Attorneys General Continue Grandstanding Against Craigslist

from the it-makes-headlines dept

This is hardly a surprise, given the well-coordinated media campaign against Craigslist, but despite multiple "settlements" with various state attorneys general, it appears that those AGs keep going back to the headline-generating well of demanding Craigslist "fix" things. You may recall that nearly two years ago, after being hounded by some AGs, Craigslist settled with the AGs, despite clearly being protected by Section 230 of the CDA. However, despite it being "settled," some AGs felt it wasn't enough and six months later there was another settlement. And, of course, it wasn't long before the AGs started complaining again.

So, take a guess what's happening now. Once again, 17 attorneys general (down from in the past) have sent a letter demanding that Craigslist shut down the "adult services" section of the site (which, it should be noted, Craigslist only created in response to AG pressure in one of these earlier settlements). What's ridiculous about this is that it's a complete "head in the sand" approach that these AGs are taking towards their jobs. In fact, this is the exact opposite of them doing their jobs. Rather than actually going after any criminals who use Craigslist -- as some smart law enforcement officials do -- these AGs are actively pushing this activity further underground where it will be harder for them to stop it. And they're doing it by focusing in on the highly emotional claims of "child trafficking" on the site -- as if those involved suddenly will stop trafficking if they can't post to Craigslist.

Frankly, it's sickening. These 17 attorneys general are effectively demanding that Craigslist stop making it so easy for them to find people involved in child trafficking. Here's a great way for these AGs to actually do their job and to use the tools readily available to track down, capture and stop human traffickers, and their response is to grandstand and blame the company that helps them do that. Rather than fighting human trafficking, these AGs are further enabling it. Just recently we wrote about Topix CEO Chris Tolles' experience dealing with crusading AGs who know they don't have the law on their side, but who use the press to bully companies into changing. Watching this process play out with Craigslist, it's clear that even if you "settle" those AGs may continue to hound you, as long as it's going to generate headlines falsely claiming that they're "doing something" to "protect the children."

Filed Under: grandstanding
Companies: craigslist

Insider's View: How Grandstanding State Attorneys General Make Life Miserable For Law Abiding Tech Companies

from the it's-a-scam dept

For years, we've pointed out how various state attorneys general seem to focus much more on grandstanding against certain companies, rather than actually helping in certain situations. What was really amazing was the incredibly clear pattern every time it happened. It would involve an attorney general who was running for higher office, going to the press and threatening some company, even if there was no legal basis whatsoever for the threat. It's as if every AG running for higher office has taken a page out of the playbook of Eliot Spitzer who used this strategy for years to get him headlines that took him right into the NY governor's mansion (which, of course, he then left due to a different sort of headline a few years later...).

Among the current crop of AGs playing this game, there's been Pennsylvania's Tom Corbett (running for governor) who subpoenaed Twitter to uncover some anonymous critics. There's South Carolina's Henry McMaster (who tried to run for governor) threatening Craigslist management with criminal charges. But the two biggest users of this playbook have to be NY's Andrew Cuomo (running for governor) -- who has targeted social networks and ISPs for not censoring content -- despite no legal obligation to do so, and Connecticut's Richard Blumenthal (running for Senate) who has grandstanded with the best of them in going after tons of tech companies with almost no legal basis at all.

So, of course, I wasn't surprised when I heard, back in February, that Kentucky's Attorney General, Jack Conway, had started threatening local news/community site Topix. After all, Conway is running for the US Senate. Still, once Conway started the ball rolling, Blumenthal actually stepped in and led the ongoing gameplan. At issue? The company let people pay a small fee to "expedite" the process of reviewing comments for abuse. There is absolutely nothing illegal about this. A website has no legal obligation to monitor its user-generated content, and it doesn't lose its safe harbor protections if it does monitor such content. So I was a bit surprised to see Topix settle the charges and change its policies.

Thankfully, Topix's CEO Chris Tolles has written up a detailed post at TechCrunch, that is a nice behind the scenes account of how the whole thing went down, and what an incredible scam it is. It starts out, of course, with an attorney general (in this case Conway) going straight to the press, rather than to the company:

Through this press release, which accused us of requiring payment to review abusive posts, I discovered that the Kentucky Attorney General had allegedly sent a letter asking me to provide information regarding our terms of service and policies around payment for expediting reviews. (The letter to which the press release referred was put in the US Mail and post marked five days after this incident.)

Tolles tried to be totally upfront and open with the various attorneys general who jumped onto the bandwagon (23 in all at the time), explaining to them exactly how Topix worked, how they reviewed comments, why they did things the way they did -- knowing full well that nothing Topix did broke the law. How did that work out? Once again, the AGs went to the press and used the info he had given them (again, which showed how what they were doing was legal) to grandstand against Topix:

So, after opening the kimono and giving these guys a whole lot of info on how we ran things, how big we were and that we dedicated 20% of our staff on these issues, what was the response. (You could probably see this one coming.)

That's right. Another press release. This time from 23 states' Attorney's General.

This pile-on took much of what we had told them, and turned it against us. We had mentioned that we required three separate people to flag something before we would take action (mainly to prevent individuals from easily spiking things that they didn't like). That was called out as a particular sin to be cleansed from our site. They also asked us to drop the priority review program in its entirety, drop the time it takes us to review posts from 7 days to 3 and "immediately revamp our AI technology to block more violative posts" amongst other things.

Eventually, he realized this just wasn't worth fighting over. The amount of revenue from the prioritized review was minimal, and just not worth the fight. So he gave in to the demands just to make them go away, giving the AGs (now up to 34 of them) another "settlement" headline -- even though they never once claimed Topix broke the law:

Pissed off people, not illegality, is the issue to watch -- At no time during this process were we accused of breaking any laws. The Attorneys General have interpreted their mandate of consumer protections very broadly, and if a lot of people *think* you are doing something wrong, you are likely to be headed for a problem.

As Tolles notes, this has become such a successful practice for East Coast state AGs to attack California companies, that successful startups need to beware, because it's going to happen a lot more often, and even when they've done nothing illegal, it's often going to make sense for them to just settle. American politics at work.

Filed Under: chris tolles, grandstanding, jack conway, richard blumenthal
Companies: topix

Media Campaign Against Craigslist Continues, As WaPo Writes Article About Its Own Anti-Craigslist Advertiser

from the conflict? dept

Last week, we wrote about how the misguided, politics-driven media campaign against Craigslist was ramping up again with a half-page ad in The Washington Post, obviously targeted at DC politicians. Paul Levy, who had sent over a scan of the ad now alerts us that the very next day, the Washington Post had a one-sided anti-Craigslist article, where it cites the ad. As Levy asks, has the Washington Post now stooped so low that buying a half-page ad gets you a one-sided story? Very disappointing move by the Washington Post.

The story, of course, is the same one that a bunch of politicians have been grandstanding over. There is prostitution on Craigslist. No doubt about it. Craigslist has set up a few different systems over the past couple of years to try to stop it, but of course, people always figure out ways to get around such blocks. The problem, now, is that all these politicians and media types seem to want to blame Craigslist, rather than blame the people actually involved in the prostitution rings. As we've noted time and time again, law enforcement agencies that work with Craigslist have found that it's a great tool for fighting illegal prostitution and breaking up prostitution rings. Craigslist actually has set up a special interface for law enforcement to use for this purpose.

The Washington Post notes exactly none of this. Instead, it asks why Craig Newmark hasn't responded to the "open letter" from a girl who was sold as an underage prostitute via the site a few years back (well before Craigslist set up these new restrictions). Separately, CNN ran a similar anti-Craigslist opinion piece written by the same group who bought the newspaper ads. At least CNN allowed Craigslist's Jim Buckmaster an opening to reply.

Obviously, this is a topic that creates an emotional response in many -- as it should. Underage girls forced into prostitution is a horrifying problem, and I'm all for doing anything possible to bring those actually responsible to justice. The problem is that putting the blame on Craigslist doesn't do anything to help solve the problem. If anything, it will make it much worse. It certainly won't stop those involved in forcing girls into prostitution rings. It certainly won't stop those rings from operating. It certainly won't stop the ability of individuals to find these rings via the internet. The only thing it will do is push that information further underground, to platforms and services that aren't willing to work with law enforcement and don't actually help efforts to stop such things. Blaming Craigslist is exactly the wrong approach and makes the problem worse. I read the open letter to Craig, and for very good reasons, it breaks your heart to hear about the horrible things that happened to these girls. But, in reading it, I can't help but wonder why their anger and questions are directed at Craig, rather than those who sold them as prostitutes.

Filed Under: grandstanding
Companies: craigslist

Political Campaign Against Craigslist Ratchets Up

from the focused-on-the-wrong-thing dept

The ongoing, misguided and dangerously self-defeating grandstanding political campaign against Craigslist apparently ratcheted up a bit today. Paul Alan Levy points out that in the print edition of today's Washington Post, there's a giant "advertisement" that is an "open letter to Craig Newmark" from two former child prostitutes who were offered up via Craigslist. It is depressing and heartbreaking to hear their story: However, placing the blame on Craigslist is entirely misguided. Yes, it was the tool that was used, but the anger should be directed at those who turned them into prostitutes, and at law enforcement for not using these publicly available tools to do their job. Some law enforcement agencies have learned that Craigslist is a great tool for finding and catching those responsible. If these sorts of ads get forced off Craigslist, it won't stop the prostitution. It'll just go further underground and make it that much more difficult for law enforcement to do anything. As it stands now, Craigslist works closely with law enforcement to catch those actually responsible. Blaming the company (or Craig himself) is misguided and likely to do more harm than good.

It makes for good political grandstanding -- which is why it's been put in the Washington Post on a giant ad on page 3. Politicians will see it, and you can bet someone will start grandstanding about this shortly... but it will be counterproductive. The real question should be why law enforcement isn't using Craigslist more to find and stop the folks actually responsible for these sorts of horrible atrocities.

Filed Under: ads, grandstanding, politicians, prostitution
Companies: craigslist

Cuomo's New Plan: A Good Idea Or A Chance For More Grandstanding?

from the that's-not-ridiculous dept

As part of NY Attorney General Andrew Cuomo's grandstanding against child porn, he's mostly been making silly threats against the wrong parties in ways that don't actually help stop child porn (and could make it worse). However, his latest announcement actually sounds a lot more reasonable. His office is putting together a database of offending photos, and letting social networks compare uploads to the database to try to stop the uploads of known offending photos. I would imagine that it also records who was trying to upload that content. Some care would need to be taken to make sure that this effort really does focus on actually offending images -- one thing that makes such an effort tricky. I also do wonder if it makes sense for a gov't agency to be putting together the database, rather than having it done by the industry itself. On top of that, given Cuomo's earlier grandstanding and his usual methods, you have to expect that it would be long before Cuomo would start threatening any social network that doesn't use his system with some sort of bogus (but very, very public) legal threats. In other words, when the gov't (especially someone like Cuomo) sets up a system like this, how long until he starts acting like it's mandatory, rather than optional?

Filed Under: andrew cuomo, database, grandstanding
Companies: facebook, myspace

Andrew Cuomo Grandstanding Again: Threatens To Sue Social Networking Site Over Actions Of Its Users

from the fighting-for-the-public(ity) dept

Now that NY Attorney General Andrew Cuomo has officially announced his long-expected campaign to be governor of New York (following in his father's footsteps), it looks like he's back to grandstanding by making very public, if very misleading, threats against tech companies. You may recall that this is Andrew Cuomo's basic blueprint for censoring the internet. It starts with him releasing an "open letter" to various online services, claiming that they have child porn on their service, and if they don't clean it up, he's going to sue. Of course, he's never actually sued, because he probably wouldn't win. Child porn is very much illegal and a very, very bad thing, but the responsible parties are those who are actually creating, uploading and sharing the content -- not the larger service providers. A Section 230 defense almost certainly protects most of these sites. But... of course, when you have a high profile politician threatening to sue you for child porn, you cave. It's simply not worth the legal battle. Cuomo would gleefully take a legal battle where he gets headlines about how he's "fighting to protect people from child porn" by taking on big evil tech companies -- even if he would lose eventually. He just needs the headlines to get elected.

And so, here he goes again, threatening the social networking site Tagged.com with a lawsuit for not cleaning up child porn on the site. Apparently, Cuomo's office had people set up accounts and go searching for stuff, which they reported to Tagged, but which the company failed to take down in a timely manner. So he threatens Tagged. But what isn't explained is why he's not doing anything to go after those actually responsible. Rather than blame Tagged, why not work with them to help find out who's responsible for the content and bring them to justice?

Reading between the lines, it looks like Cuomo's way of trying to get around Section 230 with a pretty sneaky tactic. He wants to charge Tagged with false and deceptive advertising. How's that work? Well, Tagged has said that it has safety measures in place to deal with inappropriate content. So Cuomo's office is claiming that because those measures don't work very well, that the company is falsely advertising its safety measures. As a way to get around Section 230 safe harbors, it's pretty sneaky.

The really disturbing part of all of this is that, in his blatant move to grab headlines for "fighting child porn," he's actually making the problem a lot worse. When this stuff is happening on mainstream sites, it's easier to track down and capture those actually responsible. Driving it further underground doesn't stop the activity -- it just makes it that much more difficult for law enforcement to do its actual job. But Cuomo doesn't really care about that. He just wants to get elected. If it makes the child porn problem worse, no big deal, apparently.

Filed Under: andrew cuomo, false advertising, grandstanding, section 230
Companies: tagged.com

And Of Course: Grandstanding Anti-Craigslist Politicians Still Not Satisfied

from the no-surprise-there dept

Well, this one was rather easy to predict. Way back in November, after coming under pressure from various grandstanding state Attorneys General (who seem wholly unfamiliar with Section 230 of the CDA), Craigslist caved in to pressure (despite no legal basis requiring them to do so), and it changed the way its erotic services section worked. The various AGs claimed they were satisfied. But it took all of a few months before some misguided news report showed that people were misusing Craigslist again, and suddenly these AGs sensed an opportunity to get press... so they went on the offensive again, blaming Craigslist for the actions of its users. It makes for a good headline.

Once again, in May, Craigslist caved again and further changed how the site worked and handled "adult" type ads. It also showed that the ads on its site were a lot less graphic than those found on many sites run by traditional newspapers. But, suing the local newspaper doesn't generate headlines like suing Craigslist. And, given that it did such a good job generating press (and got Craigslist to cave when it didn't need to), you had to assume that it wouldn't take long for politicians to start complaining again.

And... here we go. Connecticut's AG Richard Blumenthal, who has milked the bogus Craigslist story for a while, along with Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart, who sued Craigslist earlier this year, have both come out to once again grandstand against Craigslist and insist that the company still isn't doing enough.

Seriously. Can someone send either of these gentlemen a copy of Section 230 of the CDA, along with a nice side dish of common sense. To wit:

• It is not Craigslist that is the problem. It is the users of the site who are advertising prostitution. They are the ones violating the law. Not Craigslist.
• Not only that, but Craigslist is very cooperative with law enforcement officials in helping them track down those who break the law via the site. Plenty of law enforcement officials have figured this out and know to use Craigslist as a tool to help them crack down on prostitution.
• Cracking down on Craigslist doesn't slow down or prevent the illegal activity at all. Those who are involved in prostitution (i.e., the actual law breaking) are still out there, and are quick to find other sources in which to advertise.
• So cracking down on Craigslist is blaming the messenger -- and making it more difficult to really crack down on prostitution, by driving it further underground.

You would think that such common sense (and the fact that the law makes this clear as well) would have, perhaps, sunk in by now. But, alas, common sense doesn't get you headlines in the paper.

Filed Under: grandstanding, politicians, richard blumenthal, tom dart
Companies: craigslist

Craigslist Goes On The Offensive: Sues South Carolina's Henry McMaster

from the go-for-it dept

It appears that Craigslist has realized, in responding to all those grandstanding Attorneys General, that it's better to take an offensive position than to continue with its defensive strategy. First, it pointed out how misguided South Carolina's Henry McMaster was in threatening to charge Craigslist's management with criminal prosecution, and then it demanded an apology. With no apology forthcoming, Craigslist has sued Henry McMaster seeking declaratory relief that its actions do not violate the law. McMaster has continued to push forward with his plans to file a lawsuit, claiming that Craigslist CEO Jim Buckmaster is "the #1 defendant." Craigslist, in response, points out that Craigslist:

• is operating in full compliance with all applicable laws
• has earned a reputation for being unusually responsive to requests from law enforcement
• has eliminated its "erotic services" category for all US cities
• has adopted screening measures far stricter than those Mr McMaster himself personally endorsed with his signature just 6 months ago
• has far fewer and far tamer adult service ads than many mainstream print and online venues operating in South Carolina
• has made its representatives available to hear Mr McMaster's concerns in person
• has politely asked Mr McMaster to retract and apologize for his unreasonable threats

So, in response, Craigslist has filed its lawsuit to have a court declare that the company is not violating any laws, and that McMaster has no case. This is a good move, and you would have hoped it would quiet down McMaster, but he's actually (no, seriously) using this to claim victory. In a statement on his website McMaster claims:

The defensive legal action craigslist has taken against the solicitors and my office is good news. It shows that craigslist is taking the matter seriously for the first time.... Unfortunately, we had to inform them of possible state criminal violations concerning their past practices to produce a serious response. We trust they will now adhere to the higher standards they have promised. This office and the law enforcement agencies of South Carolina will continue to monitor the site to make certain that our laws are respected.

That's just blatant outright lying now. Craigslist made those changes last week, and at the time McMaster's response was: "That response doesn't work" and claimed it was proceeding with plans to punish Craigslist management with jail time. Since then, Craigslist has made no other change, other than to sue McMaster. To suddenly claim that it's made a new change and is taking the matter seriously, when the only change is suing McMaster, is quite the delusional response. I have no idea how likely it is that McMaster will win his current race for the Governor's spot in South Carolina -- but so far the man has been an embarrassment to the state.

Filed Under: attorney general, grandstanding, henry mcmaster, south carolina
Companies: craigslist

Craigslist Caving Shows The Perils Of Self-Policing... Or The Perils Of Grandstanding Politicians?

from the i'd-argue-the-latter dept

Following Craigslist's decision to cave in to demands and start monitoring every "adult services" post on its platform, the Wall Street Journal is running a rather odd article suggesting that this somehow shows "the perils of self-policing" by a community, and suggesting that such crowdsourced reviews don't work. Except, that's a gross misreading of the actual situation. The crowdsourcing worked just fine. The issue was that members of the Craigslist community didn't have a problem with the ads in question. Those who did have problems were grandstanding politicians looking to get elected to higher office. If anything, it doesn't show the perils of self-policing, it shows the perils of getting caught in the sights of grandstanding politicians who need to whip up populist anger even if they have no legal basis to do so.

Filed Under: grandstanding, politicians
Companies: craigslist