A good day for common decency and a bad one for civil liberties

The online bulletin board Craigslist (I've bought some stuff off there cheap) has removed its "Adult Services" section. Under normal circumstances I would cheer this decision enthusiastically. This section has in the past been used by people promoting or engaging in prostitution and other more serious crimes. But Craigslist is not doing this because they have seen the light and think prostitution is morally repulsive. They are doing it beacuse a bunch of State Attorneys General have decided to do a little grandstanding for the public and filed a lawsuit to force Craigslist to take down this section of their website.

As a little bit of background last year there was a high profile (meaning the TV news media pumped the story for ratings) murder in Boston. The victim and her alleged killer met via Craigslist. And in fairness things far more nefarious than prostitution were being marketed on that section of their site. Under pressure from the authorities Craigslist started closely monitoring that area and requiring anyone posting there to register their identity with verifiable means (i.e. credit cards and traceable phone numbers etc). Not surprisingly the number of adds for "massages" plunged and that section of their site became pretty dead.

So that was the end of the story... right? Wrong. Unsatisfied, the aforementioned AGs filed a lawsuit to compel Craigslist to shut down this section of their bulletin boards altogether. Today Craigslist caved into this blatantly political bullying. Where that, already largely dead, section of their site was is now a black box and the word "censored."

What effect will this have on prostitution or advertising for it? None at all. And the AGs damn well know it.

Anyone seeking those kinds of services can find them almost anywhere. Advertisements for escorts or other types of "adult" services on the web are so ubiquitous one need not look for them. It almost requires an effort to avoid the disgusting things.

Whatever one's moral opinion of this may be (presumably those reading this blog will be of one mind on that subject), the fact remains that efforts to suppress prostitution are rather akin to trying to halt the oceanic tides. It is not called the world's oldest profession for nothing. Obviously child rape or human trafficking are beyond the pale as they violate the principal of consent. But is this really something that the AGs should be proud of?

Is anyone safer because they have successfully wielded the might of the state against this website that had the misfortune of gaining widespread media attention? Will the AGs now file similar lawsuits (by the tens of thousands) in an effort to cleanse the web of its dark underside? If not, then what exactly were they doing? And exactly from whence does the government gain its authority to police people's private lives?

Craigslist should have pulled that section of their adds (and the other adult sections that are still up by the way) because it was the right and moral thing to do. While I deeply regret that they did not see things that way, I think it is even more regrettable that they have caved in to this outrageous abuse of state authority that served no useful purpose other than to pad the resumes of various AGs for their next election campaign.