Craigslist says it's unfairly targeted -- and it's right

Posted May 18th 2009 1:30PM by Zac Bissonnette
Filed under: Law, eBay (EBAY)

Craigslist is on the receiving end of an avalanche of bad publicity in the wake of the Boston University Medical School murders. South Carolina Attorney General Henry McMaster is threatening to charge the company with aiding and abetting prostitution if an ad on the site leads to a prostitution arrest in his state.

Craigslist CEO Jim Buckmaster is bucking McMaster, complaining on his company's blog that the company is being unfairly targeted. "Seriously?" he writes. "The craigslist adult services section for Greenville, SC, has a total of one ad for the last three days, featuring a photograph of a fully clothed person. The 'erotic services' section for Greenville, which we recently closed, has eight ads total which will expire in two days, and even for these ads the images and text are quite tame."

He goes on to point to several other sites and publications with a far larger adult services component.

Buckmaster is right to feel unfairly targeted. As a bulletin-board-style website, Craigslist is no more responsible for what people post than a newspaper is when it takes ads for questionable investment schemes. Can you imagine if every magazine that ever ran an ad for one of Bernie Madoff's businesses were charged with aiding and abetting securities fraud?

I don't say this lightly, but I think it needs to be said: Henry McMaster is a complete idiot, looking to score cheap political points by appearing tough on crime. Trust me, there's enough bad stuff going on in South Carolina that it'll be a long time before you need to head to Craigslist in search of cases.

On a side note, I was at a small conference last year and Craigslist founder Craig Newmark was the keynote speaker. While other people were presenting, he was sitting in the back monitoring the site for offensive content, handling consumer complaints as they came. The founder. Of the company. Was monitoring the site for offensive content. Craigslist's brand depends on its ability to keep the site clean, and the company makes reasonable efforts to purge the site of illicit content.

Hey Henry: Go find some real crime and stop battling the imaginary dragons of the internet.

Tags: Craig Newmark, Craigslist, eBAY, Greenville, Henry McMaster, Jim Buckmaster

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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

5-18-2009 @ 3:13PM

Yannis said...

Amen to that. We the people love CL and use it all the time. That's why the big companies who see it as a competitor will do anything to stop it. So the politicos and lawyers are working for their brownie points.