Judge Rejects Sheriff's Suit Against Craigslist 121
jjohn24680 passes along word that a federal judge has thrown out a local sheriff's lawsuit accusing the online classified group Craigslist of facilitating prostitution. We discussed the case when it was filed back in March. Here is the decision (PDF). "As was pretty clear at the time, Craigslist is the service provider and is quite obviously protected by Section 230 immunity. ... Even after all of this was clearly explained to Sheriff Dart, he still insisted that his lawsuit made sense. It looks like the court system, however, does not agree. As expected, the case has been dismissed on Section 230 grounds."
Re:Idiot Sheriff (Score:2, Interesting)
The pirate bay case (Score:3, Interesting)
Good (Score:5, Interesting)
It's nice to see this ruling. Escorts and such have been advertising in local newspaper classified ads for YEARS now and nobody seemed to care. No matter what they do they're NOT going to stop prostitution because at the end of the day it's a "crime" between willing adults. There's no victim to complain to anyone because every person involved is happy if at the end of the day no law enforcement ever shows their face.
In reality though, the truth is that a lot of times strip clubs, brothels, and other such activities are giving kickbacks to SOMEBODY in power, somewhere. I've seen it time and time again. For example strip clubs here are not supposed to feature fully naked dancers and dancers are not supposed to be on the club floor when exposed. Generally they ignore the floor rule, and will just wrap their panties around their wrist when on stage to comply with the first (they're still wearing them, just not in the proper location). Every now and then though they'll get pressured to comply, resulting in the panties staying on and the bouncers literally having to carry the girls on their shoulders from stage to stage so that the girl never touches the floor, until the club owner pays off whoever is pressuring him. Then it's back to business as usual. The same is true for most escort services and such. The older more established services stay there pretty much until the owner decides to get out of the business. New services jump into and out of existence on a monthly basis. Simple reason is that the older services have figured out who they have to pay to be left alone.
My guess is that a lot of this backlash against Craigslist is simply that with everything being done on the Internet it's making it easier for people to get these dealings done without the officials getting their due cut of the cash, and that just doesn't go over well.
Re:To add a little context... (Score:4, Interesting)
Notice Dart is not closing down cheap motels / hotels with rooms by the hour, who actually are facilitating prostitution. Nor is he closing down bars and liquor stores for facilitating drunk driving. Nor is he closing down sleazy bars (all of them) for facilitating drug dealers (all bars have drug dealers operating in them), or for facilitating prostitution. So he clearly is not into closing down facilitators, nor is he into hard work for publicity. He is attacking a single target for publicity. A cheap shot.
Re:The police do this shit all the time (Score:3, Interesting)
Careful, make sure you read the law in detail. In Kansas it is also legal to open-carry, however the state law permits cities to pass municipal ordinances restricting open-carry.
Re:Idiot Sheriff Strikes Again! (Score:3, Interesting)
Even if his suspension of foreclosures was a stunt to get him publicity, there are still reasonable people (like me) who thought it was the right thing to do.
I think that eldavojohn's intention was to say that once Dart tasted the drug of national fame for his stance against foreclosure evictions, that he probably became addicted and would continue to seek out his drug by any means possible, craigslist being an example.
Re:Idiot Sheriff Strikes Again! (Score:3, Interesting)
Banks sometimes evict people but don't complete the foreclosure process. This does 2 things:
1) keeps the evicted person on the hook for taxes and maintenance, e.g. weed control.
2) keeps the property off of their balance sheet so they do not look insolvent.
I'm supposed to ba happy about the bailouts why?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/23/AR2009062303500.html [washingtonpost.com]
http://exurbannation.blogspot.com/2009_03_01_archive.html [blogspot.com] (references a NYT article)
Re:The police do this shit all the time (Score:3, Interesting)
Careful, make sure you read the law in detail. In Kansas it is also legal to open-carry, however the state law permits cities to pass municipal ordinances restricting open-carry.
We have a preemption law in Wisconsin. For those not in the know it means no municipality/county/etc. can make a law that's more restrictive than the state law. So the open carry is legal everywhere.
That being said there's places all over the state trying to pass laws/ordinances with heinous penalties for open carry in a 'no gun' area. As in $10,000 fine for first offense. I think they've backed down on those but haven't really followed them.
Here's the lovely irony. The preemption law was passed while the current governor was attorney general. Now he's upset that it is getting in the way of his agenda. He's also trying to do away with open carry. But he's also been vetoing conceal carry because we have open carry. So the logical thing is - if he's against open carry we should have conceal carry. It's quite confusing. Funny, but confusing.