Looks Like Henry McMaster Is Upset About His Lost Craigslist Photo Op As Well

from the oh-come-on... dept

Yesterday, Craigslist caved in to the demands of various state Attorneys General, and agreed to pre-moderate all of the "adult" ads that go on their site. This appeared to be exactly what many grandstanding AGs had been asking for... but it appears that more than a few of them were upset that Craigslist did this without granting the AGs a chance to take credit for it. First, we had NY AG Andrew Cuomo's petulent statement about how Craigslist never should have done this without first getting approval from Andrew Cuomo, and now the EFF points out a similar complaint from South Carolina AG Henry McMaster, who says that he's going to continue his plan to throw Craigslist management in jail unless they remove all sexually explicit material from the site.

It's difficult to know where to start on this, but McMaster's understanding of the law doesn't seem to have anything to do with the actual law. First off, plenty of sexually explicit material is not illegal. Second, even if the material is somehow illegal, the liability is on those who posted it, not Craigslist.

Oh yeah. It's probably worth noting that a similarity between both Cuomo and McMaster? Both are apparently (definitely in McMaster's case) seeking their respective state's governorship... You would think that abusing a high-level gov't position for grandstanding and censorship would disqualify one from getting to run a state, but apparently not.

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

Senate Looks To Outlaw Phishing, Even Though It's Already Illegal

from the gotta-do-something dept

As the saying goes, when your only tool is a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail. The folks in Congress sure do an awful lot of whacking at various nails these days. The latest is a new bill in the Senate that seeks to outlaw phishing. One tiny point is important here: phishing is already illegal. So, really all this bill does is allow these politicians to claim that they took a stand to stop phishing. Except, it's actually worse than that. Not only will this bill not do anything to stop phishing, it will actually make life worse for plenty of non-criminals. That's because a part of the bill would outlaw hiding domain name registration information. Now, there are plenty of legitimate reasons for not wanting to reveal your info in the whois database -- but according to this bill, it won't be allowed any more. If you want to own a domain, you'll need to cough up your name, address and phone number to whoever wants it -- and they better be legit. If you provide false info, you'll also be breaking the law. So, it won't do anything new to stop phishing, but will make it much more difficult to own a domain anonymously. That's quite a nail.

Filed Under: anonymity, grandstanding, phishing, senators