The grandstanding of some Attorneys General never ceases — even when they created the “problem” they’re now grandstanding against. Case in point: Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal and his crusade against Craigslist. Two years ago, Blumenthal blamed Craigslist for prostitution ads that appear on the site. Blumenthal, as the state Attorney General should know about the law, right? He should know that he has no legal basis for this complaint, and that under Section 230 of the CDA, Craigslist is not liable for the actions of its users. In fact, legal attempts to pin the blame for such ads on Craigslist have been quickly dismissed on just those grounds. Even more importantly, from a common sense standpoint, Blumenthal should realize that when police work with Craigslist in partnership, they’re able to use it as an effective tool to track down lawbreakers who use the site.
But that doesn’t get headlines.
Instead, Blumenthal, based on no legal basis whatsoever, used his soapbox (along with some other attorneys general) to get Craigslist to changing its policies on “adult” advertisements. Whereas, previously, those ads had been free, Craigslist now required that anyone putting up such ads pay for them with a valid credit card, eliminating many of the ads and making it much, much easier to track down whoever placed them in the first place. You would think that would make the AGs happy. Six months later, however, the AGs were still upset, and got Craigslist to change again, boosting the fee on such ads from $5 to $10 and reviewing more of the ads.
Almost all of these moves came in response to public posturing and baseless legal threats from Blumenthal. So what’s he doing now?
He’s apparently doing more public posturing and issuing more baseless legal threats, because Craigslist stands to make an awful lot of money from these ads — the very same ads that Craigslist only started charging for because of Blumenthal’s pressure:
“I believe Craigslist acted irresponsibly when it unilaterally decided to keep the profits from these posts,” Mr. Blumenthal wrote in the letter…
Yes, and I believe Blumenthal acted irresponsibly when he put bogus grandstanding pressure on Craigslist to put in place the tollbooth in the first place. At what point does he recognize that Craigslist isn’t the target here. It’s the people using Cragslist to break the law — and that Craigslist is more than willing to help law enforcement track down those law breakers?
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