“Craigslist is the single largest source of prostitution in the nation.” That’s the provocative — and headline-grabbing — pronouncement of Cook County, Illinois, Sheriff Tom Dart, who announced Thursday that his office is suing the popular online classified advertising service for facilitating the sale of sexual services.
Dart is asking a federal judge in Chicago to order Craigslist to remove the “erotic services” section from its Web sites and to reimburse his office for an estimated $100,000 that Dart says was spent investigating Craigslist-aided prostitution cases.
Long-Running Problem
This isn’t Craigslist’s first run-in with law enforcement on the advertisements in its “erotic services” section. In March 2008, Connecticut State Attorney General Richard Blumenthal also accused the company of allowing advertisements for prostitution.
In response, Craigslist agreed last November to require all “erotic services” ads to include a valid phone number and credit card. The goal was to make it easier for law-enforcement officials to crack down on the sale of sexual services. Craigslist also beefed up its screening tools to block the advertisement of illegal services, but claims it is unable to keep pace with programmers who develop software to circumvent its protective measures.
Dart is clearly unsympathetic. He said Thursday that he has repeatedly written to Craigslist management asking them to police the site more effectively or remove “erotic services” altogether. He suggested the company’s reluctance to do so is because the “erotic services” ads are a large part of Craigslist’s $80 million-per-year revenues.
“They have crafted their site to accommodate people,” the sheriff said. “None of the ads require any imagination. There’s no mystery at all. We all know what’s going on here.”
Craigslist Immune?
Ironically, Craigslist may be protected by the very law that was passed in an effort to drive sexual content off the Internet: The 1996 Communications Decency Act. Section 230 of that…