Link: Prostitution targeted on Craigslist | CNET News.com.
On one recent day, for example, some 9,000 listings were added to the site's "Erotic Services" category in the New York region alone: Most offered massage and escorts, often hinting at more.(...) "The police have also occasionally turned to Craigslist to trace stolen goods offered for sale or make drug arrests. In June, in Nassau, spotting code words like "snow" or "skiing" to refer to cocaine, they set up a sting with an undercover officer to arrest a man who advertised cocaine for sex.
"Experts say that under the federal Communications Decency Act of 1996, the ads are legal and Web site owners are exempt from responsibility for content posted by users. Craigslist, for example, last fall won dismissal of a suit that alleged housing discrimination in ads posted on its Web site. "You hold the speaker liable, not the soapbox," explained Kurt B. Opsahl, senior staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital civil liberties group based in San Francisco.
"While Buckmaster said Craigslist was no different from old-media publications that have long carried sex-oriented ads, law enforcement officials say its scope and format are especially useful to the sex industry. With listings for some 450 cities around the world, Craigslist claims to have 25 million users and 8 billion page views a month. Posting advertisements, except those in the employment and some housing categories, is free, as is responding to them by e-mail.
"The Internet has allowed people to make contact in a way not possible before," said Ronald Weitzer, a sociology professor at George Washington University and a researcher on prostitution. "Ten years ago this was not happening at all...."
(((If a certain elderly Idaho senator had been hip to this massive social transition, he'd probably still have a job.)))
