It looks like Craigslist blinked.
The classified-ads website has apparently bowed to critics and taken down its “adults services” section, according to published reports this weekend. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/05/technology/05craigs.html?_r=1&scp=2&sq=craigslist&st=cse
After a letter from attorney generals in 17 states last month, Craiglist blocked access to its “adult” section, inserting a link with a label that said “censored” there.
The attorney general and some groups have been calling for Craigslist to scuttle the adult section, where the classified ads often solicited sex. The ads also reportedly trafficked in underaged girls for prostitution.
The AGs had directed their letter to Craigslist CEO Jim Buckmaster and the website’s founder, Craig Newmark, pleading with them to pull the plug on the adult ads.
An expert quoted by The New York Times, a fellow at Stanford Law School’s Center for Internet & Society, said that Craigslist had no legal obligation to take down its “adult services” section. The Communications Decency Act, a federal law, protects the ads.
But the Stanford fellow, M. Ryan Calo, said that the AGs decided to take their cause to “the court of public opinion,” and appear to have won, for now.
The adult ads came under revewed criticism when medical student Philipp Markoff was accused of killing a women he met on Craigslist. Markoff committed suicide last month in prison.