What Happens If A Social-Networking Exec Becomes Attorney General?
from the does-not-compute dept
Lots of state attorneys general around the country have been taking shots at sites like Craigslist, MySpace and Facebook. They're generally pretty misguided, and seem to really have more to do with politcal opportunism than anything else. Many of these diatribes are based on a pretty fundamental misunderstanding of the internet and social-networking sites, so maybe we should welcome the news that a senior Facebook exec is thinking about running for AG in California. There's a lot more than internet issues to the AG's job, but hopefully if the exec, Chris Kelly, got elected, he could inject some intelligence into the other state AGs' moral panics over online activity -- though given the way they react to disagreement, that's probably just wishful thinking.
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Filed Under: attorney general, california, chris kelly
Companies: facebook
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NOT A GOD DAMNED THING!
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it'd be nice but
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Craigslist and erotic services.
Prostitution is the exchange of money for sex. Everybody knows that the act of prostitution is illegal, but the act of advertising erotic services is not prostitution. This is nothing more than angry religious leaders, using the federal government, to impose their pathetic beliefs onto us.
Rise up against religious nazis! Keep erotic services on Craigslist.org!
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Who's the bigoted zealot again, chief?
As for the issue at hand, I think the blog author makes a great point here in the post he linked to above at "misguided," namely this post: http://techdirt.com/articles/20090428/0234214676.shtml
It's unreasonable to claim that Craigslist isn't facilitating prostitution, but shutting down "erotic" sections of Craigslist will merely cause criminals to advertise through other means.
I'd think the best solution would be for law enforcement officials to seek cooperation from Craigslist in perhaps revising user registration and data collection procedures.
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