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Judge Rejects Sheriff's Suit Against Craigslist
jjohn24680 passes along word that a federal judge has thrown out a local sheriff's lawsuit accusing the online classified group Craigslist of facilitating prostitution. We discussed the case when it was filed back in March. Here is the decision (PDF). "As was pretty clear at the time, Craigslist is the service provider and is quite obviously protected by Section 230 immunity. ... Even after all of this was clearly explained to Sheriff Dart, he still insisted that his lawsuit made sense. It looks like the court system, however, does not agree. As expected, the case has been dismissed on Section 230 grounds."
The sheriff in question was no doubt trying to just drum up some publicity for himself. Remind me again why he's enforcing laws he clearly doesn't understand?
Even if his suspension of foreclosures was a stunt to get him publicity, there are still reasonable people (like me) who thought it was the right thing to do.
Why? Because people a huge number of the foreclosures are going forward even though banks themselves can't even produce the mortgage paperwork! Because of all weird financial instruments that helped cause the mortgage crisis (cutting the mortgages up into securities and such) these corporations can't find the original paperwork. I don't know the exact numbers on this, but it's a big percentage.
There are Members of Congress that are saying the same thing: make the companies actually PRODUCE the paperwork! This is how lax the U.S. has become on the financial industry.
So, Dart might be a pompous windbag, but that doesn't necessarily mean he is wrong.
He did exactly the right move in suspending foreclosures, in which he prevented innocent people being kicked out of there homes because of mistakes made by the banks or land lords.
He was enforcing the law, and doing a morally correct act before anyone even knew who he was. I'm not sure why you try to make his actions appear as though they were just for publicity.
I'm not sure how to take his trying to sue craigslist though.
If you ignore ACs because they are anonymous - you're an idiot.
When you say "local sheriff", it makes it sound like he's the sheriff of some small town. In fact, Tom Dart is the sheriff of Cook County, which contains Chicago, is the second most populous county in the U.S, and his department is the second largest in the U.S.
People claiming Dart is drumming up publicity are pretty much correct. Keep in mind, we're talking Chicago here, so consider the history of the political machine here. Dart also refused to evict renters from houses when their landlords lost the mortgage. In a way, this is an honorable thing to do, but the way it played out, everyone read it as once again more publicity for Dart. The Craigslist case just further proves his motives.
I hate reality. Cheesy, flat story characters are so much easier to deal with. Love them or hate them. Real people are heroes today, clueless assholes tomorrow.
Bingo, we have a winner! That is EXACTLY what this is about, it is about corruption in the name of greed and what happens when you cut out the middle man. I used to live next to a college campus and there was a very well known "tutoring" service with some very attractive ladies who were frequent visitors to the campus. My roomate was campus security, he made an extra 2 grand a week for putting the proper id visitor badges on the girls and "escorting them to their clients in the name of safety." Plenty of the RAs were in on it was well, keep security happy, keep the RAs happy, college kids get their bone on, plenty of people make some money, all in all it was a good business arrangement. Secruity helped keep the girls relatively safe as well, rode in their little carts to the dorms and back to their cars, cuts out a lot of rapes, murders, and robberies to boot. Highly illegal and unethical but a nice little package, suddenly you have Craigslist and people cutting everyone else out of the picture, things get messy pretty quickly.
That's despite the fact that it is perfectly legal to open-carry in Wisconsin!
The police frequently think anything goes in enforcing the law, even violating "little laws" to enforce "big laws" is ok.
If only we went back to the old American model in which the police not only did not have a monopoly on enforcing the law (any private citizen could arrest you and bring you to a court), but anyone who broke the law while enforcing the law was civilly and criminally liable to their victim.
OP (I'm assuming you, since eldavojohn likes to single-post and then any responses are AC -- my apologies if you're not him) posited his academic credentials in an effort to discredit the sheriff's knowledge of the law.
Those academic credentials SUPPORT his knowledge of the law, which is directly opposed to the conclusion OP tried to make. Basically, eldavojohn talked out his ass again...
or it was a particularly clever troll, which is possible, considering how many times he posts a generally-good-enough-for-karma-whoring-post with an obvious error in it.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
If Craigslist is facilitating prostitution, then so are the phone networks, internet, yellow pages directories, and newspapers. If you're going to get an injunction against one form of advertising or contacting unlawful services, you'd damn well better get an injunction against all of them -- but that would demonstrate just how stupid his premise was in the first place.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
They've been on to the wording game long ago. It varies slightly, but the online variety of escort service owner/pimp basically has the following legal disclaimer:
"This website does not condone illegal activity. This is not an offer of prostitution. All services contracted for are legal arrangements for the model's time and company only. Anything additional that may or may not occur is a matter of personal preference between two consenting adults."
There's nothing against the law about contracting for a girl's company. Even for a stripper or lingerie modeling services. It's only the sex part that's illegal, and the girls for the most part know to speak and behave. You walk in and ask about sex and they'll politely ask you to leave (or they'll leave if they visited you). The assumption is that if you're pushing that issue you're either a cop or a clueless "newbie" to the industry (they don't use the word "newbie" but it's the same concept), and they don't want to take the risk. Generally, you walk in and just start talking normally. Chat for a while. Eventually the cue comes where she says "I'm going to the restroom to freshen up - make yourself comfortable.". Making yourself comfortable means you go ahead and undress. When she comes back the sight of your naked body presumably drives her mad with lust and you, as two consenting adults, get it on.
To any common sense person yeah, that's prostitution, but from "beyond a shadow of a doubt" standpoint there was never a verbal arrangement on the sexual services. That's the insanity that happens when you try to outlaw something that is completely legal if there's no money involved. I mean, if a woman is sleeping with the pool boy then it's the same situation - they paid for one service and when he got there they ended up having consensual sex. Drawing that line can be hard (near impossible if those involved really stick to their stories).
If both parties know how to choose their wording and don't slip up it can be a very hard case for the prosecution.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain