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Previously, Craigslist officials have said that "erotic services" began at the behest of users, who wanted the paid services cleared away from sections such as "casual encounters," where visitors can indulge each others' fantasies free of charge. The other point Craigslist's owners repeatedly stressed is how much of a resource "erotic services" can be for vice detectives. Recorded IP addresses can allow cops to track down both prostitution "providers"—a term used to describe both pimps and hookers—and the "hobbyists," a.k.a. johns. As blogger Owen Thomas put it recently on Gawker, "Horny, desperate men are the largest source of prostitution in America. And Dart should be happy that they're visiting a Web site which rolls over so easily when the police call."

Craigslist is not liable for prostitution that occurs online, says John Morris, general council with the Center for Democracy and Technology, a nonprofit liberal-advocacy group that works on Internet constitutional issues. "A service like Craigslist or YouTube … couldn't exist if those services had a legal liability for everything people put up," Morris says. "There's no way a YouTube or Craigslist would be able to review and take legal responsibility for every single thing posted there."

Craigslist is a daily part of the job for Det. Ryan Long, who supervises investigations in the vice unit at the Seattle Police Department. Cops routinely post fake ads and respond to real ones in order to nab suspected criminals. The detectives in Long's squad are on a first-name basis with many of the Web site's 25 employees, and the company's representatives are quick to notify police if they spot illicit activity. It was a Craigslist staffer, in fact, who alerted authorities to the disturbing Kent posting.

Since Craigslist started charging people for erotic-services ads, Long has noticed purveyors moving to other parts of the site and other Web sites, making it harder to keep tabs on them. "It's a double-edged sword," he explains. "Do we let it operate to gain intelligence and take enforcement action, or do we take the entire site down" and see it disperse?

Washington Attorney General Rob McKenna doesn't share that ambivalence. "Erotic services" made it easier for human trafficking to happen, McKenna tells NEWSWEEK, which means it happens more, whether it's in a back alley or a condominium. "The Internet reduces the cost of buying and selling, the transaction costs," McKenna says. "We know there's more activity occurring because it's easier for prostitutes and their clients to find each other."

Craigslist also seems to broaden the playing field, Long adds. Modern-day prostitutes include suburban housewives and high-school cheerleaders, and they operate in places where people never thought they had a prostitution problem.

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Posted By: Dolmance @ 05/17/2009 4:33:41 PM

Well, of course we all know prostitution didn't exist before Craigslist, so I have every expectation that it will magically disappear now that they're not going to run those ads anymore.

Fact is, if it wasn't for Craigslist, they'd never have caught that miscreant freak just starting out on his career of being a serial killer. And stopping the erotic services ads will simply drive the sex workers even more underground, and increase their susceptibility to vicious predators.
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Posted By: very old man 0838 @ 05/16/2009 10:58:35 AM

Everybody pay for sex. The cost of bringing another human being to our world is so great if God did not create climax with sex, nobody with the right mind will ever do it.
Less than 1% of us ever get paid to have sex. 99% of us pay through our teeth for the rest of our life just to enjoy a few seconds of the greatest pleasure God ever granted us. Can we blame those who are jealous of the prostitutes and the johns?
We are so unwilling to confront the true criminals, the pimps, the mentally ill murderers/abusers we will rather assert our value on ordinary people who are doing a natural thing in a way we disagree with.
Getting paid for sex is a risky business and requires extraordinary will power to execute it successfully. This is extreme high wire walking. We are so jealous of those who practice it we will use those who tried and died to disallow anybody from doing it so nobody will say we are not able to participate in that game.
That???s human nature.
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Posted By: pandahays @ 05/15/2009 10:23:37 AM

Now I'm a fairly conservative gal. I believe in monogamous sex within a married relationship, but even I find it a little confusing that so many things are legal, that the government talks endlessly about rights (including right to do with your body what you please i.e. abortion), yet they outlaw paying for a sexual act?

I would never condone prostitution because I find it morally reprehensible, and I think its a dangerous game. However, I do wonder if legalizing it and putting restrictions on it (regular STD testing, some kind of taxing, registering prostitutes) would make it safer and keep the underage girls at bay. I don't know, just a thought. I guess we could say the same thing about marijuana, but maybe I'm a hypocrit in that way. I just don't think the government has the right to tell us how to behave morally, unless we are forcing someone else to suffer from that immorality.