14 DAY TRIAL // Craigslist has given up the fight completely and has now removed the Adult Services section worldwide after pressure from attorneys general and other organizations. The groups argued that the section was a hotbed for illegal activity including human trafficking.
Craigslist replied that it was simply providing a service and making it safer for some of the women involved by doing it somewhat in the open where people could be held accountable.
Connecticut attorney general Richard Blumenthal, a figure isn't afraid to tackle any web company on issues that might lead to some public sympathy, confirmed that Craigslist has now removed the section, for good, worldwide after his long and tireless fight against the company.
He labeled the move as a victory for the women and children who may be abused or even traded via the service.
He failed to explain how the fact that Craigslist doesn't have a dedicated Adult Services section anymore, which had a thorough filtering system, helps the people caught in these horrible situations, something that hasn't been made clear since the campaign against Craigslist started.
The likely scenario, one that was observed when Craigslist first relented and shut down the section in the US, is that all the ads will move to other sections of the site or to other, more obscure and harder to track sites.
The Adult Services section was one of the few that required users to pay for the listings. This turned into a tidy revenue stream for the site, but it also meant that the ones posting the listings could be held accountable since there was a paper trail.
However, this argument failed to persuade the attorneys general, led by Blumenthal, which took the much easier to explain stance of shutting everything down, effectively moving the illegal activity out of sight.
The same Blumenthal, which was recently elected Senator in the US, has asked Google to hand over any WiFi data it had collected with its Street View cars. Google refused to do so and argued that it has taken all the steps necessary to make sure this doesn't happen again. It also said that it wants to delete the data as soon as possible.
Google doesn't believe that there is a legal base for the request and, though the attorney general threatened legal action, nothing has happened so far. This was the same with Craigslist which was never charged with anything, but rather, had its name tarnished in the press time and time again.