Liz McDougall on Defending Classified Ads for Erotic Services

In the summer of 2008, a partner at our Seattle law firm asked me to work with Craigslist. I’d been focused on Internet law and cyber crime for clients like Microsoft and Amazon.com, and I’d done work with victims of abuse. Craigslist was drafting new guidelines for its erotic services section. These ads may be distasteful, but services like stripping and phone sex are legal.

Craigslist had let people post these ads for free. It added a fee after pressure from the states attorneys general; payments make it easier to track predators. Then the attorneys general turned around and accused them of profiting from the exploitation of women and children. In 2010, I was sitting in our firm’s office in San Francisco when [Craigslist] Chief Executive Officer Jim Buckmaster told me they were going to shut the section down. It was heartbreaking. I knew the content would just migrate.