State officials put pressure on Craigslist’s erotic-service ads

Los Angeles Times

SAN FRANCISCO — State attorneys general from across the United States are stepping up pressure on Craigslist to shutter what they call the nation’s busiest virtual street corner, where prostitution runs rampant.

Craigslist says it has reduced by 95 percent the number of inappropriate listings on the erotic-services section of its classified-ads Web site since November, when the San Francisco company reached an accord with more than 40 of the states’ top prosecutors.

But several attorneys general say that they still find hundreds of ads for sexual services there each day and that Craigslist should do more.

“This is the world’s oldest profession using the world’s newest technology,” South Carolina Attorney General Henry McMaster said in an interview. Last week, he warned Craigslist that it would be “subject to criminal investigation and prosecution” if the erotic-services section wasn’t removed by May 15.

Craigslist says that it’s shielded from such prosecution by federal law, but that it’s taking great pains to clean up its Web site, which research firm ComScore Inc. says attracts more than 40 million U.S. visitors a month.

The privately held company’s lawyers discussed its enforcement methods with a half-dozen attorneys general or their representatives in New York last week, and Rhode Island Attorney General Patrick Lynch said they agreed to meet again this week.

“Criminal misuse of Craigslist is absolutely unacceptable, and we are committed to working together with law enforcement to eliminate it,” Chief Executive Jim Buckmaster said in an e-mailed statement.

In a post on Craigslist’s corporate blog, Buckmaster noted the quick progress in removing such listings and the continuing collaboration with law enforcement.

Law-enforcement officials often have complained about the ease with which prostitutes and their clients can arrange encounters on Craigslist.

But officials have stepped up their criticism since the murder of masseuse Julissa Brisman in a Boston hotel last month. Police say the killer found her through a Craigslist ad.

Boston University medical student Philip Markoff, 23, is accused of bludgeoning Brisman with a gun and then shooting her April 14. Rhode Island authorities filed additional charges last week, saying Markoff robbed a stripper at a Warwick, R.I., Holiday Inn two days later. He was arrested the following week.

Markoff has pleaded innocent.

Lynch urged Craigslist to shut down the section of its site where the majority of the suspected illicit activity originates.

Whether the owners of an online platform are themselves legally responsible for the conduct of their users has long been a contentious issue on the Internet, where the daily volume of new text, image and video content is so vast that monitoring every bit is all but impossible.