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Craigslist Fights Back, Sues SC Atty General
FredMastro writes "Craigslist has now stepped past just asking for an apology. The Wall Street Journal and CNet report that Craigslist is fighting back. 'Craigslist said it has sued South Carolina Attorney General Henry McMaster, in the latest escalation of a battle over adult-oriented ads on the company's site. Jim Buckmaster, Craigslist's chief executive, said in a blog post that the company filed its suit in federal court in South Carolina. ...'" Unfortunately, the WSJ's piece requires a subscription, but reader Locke2005 adds a link to coverage in the San Jose Business Journal.
People trying to make Craigslist into this big bad fraud sex site is getting old. It's about 2% of US internet traffic, no duh it's got a few hookers on it.
It's about time someone stood up for free speech. Intimidation and coercion need to be met with even more force to keep our rights intact.
that and I like Craigslist.
Viable Slashdot alternatives: https://pipedot.org/ and http://soylentnews.org/
1) Copy and paste the url http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124283370260739663.html
2) Copy and paste into google, resulting in a link like this
Click link and read page.
Not pasting full text of article though, so you're gonna have to do it yourself.
Is it sad that I am more likely to recognize you and your posts by your sig than your name or UID?
McMaster called the suit "good news" in a Wednesday statement. "It shows that Craigslist is taking the matter seriously for the first time."
Shyeah. Good news for someone trying to justify a job as A.G.
Anyone else seeing a pattern here? I mean they made a big deal about Napster, had their 15 minutes of fame but that hasn't really stopped anything. I don't recall ever hearing about court cases, for Kazza, Frostwire, LimeWire, Edonkey ect.
They are filing a civil case against a state's attorney general (which will make it a federal hearing) - alleging what?
That his sidebar remarks that Craiglist executives could have criminal charges filed against them cost them revenue? Affected their listings?
McMaster is an asshole, no doubt. He may as well have said that Hugh Hefner was going to go to jail for publishing that salacious playboy magazine all these years. He is just looking to grandstand, possibly because he thinks he's going to run for governor someday.
I'd like to see Craigslist attorneys hand that douche a slapdown, but I'm not holding my breath that the actual tort here won't get tossed.
Make it so that incorporated entities cannot be sued. Why should a company, union or government bear responsibility for what individuals did? If a cop beats you relentlessly, the PD should have full immunity, and the cop none. If a CEO orders subordinates to break the law, sue the CEO, not the company. If a politician uses state power illegally to grandstand, make them liable and not the state (and don't allow them to use state resources to defend themselves).
This AG wouldn't have been nearly so ballsy if he knew he'd go it alone if Craigslist were to sue him personally.
Disclaimer: This is total speculation. I have no facts to back this up:
I'm wondering if there are some power printing/publishing interests lobbying the state government to hamstring Craiglists because of the thread that site represents to print advertising.
Consider this section of TFA:
Emphasis mine.
If it weren't for the thread that craigslist represents to print media advertising, I would have concluded that this was just another puritan witch hunt. However, the fact that craigslist has fewer adult services ads than mainstream publishers in the state leads me to speculate that this is about smacking down "unfair competition" from an outsider.
This space left intentionally blank.
Seriously, there are quite clear click-through warnings on the site, if you don't want to see adult advertising, don't go into that section. As for illegal activity, it's a public forum so you can expect a certain amount of that sort of thing.
This is the sort of thing that is going to go on regardless of the existence of craigslist. Now at least there is some kind of paper trail if something bad goes down ( kidnapping, murder, etc ) since most people don't secure delete their emails, but if we make sure this all keeps out on the street corner at night, it just makes it all that much more dangerous.
Blog
I don't know how the adult/erotic services was ever allowed. I figure they are facilitating a crime, and illegal industry, whether explicitly knowing or not.
Now, that is not to say that I think the government is in the right. I think it is futile that states prohibit the worlds oldest profession. I personally don't think states should bar women from making ends meet. If you are unmarried and not spreading disease, who are you doing wrong? It is about as logic as banning marijuana. If you have them
I also don't know why CL just doesn't turn off the offending sections in cities/states that take offense.
That being said, I did try to use the service once to find adult services for a friend's birthday party (adult oriented, but completely within the law). But I was not successful. A lot of what I saw advertised was blatantly illegal in my locality.
Can someone please fill in in on 1) how its not a crime to carry prostitute's ads, and 2) if there is some Safe Harbor provision?
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
When will McMaster and Buckmaster stop baiting each other?
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
for your right, to PARTY!!!
nuff said
So this is an argument between Mr. Buckmaster and Mr. McMaster?
So this is all just a bunch of Master-debating?
-Peter
So Craigslist has become the defacto goto site for cutthroats and ner-do-wells all over the Internet. Why would the SC AG want to shut it down? With Craigslist, if they want to find the criminals, then there they are. Without Craigslist, you'd have to burn up some shoe leather pounding the pavement looking for these people.
All ideas^H^H^H^H^Hprocesses in this post are Patent Pending. (as well as the process of patenting all postings)
I find it ironic that the SC AG's office promises to monitor Craigs. I can just see it now:
"Jimmy, you need to go troll an adult oriented web site all afternoon to see if they have taken down the dirty pictures yet."
"Yes sir!"
A bit off-topic: I applaud Craigslist, but I noticed this article is arguably more about McMaster than it is about Craigslist.
The bias is not hostile or obvious, as one might expect from stereotyped hostile reporting source, which is not to say that the SJ Business Journal is such. Mostly it is an imbalance in coverage styles and content.
Most paragraphs describe what McMaster did, what he thinks, what he has to say, etc. He is often quoted with his reactions to the suit. His position is explained in detail.
Craigslist, on the other hand, gets comparatively little verbiage in its own words. Craigslist's reaction to McMaster's assertions are stated in broad terms, without McMaster's sense of specificity and precision.
The reader is left with a good idea of McMaster's position and less of Craigslist's. This is a great article for students of propaganda studies to cite when looking for media bias in the news, either deliberate or incidental.
Just a note.
and claim fair use. I'll start.
The
In a statement, Mr. McMaster called Craigslist's legal action "good news" because "it shows that Craigslist is taking the matter seriously for the first time."
The logical disconnect is astounding, like if McBride claimed to be glad that Novell was suing because is demonstrates their serious intent.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
So, who is going to get criminal charges brought against them for all the hookers on the streets and sidewalks?
Hey, let's throw hotel management in jail, too -- I heard hookers do things there.
Wait, wait - they do it in cars, also. We're gonna need to get those automakers in here. Holy crap, I just thought of something, the UAW has been giving it deep to the automakers for decades - it's a massive conspiracy for prostitution!
What do lazy fools that cares more about appearances than actually reducing illegal activies
It doesn't matter whether the area is in the meat packing district of a city or online, the response is the same.
Frankly, the prosecutors/cops are acting look a lot like Chief Wiggum, not Elliot Ness. If I were their boss I would fire them for a combination of lazyness, stupidity, and waste.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
The best prosecutor is all bite and no bark.
Threatening in the media is just an attempt to influence public opinion--including potential jury members.
This is also a public official trying to stigmatize a person with a crime without any crime even being charged.
This reminds me of Nifong and the lacrosse players. This prosecutor is bad and should not be reelected. He places his own selfish need for publicity above the defendant's right to its day in court.
There are no parental controls or disclaimers" on personal ads in newspapers, and some of those are even less discreet than the "erotic services" ads.
We have so many other more serious problems than prostitution in this state. I'm watching roads fall apart, companies lay off people everyday, I had a guy come into work today that was in his mid 40s that couldn't write us a check because he doesn't know how to read or write, this list goes on. Out of the thousands of people I've met in my life I know of one that hired a prostitute. I don't really judge him for it because he's in a wheel chair and is not attractive at all. He wanted to experience sex. I'm sure not everyone I'd meet would tell me if they hire hookers, but the things is that one out of thousands have told me about it and how can that be morally degrading to our society?
Just drive down I-85 or I-95 and see how many nudie bars are advertising on billboards all the way down the corridor.
The hypocracy of this guy is illuminated in Buckmaster's request for an apology, summarized by Cnet:
The attorney general, Buckmaster said, "has persisted with his threats despite the fact that craigslist:
http://blog.craigslist.org/2009/05/an-apology-is-in-order/
Selling is legal. Fucking is legal. Why isn't selling fucking legal? You know, why should it be illegal to sell something that's perfectly legal to give away. I can't follow the logic on that at all. -George Carlin, Napalm & Silly Putty
What are you, the Pope? It's already got a name, luxury tax baby!
Quack, quack.
It seems likes there's a purposeful implication that the Adult Section of Craig's List is that it's meant to be for prostitution. It's not.
The Adult Section is just like any of hundreds of online and print services meant to match people of similar interests. It's like Match.com, or Cupid.com for people who really intend to get physical. Often these people do not want a relationship and desire only one time meet-ups. Obviously a desire to do so goes against some conventions, and success in looking for that can be difficult. But there's nothing at all illegal about it.
One might suggest that a purposefully misleading portrait of the Adult Section as an intended service to promote prostitution is an agenda to aid in policing morality. That would be extremely dangerous precedent for a State's AG to pursue.
"But we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it,..." - Nancy Pelosi
Has anyone noticed the URL of the South Carolina Attorney? http://www.scattorneygeneral.org/ Maybe a complaint that such a "Disgusting" and "Offensive" term is clearly visible in the URL of such a person would be interesting. I mean a Scat Tourney? That's just horrible! ;)
The CEO of craigslist would not be liable under that scenario, the manager who decided to post it would be liable. Why should a whole company be punished for the actions of a single person? If you run an escort service, and you KNOW your girls are having sex for money with your clients AND you never stop it, you are already liable in most jurisdictions.
Frivolous lawsuits can already be handled by laws regulating who has standing, punishing lawyers for taking blatantly frivolous cases, etc. For example, to use the other poster's anti-war example, that could be solved simply by Congress passing a law stating that no private citizen has legal standing in a federal court to sue the President if he prosecutes an armed conflict that has been approved by Congress.
If you want to make the frivolous lawsuit issue so extreme that it becomes the hot reform topic, then this would be a bold step toward making America less litigious.
This guy in SC is a real bozo. He claims this is the first time they have taken the matter seriously. He's being a idiot. He's making idiotic statements.
Craigslist was always in the right. They were protecting freedom of speech and to be able to conduct business without the interference if right wing politicians bent on making a name for themselves while seeking higher office.
These SC residents need to vote this guy out of office and he needs to pay some with is personal income for violation of the constitution by trying to enforce prior restraint against free speech.
He's incompetent.
You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.
http://blog.craigslist.org/2009/05/cl-sues-sc-ag-for-declaratory-relief/
Or click on this link to read the brief in a South Carolina newspaper.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&q=%2Bescort+%2B%22south+carolina%22&btnG=Search
this returns :
Results 1 - 10 of about 2,490,000 for +escort +"south carolina". (0.20 seconds)
far more than craigslist.
http://blog.craigslist.org/2009/05/an-apology-is-in-order/
Hey mods, just because you think something is a bad idea doesn't make it a troll.
Government officials, including the president, get sued all the time. Because they are being sued pursuant to their job, their employer defends them. Hell, I was just a lowly Officer with the IRS back in the day and I managed to get myself sued once or twice. The government has some really good lawyers and I was glad of it.
Sometimes, things get even more indisidious. Back in the day (20+ years ago) every local district office of the IRS had a director. There were 66 of them spread around the country and they were the public face of the IRS. Ours was a good guy, totally in the "firm but fair" mode, who even had a sense of humor. He used to donate his time (very occasionally) to charity to sit in a dunk tank and let the public try to drop him into the water.
So what was his reward for trying to be open, transparent, and just plain *human* to the public? Not only did he get sued pretty much every week, lots of anti-tax protestors would go to various county courthouses in the area and file "common law liens." These bogus documents were a bunch of rambling nonsense that basically says "The IRS is illegal so the local director should be held personally liable for all the damage they cause." Said "damage" was calculated in various ways, ranging from just the amount the aggrieved citizen-idiot owed all the way up to some approximation of the entire amount of money collected by the IRS in that city that year, typically billions.
The clerks at the county courthouses eventually learned to recognize this crap and refuse to accept bogus documents for filing but that put them on thin ice; they are supposed to let anything be filed and let the courts decide if a filing is fraudulent. Sometimes they just held the filings until the lawyers could have a look. Most time, the filings just went through.
Our guy was a good person, making a good salary, filing all required financial disclosure reports that showed he never defaulted on a loan or was late with bills. But at the courthouse, there were filings showing that he was a multi-billion dollar deadbeat. The poor guy had the worst credit in the world. Getting a loan to buy a house or car or just getting a credit card was an exercise in frustration for him.
So the answer to your question is "Lots of government lawyers spend their time going to court, time that could have been better spent doing work in the public interest. The few people filing frivoulous actions waste lots of your tax money. That's what happens."
In the US, there are (at least) two types of prostitution, and two main groups of opposition.
Some prostitutes choose to be prostitutes, because it offers them the best income per unit time: they're just doing business. That's what many Americans, particularly libertarians, think of, when they advocate legalizing prostitution. In many countries, this has been the model they've taken.
Some prostitutes are not willing prostitutes -- they've been forced into it. This is primarily seen in the US with child prostitution, where we don't recognize the child's right to choose that particular profession, but in much of the world there is a large market for what is essentially sexual slavery.
Now, for the opposition: religious conservatives don't like the idea of sex outside marriage for a number of reasons. They're actively opposed to legalizing prostitution. Many other people are passively opposed to prostitution because they mentally model it as scabs crossing a union line called marriage, and dragging down the value of sex, to get all economic about it. This general group is going to oppose *any* type of prostitution, whether by choice or coercion.
The second type of opposition: many people oppose prostitution because either they're worried that even if it's primarily voluntary, it'll lead to a rise in involuntary/coerced prostitution, or they have decided that *any* prostitution is involuntary. (See Andrea Dworkin's work, for instance, where she generalizes to claim that any heterosexual act is essentially coercive. I don't agree, but it's unquestionably an influence.) So while this group -- typically on the left/liberal side -- might consider voluntary prostitution okay, they're still uncomfortable with the whole idea.
A lot of European countries have legalized prostitution while making pimping illegal and heavily prosecuted, which would tend (on first inspection) to select for only voluntary prostitution: just business. The problem with this is two-fold. Prostitutes find they make more money, and are safer, when they have someone to back them up in the case of a dispute with a client. One work-around is collectives, or unions, where prostitutes work with each other, but there's a fine line between that and pimping.
So it's not as simple as just saying 'legalize it'.
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
if it were "it's legal not to fuck...".
As it is, you're channeling BadAnalogyGuy.
Again.
Laws like this seem like parents that suck at parenting. Any behavior in your kids you wish to modify you have the choice to try to teach what they should be doing and why or simply mandate that they act according to your wishes.
It's so much easier to mandate than to teach or try to convince.
Huh? The conservatives are the main group advocating legalization. Among those conservatives, are the hardcore conservatives who say, "and once it's legalized, problem is solved," and the moderate-conservatives who say, "but once it's legal, regulate and tax it."
It's the nanny-government libs who advocate keeping it illegal. They know what's best for everyone.
You can read wsj.com without a subscription. Instructions at boing.
Now, for the opposition: religious conservatives don't like the idea of sex outside marriage for a number of reasons. They're actively opposed to legalizing prostitution. Many other people are passively opposed to prostitution because they mentally model it as scabs crossing a union line called marriage, and dragging down the value of sex, to get all economic about it. This general group is going to oppose *any* type of prostitution, whether by choice or coercion.
You have the motives correct, but you have identified the wrong group. "Married women" was what you were looking for...
If prostitution were legal, and consensual sex a commodity, why would a man stay married to a woman in the modern world? With all the 'equality' in married relationships a typical husband would genuinely be happier living alone or with a roommate than a modern wife. Take the sexual companionship out of the relationship, mix in the fully developed career goals modern women have, combined with the utter rejection of gender-based roles around the home, and you essentially have a marriage of two men. Except that one has a woman's logic and hormones.
This is the same reason why adultery/cheating is so vilified among women. And this is also the source of the outcry against porn, strip clubs, etc. A wife gains a certain amount of control in exchange for her support of her husband's sexual needs. She's not about to support a business that meets that demand in another way.
Religious conservatives have a motive to support this action, but I suspect that were there no influence from the married women in the church, the trusty 'blind eye' would be in full force.
And before you few ladies on this site start finding a tree and a rope, let me just say that while I may not have fully expressed the concept here, even my own wife tends to agree with the dilemma we men face in this post-womens-lib era. Not that she advocates any changes, mind you...
You forgot the third type of opposition: Spouses who are afraid it will ruin their marriages. These people don't necessarily have a moral interest, as your first two groups do, but rather a practical/selfish interest. I suspect that this group is larger than, although not exclusive of, the other two groups combined.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I agree that wives are a strong anti-prostitution force, for the reasons you mention, but the fact is that even if wives == roommates these days, then it's still cheaper to have free sex with your roommate than to pay for a prostitute, especially if you have sex more than once a week.
Also, it's rumored that some people actually like being married.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
Perhaps, but entanglements being such as they are, a female, sexual, roommate is not very far away from a wife, practically speaking.
Costs would likely attach that could be considered greater than those of prostitution. E.g. kids and jewelry.
Nothing is as simple as just saying "legalize it" but in my opinion the benefits of legalizing prostitution out weight the negatives in this case. Main thing for me personally is that police would have better resources to go after sexual slavery when they don't need to go after everyone. Additionally customers would have incentive to report criminal activity to police and steer towards voluntary prostitutes.
The downside that you mentioned about not having backup in case of trouble is real, but if the operation was legal there would always be a police to call. Similar to hair dresser whose customer refuses to pay because of bad service or whatever other reason. I would want to see that case go court where the customer demonstrates and explains how bad service they got from the prostitute.
Presumably kids are not a cost incurred by the wife (unless she lied about being on birth control), and you're spending more on your wife than she spends on you, that's your own damn fault.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
Kids are a cost incurred by relations with a woman that wants to have them. Excepting a vasectomy, women have complete control over whether 'just sex' results in an 18-year long commitment.
Again, females have power over sex, and they know it and use it to their fullest advantage.
YOU MUST BE A GREAT LAY
You better watch out, there may be dogs about . .
I was silently classing that under the economic/scab argument, although it might be sufficiently different to get its own treatment.
The interesting thing is the group of people who are against it for society, but for it personally, as was apparently the case with eg Marion Barry or Ted Haggard. But that's the case with lots of things.
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
Some prostitutes are not willing prostitutes -- they've been forced into it.
If you believe in free will and choice, then you can't make that claim except in the rarest of circumstances (organised crime, one-off cases of kidnapping, etc.). The perception that any significant portion of prostitutes are "poor and innocent women being forced in slavery" is a gross exaggeration that makes for great TV, but has no basis in reality.
What we're talking about here is the poor who are forced into something every day of their lives and the list of what that includes is a mile long. More accurately, the choices the poor have are often choices between The Bad, The Really Bad, and the Truly Fucked.
Sucks to be poor. Or weak. Or stupid. Let's not dramatise things like this is a Victorian era novel. I don't know whether the city you live has any local mobsters, but I'll guarantee it's got an endless supply of young women looking for easy money.
>You have the motives correct, but you have identified the wrong group. "Married women" was what you were looking for...
Well, it isn't just married wives, but that does constitute most of the group, yeah. I just figured I'd throw out the general idea, without getting into realms that could easily, and justifiably, be called sexist.
People who model this economically claim that there's an interesting balance between prostitution and marriage. If many men didn't marry, the price paid for prostitution would rise quite a bit. It's a supply/demand thing.
The adultery/cheating thing could be modelled as a sort of tall poppy syndrome/crab mentality thing, but I think it's probably more biological than that: men tend to want to wander, women tend to want their men to not wander. (This is especially obvious in places like Cambodia or Thailand, where a large proportion of hookers have AIDS, so a wandering husband could be lethal.)
On the commodity consensual sex side of things, I've wondered enough to write some scifi stories about a potential future in which everyone has a job (nobody can afford to support a stay-at-home spouse) and most men have Japanese robots designed for, ah, intimacy, and most women have AI's designed for talking and emotional interaction, and everyone is quite content, and marriage is considered weird and old-fashioned. I absolutely don't think that things are as simple as that, but hey, that's what speculative fiction is all about, isn't it, is to postulate where things could go.
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
I'll start this off by saying that I agree with you.
But, first off, many of the people who most vociferously defend keeping prostitution illegal don't care about the negatives of the current system. They think the idea is abhorrent, so they don't care what the cost/benefit analysis says. (See: war on drugs.)
Secondly, while there are always police to call, as the old sayings goes, when every second makes a difference the police are only minutes away. Extreme violence is not unusual, and hookers get killed on a regular basis. That might not be as much of an issue if it were legal, of course -- in fact, it probably wouldn't be. But the subject is one that's a lot more emotionally volatile than hair stylists, and a lot more likely to lead to violence.
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
I'm betting you're an American.
You should read about Africa, South America, and Southeast Asia some time.
Here's an interesting article detailing what's happening throughout those areas: women are hired in country A, by agents from country B, who tell the women that they're going to country C to be housekeepers, maids, or work in manufacturing jobs. Once they leave their country -- and often, pay for the ticket -- their passports are taken and they've become illegal aliens who are enslaved, for all practical purposes. The local police are involved, so that doesn't do them any good, and they're physically prevented from going to their embassies, who don't seem to have any interest in helping poor women, anyway.
The current estimates range between half a million and four million women being held this way. I have no idea how accurate that is, but as such, I don't think it's anything like a gross exaggeration to make the claim that involuntary prostitution is real.
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
Till they get off?
The current estimates range between half a million and four million women being held this way. I have no idea how accurate that is, but as such, I don't think it's anything like a gross exaggeration to make the claim that involuntary prostitution is real.
That "involuntary" prostitution is real no one is going to argue with. However, that's not to say the wild-assed estimates for "involuntary" prostitution are significant when compared to wild-assed estimates for for "voluntary" prostitution.
Again, you're tone is indistinguishable from what passes for journalism on those pseudo documentaries that litter the cable channels.
1. Cite wild-assed statistics for prostitution across the world.
2. Show video dramatic footage of widespread street-corner prostitution in various localities.
3. Get someone in authority to say that organised crime is involved in illegal immigration and immigrant smuggling, but leave the viewer with impression that prostitution is at the core.
5. Cite a few known cases of violent crime, child abuse, child prostitution, and then conflate those one-off cases with prostitution in general.
6. Make the assertion that prostitution includes all the above.
Works on the emotional level, but when you have a closer look, you see something else. Which is mostly women in poverty making shitty choices. The rest is tangential.
There are plenty of trades for which you need a licence, previous relevant experience or recognition from some body or association, in order to ensure you comply with health and safety issues.
An unemployed person would not immediately meet the criteria to become a sex worker if sex work was legalized and properly regulated.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
No, I don't want to even think about it....
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
I'm sure that this happens to a point.. This is also reportedly the same problem with former soviet states,, however I am skeptical as to the size of the problem, for several reasons.. First, you have to examine the supply of "willing" prostitutes.. In many of these countries it would be so much easier to obtain a willing participant, than to "dupe" someone.. the problems, and risk involved don't make sense.. I suspect that many of the reports of being "tricked into it", are false.. because these women who get caught have to go home to face the authorities in their home country, and their family and friends.. Is it more likely they are going to admit they did it willingly or to say they are a victim ?
waiting for ad.doubleclick.net
>Which is mostly women in poverty making shitty choices.
There are a lot of serious papers about this subject, that are less fluffy and USAToday than that New Yorker article. I'm not going to start googling child sex trade articles from work, but I've read them in the past since I've written about this extensively elsewhere. The fluffy article's fundamental assertions are apparently correct.
Consider that if someone puts a gun to your head and says "gimme your wallet or I'll kill you" -- you have a choice, in a manner of speaking. This isn't really a different situation: women who are barely literate, physically constrained in a country where nobody speaks their language, where they have neither money nor a good idea where they are, and don't get fed unless they do what they're told.
That's not what we mean when we use the word "choice". That's a "choice" the way that someone "chooses" not to go to prison when locked in a cop car on the way to Joliet. That's why I call it "coercive".
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
Let's say you meet a woman at the bar, buy her a few drinks and end up going home with her? Is that prostitution? Obviously something of value has been exchanged for sexual services. Same thing for dinner and a movie, if she sleeps with you and then never talks to you again does that make her a prostitute?
Escort services can argue that you're paying for time, not sex. If the escort just happens to be attracted to you what's the harm in that?
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/05/22/judge_grants_restraining_order_against_sc_ag_over_craigslist/