Judge Rejects Sheriff's Prostitution Suit Against Craigslist

CHICAGO — A federal judge has thrown out a local sheriff's lawsuit accusing the online classified group Craigslist of facilitating prostitution, court records showed.
"We welcome the judge's ruling," a spokeswoman for Craigslist said Thursday.
Cook County Sheriff Thomas Dart sued the website in March to recover the money his department spent policing Craigslist-related prostitution in the Chicago area and to impose punitive damages for acting as a "public nuisance."
Craigslist said in May that it would shut down the "erotic services" section of its website and create an "adult services" section in which all ads would be manually reviewed.
The website -- which offers users free advertising for everything from houses to babysitters to furniture for sale -- had been under pressure for months from state law enforcement officials to drop its "erotic services."
Dart argued that the changes were simply cosmetic and that users continue to post unlawful content, which Judge John Grady wrote was "a live controversy," and that the website should bear liability as a facilitator of the ads.
But the judge ruled that while newspaper publishers may be held liable for the content of classified ads, Craigslist is shielded by laws protecting phone companies and websites from how people use their services.
"Intermediaries are not culpable for 'aiding and abetting' their customers who misuse their services to commit unlawful acts," Judge Grady wrote in a 20 page opinion issued Tuesday.
"Sheriff Dart may continue to use Craiglist's website to identify and pursue individuals who post allegedly unlawful content."

While prostitution is a serious problem, targeting websites like Craigslist is simply "a cheap and easy way to score political points," wrote Matt Zimmerman of the advocacy group Electronic Frontier Foundation.
"Meritless cases brought by law enforcement officers, amounting to little more than publicity stunts with little to no chance of success, do little to address the officers' underlying concerns," he wrote in a blog posting.
"Service provides are not liable because Congress correctly understood that the soap box should not be held responsible for the speech of others."

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