instead of having a dedicated, small group of individuals in charge of everything (leading to ridiculous situations like this, where they posture for the electorate), why not have anyone be as involved in government as they wish?
Sounds like somebody is setting himself up for a run at the Governor's Manson.
Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.
In trying to understand why he seems so adamant to grandstand at this particular time, it might help to know that he's planning to run for governor next year. I'm not saying he's a whore who's only doing it for that reason, mind you. Perish the thought that a politician would be so cynical!
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Kudos to Craigslist. Sex sells. They have done more than they should have to prevent this kind of activity on their site. The way I see it, they are keeping officers employed by busting the prostitutes and the people who use their services. Its a personal choice if you choose to use the services. they control their content but honestly stopping craigslist from have an adult section is gonna do absolutely nothing to stop prostitution in cities. There are plenty of other websites such as backpage or citypages that do the same exact thing at no charge and I've yet to see any of them make the news. The claim that the "prosititute" was killed because she posted on craigsiist is bogus. She's the one taking the chance by sleeping around and she'd do it whether or not craigslist existed or not. It's about time someone grew a pair and stood up to the corrupt legislatures in this country and told them to politely f*ck off.
...but I'd be willing to bet that South Carolina Attorney General Henry McMaster has had some direct personal experience with these so called "Adult Services". Perhaps even through Craigslist?
Like I said, it's just a hunch.
Authority questions you. Return the favor.
... when they refused to grow a pair and claim First Amendment protection, not to mention the safe-harbor provision of the CDA. Paternalistic, moralizing governors and DAs have no Constitutional basis to object to anything Craigslist was doing, and the company should have told them to STFU and GBTW.
But instead they tried to "negotiate," "compromise," and otherwise find a middle ground with religiously-motivated censors and nanny-statists.
Yeah. That always works. Because those sorts of people always go away and leave you in peace once you give in to their demands. <rolleyes>
Google's motto is "do no evil". Craiglist's is apparently "do no evil and don't be a pussy".
Good for them.
If he wrote it down, sue him for libel, too. It's pretty obvious that saying your business is a criminal enterprise that endangers its customers' lives would be damaging to your business, and there seems to be plenty of evidence showing that it is better run than many unmentioned competitors.
So what are some other sites that the AG should try to take down for prostitution?
Purely for sake of argument of course. cough cough
... when they refused to grow a pair and claim First Amendment protection, not to mention the safe-harbor provision of the CDA. Paternalistic, moralizing governors and DAs have no Constitutional basis to object to anything Craigslist was doing, and the company should have told them to STFU and GBTW.
But instead they tried to "negotiate," "compromise," and otherwise find a middle ground with religiously-motivated censors and nanny-statists.
Yeah. That always works. Because those sorts of people always go away and leave you in peace once you give in to their demands. <rolleyes>
Ah. So, you're calling Craigslist out for trying to be civil. Good man! We need more people flying right off the deep end without any sense of negotiation. We also need more stereotyping, darnit, because without that, we might be seen as a serious culture! We have to preserve our l33t, underground status as overreacting outsiders whom nobody should try to understand because we get in huge screaming fits over what the other 90% of the planet just doesn't give a rat's ass about!
Shame on you, Craigslist! Shame on you for trying to be civil! Next time somebody looks at you funny, break his/her nose to restore the balance!
Just look at the Yellow Pages for any moderately large city... it will have hundreds of ads for "escorts" and "escort agencies'. This kind of activity has been going on for ages, but no one ever made a big stink. Now that it's on the intewebs prosecutors somehow feel that there is cause for concern? I say, Quit wasting my tax money!
But I doubt your state has exhausted its backlog of murders, rapes, armed robberies, child molestation cases, etc. Until you do, here's a polite suggestion: get your fucking priorities straight you worthless politician.
I swear, the fatal flaw of democracy is that it relies on the public to make the highest office holders do their job and not just use the office as a means of personal advancement. At least under a monarchy, the king could bitch slap a guy like this for grandstanding (not saying we should go back to a monarchy).
To me, it sounds like you're advocating reasoning with people that may well be unreasonable. Embarking on that is like arguing with pigs.
Actually, the GP poster has a point. It's not pretty, but there are a lot of people out there who see compromise as weakness. If you look at recent history of the Basque separatist movement, for example, as soon as there was some level of conciliation, the level of violence skyrocketed.
Part of it may also be that people who have lived for so long fighting a particular cause end up being more attached to the fight than the cause itself, and as soon as it looks like their way of life is threatened, they try to do things which encourage the fight to continue.
In this case, however, I feel it's a much baser motivation. Like a shark smelling blood, this guy decided he could have a little PR feeding frenzy to fuel his gubernatorial run. Silly AG, don't you know that a well-educated populace would never fall for such a thing?
The CB App. What's your 20?
But Craigslist isn't committing the crime. They're providing a means of communication in the same way Google Gmail or AT&T do - or any Internet provider. And they should bear no more legal responsibility for the communications people make with their service than AT&T, Google, or Comcast do. To modify your examples, it would be like prosecuting the manufacturer of the car for letting people speed with it, or prosecuting the manufacturer of the Louisville Slugger that someone gets beaten with.
The sign of a good compromise is when both sides are unhappy. Just because you have the right to free speech, it doesn't always mean it is in your best interests to use it all the time. People are complaining about something even though it is in your rights you can always choose to back down too. Or are you the guy who never lets some one in front of you when the lanes are merging in the road.
Putting your self fully in the firing line. Espectially with "religiously-motivated censors and nanny-statists" is always a big fight. If they see that you can at least meet them half way they tend to back off a lot, so they can focus on the next big evil. Sure you not in the clear there will be some point where you need to draw the line. However to keep things running smooth it is easier to compromise.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Craigslist has the support of the people. Why wouldn't they? It's free, has no ads, and always works as promised. There are no ulterior motives, Craig isn't looking to get wealthy. The government shutting down or censoring Craigslist would be the fast path to a miniature revolt. I don't see any elected official actually doing anything to it.
Besides, it's not like Craigs list has given up its first amendment rights. If they ever wanted to, they could use them in a court of law. My guess is they just wanted to avoid court because it would cut into their already-small profits.
To try and take away any focus on why he is not able to do his job better.
Or like prosecuting the manufacturer of the handgun that ... oh wait. Never mind.
'The tyrant will always find pretext for his tyranny.' - Aesop's Fables
I know you're probably saying that as a hyperbole, but sometimes I do kinda wonder.
Way I see it, any working democracy nowadays has the politicians and some non-elected body to fix the politicians' deliberate self-promoting screw-ups. In some countries (e.g., the USA) it's the judges. In some (e.g., the UK) there are some non-elected lords who get to say "that's stupid and unconstitutional, screw that."
Seriously, you'd expect the aristocracy to be the self-serving self-centered barstards, and the politicians to represent the common man. But the way it seems to work entirely too often is that the politicians pull some populist stunt as a law, and then keep their fingers crossed that the non-elected guys have the balls to strike it down. I'm thinking just of the slew of recent "think of the children" laws (saving them even from non-threats like video games) that seem to crop up everywhere before elections.
Except sometimes the non-elected guys don't intervene, or nobody challenges it all the way to the apropriate level to strike it down, and the rest of the country is saddled with the stupidity its politicians wrought. And even in the best case scenario, often it can take several years before its escalated to the point where it can be removed.
Now I'm not entirely deluded. I know how totalitarian regimes historically were worse, and why some people shed blood to get, say, the Magna Carta signed by the king.
But I still wonder. It seems to me like at the very least for each two evils we avoided via democracy, we introduce a new one _because_ of the way modern democracies work.
I'm not sure what a better system would look like, but sometimes I wish someone would invent it already.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
There's no point in arguing with -- much less negotiating or compromising with -- someone whose objection to your conduct is based on religious or moral grounds. They're not just going to give up because you tried to meet them in the middle; they're just going to wait until the time is right and then finish you off.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
By attempting to reason with unreasonable people and failing, you can more easily demonstrate to the rest of the world that they're unreasonable.
This is handy when you're dealing with, say, an elected official.
I am officially gone from
"Ok, sorry, slimeballs."
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
Where is this mythical well-educated populace? The average person seems to be deeply ignorant, uninterested in anything remotely political most of the time, and regularly falls for the outright lies made by many politicians when they are trying to get elected, but isn't motivated enough to call them on it after they win and fail to follow through.
The average person is incredibly stupid and uneducated. Quite frankly, any system that relies on ignorant, uneducated people electing politicians based on their understanding of issues is highly suspect. Sadly, its the best system we have :P
"The first time I got drunk, I got married. The second time I bought a chimpanzee, after that I stayed sober" Arian Seid
Silly AG, don't you know that a well-educated populace would never fall for such a thing?
Lucky for this guy that he's running in South Carolina then, eh?
Craigslist has the support of the people. Why wouldn't they? It's free, has no ads, and always works as promised.
If it really had no ads, I don't think that could be described as "working as promised"... ;-P
Now that I cannot find any "erotic services", I'll have more time to read slashdot.
By attempting to reason with unreasonable people and failing by talking to unreasonable people about being reasonable to otherwise reasonable people who are behaving unreasonably about a reasonable situation, you provide - hang on my head fell off...
Technically, they only elected him once.
To do list for Windows
Interesting. Last night Jim Buckmaster was talking on NPR about the case, and complaining that everything in the Internet, and particularly Craigslist, is held at a much higher standard than, for example, the car industry. If cars kill 45000 people a year, why are car makers allowed to make cars that can two twice as fast as the speed limit? Asking CL to go so far beyond their duty is, to say the least, unfair.
To do list for Windows
They elected, and then re-elected Bush. Now, what is it you were saying?
Well, Bush had the advantage of being consistent, even if his policies were disturbing. Kerry on the other hand appeared lost in trying to make everyone happy, but making few happy. People generally vote for someone who is firm in where they are going, than someone who isn't. You generally expect politicians to break promises, but when the politician isn't sure what is being promised, then you have real issues.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
Actually, some people voted for Obama multiple times. (Paid by ACORN.) It's a fact that one man registered to vote over 72 times because ACORN wouldn't take 'no' for an answer. I'd post a link, but you can google as easily as I can.
"They said I probly shouldn't fly with just one eye," "I am Bender. Please insert girder."
REALITY is the two wolves still being better armed.
Sorry, but the trope that if everybody just armed themselves to the teeth we'd somehow be safer and better able to protect ourselves from bullies and tyrants completely falls apart when you consider that the bullies and tyrants get to be armed to the teeth too, plus there are more of them, and they are usually bigger and more dangerous.
If you really believe that unless you have a gun you are in terrible danger of life and limb, that doesn't make you a heroic champion of the Second Amendment, it makes you a coward.
Try not to take me more seriously than I take myself.