CL Sued By Chicago For Promoting Prostitution

[Shining Star]

Calling it the single largest source of prositution in the United States, no less.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/03/05/craigs.list.prostitution/

[Solitary Brother]

This is all over the news.
The girls are so blatant with it...I dont see why more arent caught.

[Shining Star]

What gets me is the teenaged girl at the news conference who was busted within four hours of putting up her ad on CL. She now complains that CL and by extension prossing ruined not only her life but other ladies as well.

Hmm, excuse me but unless she was being pimped or otherwised forced, no one pushed her to put up an ad. One assumes she is speaking of her rap sheet now that she has a conviction on record, but that is not CLs fault.

SS

[BeardedOne]

CL is a cesspool that was aching to be busted. I can't for the life of me understand why some of the gurls we know even waste their time there. The clients are shit, the LE is prolific, and the profits are minimal in relation to the risks.

[justatransgirl]

Yeah, that's a good one. Let's all sue CL! It's all their fault anyway.

For the record CL did not ruin my life, instead it gave me a new lease on life!

Just my opinon.

LOL,
TS Jamie :-)

[Shining Star]

Why?

CL is free and compared to Eros.com asks very little of it's advertisers. Eros.com OTHO is not only dear to advertise on, gets all up in your bidness (so the girls tell me), when placing adverts.

With the economy going down the tubes, even established girls are having a hard time making their monthly nut. Shelling out 300 or more USD that one does not have is something, especially when there is not the sure return on investment as before during boom times.

Methinks as the economy goes down hill, and unemployment keeps going up, something is happening that historically always happens; persons are turning to prossing to get by.

I mean if you are staring an eviction or other dire notice, turning a few dates at $$$ may save the day.

[MrF]

The issue in the complaint is that the sheriff wants CL to close its erotic service section. But CL explains very well why they created this (see the section for the explanation.) The erotic ads were popping up all over the board, so by creating the section they essentially fenced it off. Now there are plenty of warnings for people before they go there, so those who are offended can choose to stay away. And parents have to police their kids internet usage anyway. Everyone knows what the internet is.

Not sure what CL can be expected to do, given that they have only 28 employees nationwide, and given the open-community nature of the board. Let the ads pop up everywhere again ? Shut down CL entirely ? That ain't gonna happen.

[ARMANIXXX]

CL is a cesspool that was aching to be busted. I can't for the life of me understand why some of the gurls we know even waste their time there. The clients are shit, the LE is prolific, and the profits are minimal in relation to the risks.



I too, like Shining Star above me, will defend CL from sentiment like this.

What I notice is many people have a bad impression about Craigslist, but consider this,

CL is a community forum, that caters to many specific areas, exclusively. CL is reflective of said community.

So, if you say CL is a rotted cesspool, you are in fact addressing the users of your said specific area, that your specific town/city is a piece o' shit.
Perhaps it's because CL was invented here, but honestly, and I'm not shittin you, Craigslist works just fine in the Bay Area.

[justatransgirl]

Yeah - MrF has a good point. I use CL all the time for all sorts of stuff. I hire people to work for me via the short term jobs (gigs) area. I hired a couple of tutors for Jessica from the Computer section. I look for real estate and check rental markets on the Real Estate area.

And when we needed it, it was a solution to some of our financial problems.

The problem is a few morality police and religious zealots in various areas who don't have enough crime to deal with that they have to stick their noses into the private bedrooms of consenting adults.

BUT, in their defense - CL does contribute to crime. Meaning that the street whores and pimps took their business onto CL - and that has fucked it up for everyone. It's too bad.

What we need is a federal prostitution law similar to Canada's, which allows it, but only in private.

IMHO,
TS Jamie :-)

[Shining Star]

People tried to shut down the Village Voice, when it began running " model/escort" adverts, along with a few of of the other free pennysaver newspapers in NYC.

The main complaints came from Screw Magazine, who saw much then most of it's "escort" advertisers defect to the cheaper Village Voice. In the end the VV cleaned up some of the photographs, and placed restrictions on some wording and pictures, but the ads remain.

Oh, IIRC, Screw got some places like Starbucks in NYC to stop distributing free copies of VV on the grounds the adverts were "porn", and minors frequent Starbucks. No big deal, those free VV kiosks are on ever corner, just like Starbucks.

Screw Mag had a problem with the fact that the VV is free (in Manhattan), and not being a true "porn" newspaper, thus was able to be more widely distributed, and hence more readers saw adverts.

What one is saying, you cannot put new technology back into the bag once it is out. If ads weren't on CL, someone else would start something similar. This leaves out the numerous sites like Eros and Exotics, and sites managed by prossies themselves.

In short picking on CL is just grasping low hanging fruit (or trying to anyway), it is NOT going to stop online advertising of prossing.

And Another Thing:

The girl that got busted in less than four hours on CL, just shows what happens when persons who don't know what they are doing run adverts. That she now has a conviction means whatever happened there was either a strong enough case she plead guilty, or again she simply didn't know what time it was and took a plea. Again, this is nothing to do with CL. Like the song says " don't do the crime if you can't do the time". *LOL*

[MrsKellyPierce]

wow crazy

[phobun]

The clients are shit, the LE is prolific, and the profits are minimal in relation to the risks.
And I would add that the girls are invariably low end.

[JHANIAH L0VE]

SORRY BUT CL IS A GOLDMINE IF YOURE HOTT!!! IT GOT ME A FIVE BEDROOM CONDO, NEW CAR, AND PRACTICALLY EVERYTHING I OWN lots and lots of hormones, clothes, photoshoots, make up hair nails big screen tvs. rent and bills every month. JUST EVERYTHNG!! and no cl is not free its $5.00 per ad. the clients will pay 200-300 mabey more. not all their escorts are low end, many eros escorts also advertise on cl. and vice versa. the girls who get locked just ask for it by discussing sexual favors for money. just in defense

[ARMANIXXX]

The clients are shit, the LE is prolific, and the profits are minimal in relation to the risks.
And I would add that the girls are invariably low end.


Again.....


Where YOU live.

[tsntx]

ive enjoyed the fruits of cl

to say its complete crap only reflects YOUR specific area

not cl as a whole

[BrendaQG]

Why use CL instead of Eros... Like the other ladies said. Less money for practically the same results. A better ROI as the suits say.

The only bad thing was how ads could get flagged in 2.5 seconds so I had to fight to keep it up there.