The Craigslist Ban

[Jake_Ellison]

For those of you who haven't heard (because of the loud calls in the media, following the recent "Craigslist killer" hysteria, to further restrict rights in favor of the illusion of safety and forced morality), there are people in this country objecting to the gov's intimidation that forced Craigslist to shut down their (almost openly) prostitution related ad section, and they are making excellent arguments.

Here's a youtube video of a news piece asking the question in the title:

To add to those arguments, this person was caught soon after his first murder precisely thanks to Craigslist. He wasn't a serial killer, but rather a serial robber who murdered this one victim because he felt trapped (a little detail tabloids were neglecting to emphasize), but if he were: serial killers searching out their victims on Craigslist would actually leave an e-mail and IP trail that would help Police catch up with them faster than if they were picking them out on the streets. So, if anything, this ban will cause more murders, rather than prevent any.

[Chris.S]

I don't think it would decrease or increase the murder rate. A person intent on killing will kill regardless of media usage, but might have a decreased number of easy targets of people being too trustworthy of strangers met on the internet.

I do agree that the ban will increase street prostitution, and some of it will just move to other adsites, hosting services, adult networking sites, and even to escort services. But really, if they're going this far to ban freely hosted sex ads, the next thing is probably entire sex sites, and then porn/sex toy shops (or increased regulation of). Is the ban just in the U.S. or the entire CL?

[TheEgoist]

As we all know, violent sexual criminals didn't exist until the internet. I hear Jeffrey Dahmer learned how to boil teenage boys alive on 4Chan. Albert Fish figured out how to cook a small child from SomethingAwful. H.H Holmes advertised his hotel of horrors on CraigsList.