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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."
Probably because the degenerate electorate would rather have a sheriff who stands for "values" and against "bad people" than a sheriff who upholds the law?
There are cases(most notably just about anything having to do with "asset forfeiture" or the possibility of real consequences for police misconduct) where law enforcement, as a body, are led by self-interest to run roughshod over the public and the law; but in cases like this, the sheriff is almost certainly running roughshod over the law because he has calculated(probably correctly) that that is exactly what the public wants.
It's nice to see this ruling. Escorts and such have been advertising in local newspaper classified ads for YEARS now and nobody seemed to care. No matter what they do they're NOT going to stop prostitution because at the end of the day it's a "crime" between willing adults. There's no victim to complain to anyone because every person involved is happy if at the end of the day no law enforcement ever shows their face.
In reality though, the truth is that a lot of times strip clubs, brothels, and other such activities are giving kickbacks to SOMEBODY in power, somewhere. I've seen it time and time again. For example strip clubs here are not supposed to feature fully naked dancers and dancers are not supposed to be on the club floor when exposed. Generally they ignore the floor rule, and will just wrap their panties around their wrist when on stage to comply with the first (they're still wearing them, just not in the proper location). Every now and then though they'll get pressured to comply, resulting in the panties staying on and the bouncers literally having to carry the girls on their shoulders from stage to stage so that the girl never touches the floor, until the club owner pays off whoever is pressuring him. Then it's back to business as usual. The same is true for most escort services and such. The older more established services stay there pretty much until the owner decides to get out of the business. New services jump into and out of existence on a monthly basis. Simple reason is that the older services have figured out who they have to pay to be left alone.
My guess is that a lot of this backlash against Craigslist is simply that with everything being done on the Internet it's making it easier for people to get these dealings done without the officials getting their due cut of the cash, and that just doesn't go over well.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
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.
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.
Banks and other instutitions have flagrantly ignoredfederal and state laws, and in many cases it appears that they screwed up so badly that no one actually has legal standing to forclose!
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?
Yes, because anyone whose view on the law is different than the generally espoused views on slashdot MUST be expressing those views out of dishonesty or corruption or a desire for publicity or because they were bribed. Year in, year out, I see that viewpoint repeated again and again and again here and I just don't understand it. Every bad legal opinion, and a bunch of people pipe up that the judge in the case was probably bribed.
Man, I've got to take a break from slashdot, not worth getting annoyed every morning.
ANYWAY, first of all, the cause of action here was not for "facilitating prostitution," it was for public nuisance. Secondly, the sheriff here is a former prosecutor, so he probably understands the law pretty well. He's probably also familiar with the fact that the 7th Circuit, which interprets law for this district, has held that 230(c) does not provide blanket immunity for internet service providers; he was likely hoping that the court might find this case to be one of those where it doesn't apply. Thirdly, it's entirely possible that he intended all along, if necessary, to appeal the constitutionality of the safe harbor provisions of the law.
I don't agree with his position. But that doesn't mean I think it was a frivolous case, or he's somehow a horrible person because of it. And if you read the position the Court, while agreeing with the Defendant, doesn't seem to think so either. It's not an especially harshly worded decision, the word "frivolous" and "obvious" do not appear.
Finally, the way the techdirt article is phrased is just silly; "[e]ven after this was clearly explained to Sheriff Dart"? By who? The defendant? What's he supposed to do, "well I was going to prosecute this case, but the defendant is arguing that it's wrong, so I better just stop what I'm doing"? The headline is ridiculous too; should we just phrase all legal headlines like that? "Court Teaches EFF About DMCA"?
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.