Craigslist Fights Back, Sues SC Atty General 286
FredMastro writes "Craigslist has now stepped past just asking for an apology. The Wall Street Journal and CNet report that Craigslist is fighting back. 'Craigslist said it has sued South Carolina Attorney General Henry McMaster, in the latest escalation of a battle over adult-oriented ads on the company's site. Jim Buckmaster, Craigslist's chief executive, said in a blog post that the company filed its suit in federal court in South Carolina. ...'" Unfortunately, the WSJ's piece requires a subscription, but reader Locke2005 adds a link to coverage in the San Jose Business Journal.
How to get around the wsj sub wall (Score:5, Informative)
2) Copy and paste into google, resulting in a link like this [google.com]
Click link and read page.
Not pasting full text of article though, so you're gonna have to do it yourself.
Re:I'm not sure... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:A civil case? (Score:5, Informative)
http://blog.craigslist.org/2009/05/an-apology-is-in-order/ [craigslist.org]
SC Adult Industry (Score:3, Informative)
Just drive down I-85 or I-95 and see how many nudie bars are advertising on billboards all the way down the corridor.
The hypocracy of this guy is illuminated in Buckmaster's request for an apology, summarized by Cnet:
The attorney general, Buckmaster said, "has persisted with his threats despite the fact that craigslist:
http://blog.craigslist.org/2009/05/an-apology-is-in-order/ [craigslist.org]
Re:How to fix all of this (Score:4, Informative)
They are protected by section 230. [cdt.org] The threats and allegations are unconstitutional and IMHO slanderous.
Re:Good. (Score:1, Informative)
>I still don't understand why prostitution is illegal.
In the days before effective birth control (only a single generation before my own), a consequence of prostitution was unwanted children, who create a burden on the state.
Re:A civil case? (Score:3, Informative)
Bingo. This DA has gotten SC in hot water more than once. This nationally publicized attack of something that even SC judges have been mumbling over whether is technically even illegal or not (in many places, including outside Vegas, prostitution IS legal, so who's to say how Craigslist was to validate the geographic location of both the poster and searcher to see if they could both conduct that kind of transaction leggally or not?) is just a play at TV time so he can position himself for a job with a massive salary later...
This negative publicity, INCLUDING siedbar remarks associating the sale of prostitution to the recent craigslist murder HAVE affected their posting rate, which effects their advertising revenue, and thus profit. It was a personal attack levied againts them, when a court of law had not actually ruled it a crime for craigslist to be operating the way they did in the first place.
It's illegal to seel MANY kinds of things in some places that are perfectly legal to sell in others. If the courts rule they have to oblige that and block prostitution, they'd have to track each item by type and location the same way, which is an insurmountable burden for a business, especially one not actually profiting from the sale or being directly related to the sale.
Craigslist not only offered to remove the posts (apparently not fast enough), but the state is now persuing legal action anyway (even though their chance of winning is miniscule, and might not even be a case the state can bring under commerce law since it's an interstate transaction).
Further, and the crux of the lawsuit, was not even so much that they were targeted, but they were EXCLUSIVELY targeted, even after Craigslist brough evidence of other sites doing the same that the DA ignored and is NOT persuing...
The legal paperwork meatspace DOS (Score:5, Informative)
Government officials, including the president, get sued all the time. Because they are being sued pursuant to their job, their employer defends them. Hell, I was just a lowly Officer with the IRS back in the day and I managed to get myself sued once or twice. The government has some really good lawyers and I was glad of it.
Sometimes, things get even more indisidious. Back in the day (20+ years ago) every local district office of the IRS had a director. There were 66 of them spread around the country and they were the public face of the IRS. Ours was a good guy, totally in the "firm but fair" mode, who even had a sense of humor. He used to donate his time (very occasionally) to charity to sit in a dunk tank and let the public try to drop him into the water.
So what was his reward for trying to be open, transparent, and just plain *human* to the public? Not only did he get sued pretty much every week, lots of anti-tax protestors would go to various county courthouses in the area and file "common law liens." These bogus documents were a bunch of rambling nonsense that basically says "The IRS is illegal so the local director should be held personally liable for all the damage they cause." Said "damage" was calculated in various ways, ranging from just the amount the aggrieved citizen-idiot owed all the way up to some approximation of the entire amount of money collected by the IRS in that city that year, typically billions.
The clerks at the county courthouses eventually learned to recognize this crap and refuse to accept bogus documents for filing but that put them on thin ice; they are supposed to let anything be filed and let the courts decide if a filing is fraudulent. Sometimes they just held the filings until the lawyers could have a look. Most time, the filings just went through.
Our guy was a good person, making a good salary, filing all required financial disclosure reports that showed he never defaulted on a loan or was late with bills. But at the courthouse, there were filings showing that he was a multi-billion dollar deadbeat. The poor guy had the worst credit in the world. Getting a loan to buy a house or car or just getting a credit card was an exercise in frustration for him.
So the answer to your question is "Lots of government lawyers spend their time going to court, time that could have been better spent doing work in the public interest. The few people filing frivoulous actions waste lots of your tax money. That's what happens."
Re:Good. (Score:5, Informative)
No Nevada city that has legalized prostitution has any significant amount of street walkers or off-the-books prostitutes. I grew up there and know the normal type of people that would have those connections (drug dealers, ex-cons, etc.) and have never heard of anything of the like. Maybe it would be different in a city large enough to matter (it's illegal in both Washoe and Clark counties), but I don't think there's any reason to believe that it would be a huge social problem like it is now. And I think you will find that prices with illegal prostitutes are pretty comparable with legal ones. The risk associated with performing an illegal activity costs just as much or more as "regulatory overhead."
Legalized prostitution in Nevada is better for johns (safety, both from dealing with criminals and possible VD), better for the prostitutes (better working conditions, access to legal solutions in case of abuse, generally better pay, legally legitimate), and society (they get to regulate where brothels are located, brothels can't advertize so there's not tacky ads on all the taxis, cops have more time to deal with real crimes). The only people who don't benefit are pimps. I really don't understand why this is still an issue in our country. Legalize it already.
Re:George Carlin Quote (Score:3, Informative)
You will invariably find that in any clampdown on prostitution it is only the prostitutes who are targeted by authorities. Never the clients.
That is just BS. Phoenix, AZ often has prostitution stings and the prostitutes are NEVER the targets. Undercover policewomen pose as hookers and as soon as the John solicites sex they are arrested and sent to prison for a long time. It's not a small deal here.
Re:How to fix all of this (Score:3, Informative)
The president is protected from civil suits while in office period.
Completely wrong [wikipedia.org].
Re:A civil case? (Score:4, Informative)
Certainly, diversity jurisdiction is one of the bases on which federal jurisdiction could be established here, but so is federal question jurisdiction.
Assuming that the federal statute under which the statutory claim is raised (I believe its the Communications Decency Act) doesn't provide for exclusive federal jurisdiction (which I don't know off the top of my head), they could have filed it in SC courts even given the diversity of citizenship. Neither federal question nor diversity of citizenship generally requires a case to be filed in federal court, they just provide a basis for federal court jurisdiction, giving the plaintiff the opportunity to file in federal court, and, failing that, the defendant the opportunity to seek to have the case moved to federal court.
Re:two types of prostitution, two types of opposit (Score:4, Informative)
I'm betting you're an American.
You should read about Africa, South America, and Southeast Asia some time.
Here's an interesting article [newyorker.com] detailing what's happening throughout those areas: women are hired in country A, by agents from country B, who tell the women that they're going to country C to be housekeepers, maids, or work in manufacturing jobs. Once they leave their country -- and often, pay for the ticket -- their passports are taken and they've become illegal aliens who are enslaved, for all practical purposes. The local police are involved, so that doesn't do them any good, and they're physically prevented from going to their embassies, who don't seem to have any interest in helping poor women, anyway.
The current estimates range between half a million and four million women being held this way. I have no idea how accurate that is, but as such, I don't think it's anything like a gross exaggeration to make the claim that involuntary prostitution is real.