On March 5th, Cook County sheriff Tom Dart sued craiglist, Inc. in U.S. District Court for “knowingly promoting and facilitating prostitution” through its “Exotic Services” section. Dart does not seem fixated on the crime of prostitution per se, but that “missing children, runaways, abused women and women trafficked in from foreign countries are routinely forced to have sex with strangers because they’re being pimped on craigslist.” He asks for an injunction to shut down the “Erotic Services” section of the site, as well as damages of ~$100,000 to reimburse the police department in tax dollars expended in investigating prostitution claims on craiglist.
CEO of craiglist Jim Buckmaster said misuse of the site is extremely rare, and is not tolerated. In the past, Buckmaster has defended this section of the web site as striking a balance between allowing free speech and preventing exploitation. The craiglist blog lists 18 separate measures that the site takes to prevent illegal activity on the site.
This is not the first time the “Exotic Services” section of the site has been criticized. A year ago, the Attorney General of Connecticut Richard Blumenthal threatened a suit against the site for allowing nude pictures to be posted. In November 2008, Craiglist was able to come to an agreement with 40 states, which terms including a posting fee for advertisers to the “exotic services” section that required a valid credit card and working phone number (the idea being that law enforcement could access this information by subpoena). The website also agreed to sue 14 companies and individuals who allegedly used the site to facilitate human trafficking, child exploitation, and prostitution.
While craiglist claims that all revenue earned from the fee will be donated to charity, Dart has chided these efforts at goodwill as “dirty money”, and that the efforts have had “little practical effect”. Craiglist has countered this by showing the enormous reduction in postings to this section of the website since this November agreement, and continues to emphasize its continuing cooperation with law enforcement all around the country.
While it is perhaps too soon to see how the case will turn out, the Sheriff will face a tough battle. §230 of the Communications Decency Act provides immunity for ISPs and other service providers against actions perpetrated by 3rd party users, and craiglist will surely advance this as their defense. However, §230 is not so broad as to exclude federal criminal liability, and Dart is claiming that craiglist is more than a passive website operator, but actually an accomplice to the multiple federal crimes.
The Cook County Sheriff, Tom Dart, speaks about the suit at a press conference on March 5:
Because of section 230, it seems that Craigslist is bound to win this action since CL has regularly been defined as an ISP that does not put its own content on in past cases. Here are some cases where the “craigslist is NOT an ISP” argument has failed:
http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/tech_law_prof/2008/03/win-on-appeal-f.html
http://techdirt.com/blog.php?tag=safe+harbor&company=&start=20 “once again craigslist is not liable for discriminatory posts”
But see the en-banc roomates.com decision. You could craft an argument using the logic of roomates.com based on the way information is structured on craigslist.