Even after agreeing to totally revamp its erotic services section, Craigslist is still in trouble with the law, especially in Greenville, SC where the DA is threatening criminal charges.

Last Wednesday, the popular Craigslist classified ad site gave in to pressure from law enforcement agencies in several states, saying that it would remove its “erotic services” section. They plan to replace it with a more closely monitored “adult services” section for legal companies.  CEO Jim Buckmaster said that Craigslist would be ready for sex workers who tried to outmaneuver the new site restrictions. Buckmaster said, “We have blocking and filtering technologies in place site wide. And of course our flagging system remains fully in effect across all the categories, but we will be monitoring that situation.”

Despite those agreements to clean up and more carefully police the site, at least one law enforcement official in South Carolina is considering a criminal investigation of Craigslist, according to a CNET story. Attorney General Henry McMaster had given Craigslist until Friday afternoon to remove erotically charged material from its South Carolina listings, via the following statement on its Web site:

As of 5:00 p.m. this afternoon, the craigslist South Carolina site continues to display advertisements for prostitution and graphic pornographic material. This content was not removed as we requested. We have no alternative but to move forward with criminal investigation and potential prosecution.

In response to that threat, Craigslist published a post on their blog comparing the ads left on their site with those of a number of South Carolina classified ad Web sites. The following are excerpts from that post:

Seriously? The CL “adult services” section for Greenville, SC has a total of 1 ad for the last 3 days, featuring a photograph of a fully clothed person. The “erotic services” section for Greenville, recently closed, has 8 ads total, images and text all quite tame.

Meanwhile, the “adult entertainment” section of greenville.backpage.com (careful with link, NSFW), owned by Village Voice Media, has over 60 ads for the last 3 days, and about 250 in total. In sharp contrast with Craigslist, many of these ads are quite explicit, quoting prices for specific sex acts, featuring close-ups of bare genitalia, etc.

Of course, no one in mainstream legal circles thinks either company should be subject to civil suit, let alone a criminal investigation. But if for whatever reason you were so motivated, would you target a venue with 9 PG-13 rated ads, or one with 250 XXX rated ones?

Craigslist has a point. It seems that going after Craigslist is sure to garner a law enforcement official a great deal of publicity, which they hope will improve their image and therefore their electability or promotability. Those same officials know that they won’t get much coverage by doing their jobs, most of which has to do with local law enforcement. They ignore the local “lawbreakers” in favor of the publicity. Even without considering the ethics of the services being sold or by whom, it is very clear that the ethics of some Craigslist chasers are highly questionable.

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Entry was posted on Sunday, May 17th, 2009 at 1:31 pm under Adult content, Advertising, Crime, Internet.

Read more entries by Michael W. Jones.
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