Craigslist Censored: Adult Section Comes Down • Hacker News Board

Re: Craigslist Censored: Adult Section Comes Down

#51

Post by joe_the_user » Sat, Sep 04, 2010, 6:15 PM UTC

sliverstorm wrote: post #24

korch wrote: post #20

The best way to get a bad law repealed is to enforce it strictly. —Abraham Lincoln First, the only question that truly matters: Cui Bono? What industry made ~40% of their revenues from classified listings within the last decade? What industry has been slyly running hooker ads and profiting off prostitution for decades? What industry has been anti-Internet from the start? What industry has been running sensationalist,…

> send one hundred or more paid lobbyists to DC. With what money? Not only does Craigslist not really have any profitable business interests to protect, but they don't have the money to do that even if they wanted to.

I don't think the down votes are warranted here.

Craigslist makes money but this money is minimal compared to the amount of money its taking from the billion-dollar newspaper industry.

Sending 100+ lobbyists to Washington would cost at least a good chunk of the ~$100 million/year that craigslist makes. It's reasonable to argue that it would make no sense to do this.

Re: Craigslist Censored: Adult Section Comes Down

#52

Post by Maascamp » Sat, Sep 04, 2010, 6:19 PM UTC

jbellis wrote: post #33

korch wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Craigslist makes over $100 million a year. And they have just 60 or so employees. And I bet they have dirt cheap fixed costs. The website hasn't fucking changed in a decade, and it's more popular than ever! They're probably the Internet company with the highest profit margins! Craiglist is the fucking showcase example of Metcalfe's law. But like bank robbers who foolishly think they wouldn't get caught on the 10th ro…

> I'm an unabashed Craiglist hater simply because he completely fucked up and missed the boat and failed us developers by not transforming the most popular and best single Internet site of high signal/noise anonymous contact into the best open mashup API of real-time, localized, semantic data Not only has CL failed to innovate, it actively goes after and shuts down third parties who do interesting things with CL data…

Stop whining. It's not your data.

Re: Craigslist Censored: Adult Section Comes Down

#53

Post by kelnos » Sat, Sep 04, 2010, 7:05 PM UTC

Maascamp wrote: post #52

jbellis wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm an unabashed Craiglist hater simply because he completely fucked up and missed the boat and failed us developers by not transforming the most popular and best single Internet site of high signal/noise anonymous contact into the best open mashup API of real-time, localized, semantic data Not only has CL failed to innovate, it actively goes after and shuts down third parties who do interesting things with CL data…

Stop whining. It's not your data.

Actually, if jbellis posts to CL, some of it is his data. It belongs to the people who post it, not CL. See the terms of use: http://www.craigslist.org/about/terms.of.use

Notably section 3, "CONTENT," and the 2nd paragraph of section 14, "PROPRIETARY RIGHTS," in which they explicitly disclaim ownership: "Although craigslist does not claim ownership of content that its users post..."

Re: Craigslist Censored: Adult Section Comes Down

#54

Post by kelnos » Sat, Sep 04, 2010, 7:10 PM UTC

ramchip wrote: post #42

yummyfajitas wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm confused here - according to Wikipedia, (coital) prostitution is illegal in Japan. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prostitution_in_Japan As you say, it takes a lot for the police to get involved - I'll speculate that they only pay attention when the monthly envelope of cash is light. That isn't the model pushed by most advocates of legal prostitution that I've heard - most want prostitution to be legal in the same w…

> I'm confused here - according to Wikipedia, (coital) prostitution is illegal in Japan. And so is gambling, yet you'll find plenty of pachinko parlours or soaplands/"health salons" announced very explicitly. I believe the main reason is that many of these places are run by Yakuza (organized crime), and police would rather not stir up the hornet's nest - there's a sort of tacit agreement.

You've missed the point. The original premise from patio11 was that legalizing prostitution doesn't automatically make it all safe, aboveboard, and free from crime. Then he used Japan as an example... except that prostitution isn't legal there. Regardless of how it's treated by the police, the point is that it's not legal, and that skews how the illegal operations work.

(Regardless, my feeling is that Japan's attitude toward sexuality is so different from that of Europe/the Americas that it's a little hard to make good comparisons anyway.)

The Amsterdam argument is interesting and worthy of further discussion, at least.

Re: Craigslist Censored: Adult Section Comes Down

#55

Post by patio11 » Sat, Sep 04, 2010, 7:17 PM UTC

weeksie wrote: post #39

patio11 wrote: post #21

I hear quite often that prostitution would be a wonderfully pleasant industry if it were only legal, which does not square with the experiences of countries where it is legal or tolerated. You pretty much have to be running schoolgirls out of homeroom to get the Nagoya police to so much as glance in your direction, but Japanese prostitution is a very, very ugly place to be, and much of it is based on trafficking. I l…

Don't paint every country with the same brush. In Australia it's legal and regulated. Sure, there are dodgy brothels (usually the asian ones) but the normal ones are mostly college girls who are earning a bunch of extra cash.

Sure, there are dodgy brothels

There are "dodgy" brothels like the American South had "dodgy" cotton plantations in the 19th century.

the normal ones are mostly college girls who are earning a bunch of extra cash

This is a myth which society uses to let it sleep at night about them. (The same myth is widely held about strippers in the United States, and is equally false there.) Prostitution, nice clean business, step up into a middle class existence. Social science research on the demographics of prostitutes, in Australia and elsewhere, is legion. Only about a quarter of brother prostitutes either have a degree or are enrolled in college. (see: "Sex work and sex workers in Australia")

You can find more numbers at your leisure. A good source of pointers is Wiki

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prostitution_in_Australia

Among many other depressing statistics:

http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/queensland/queensland-sex-in...

After 10 years of legal brothels in Queensland, 90 per cent of prostitution here remains either unregulated or illegal, University of Queensland research shows.

Re: Craigslist Censored: Adult Section Comes Down

#56

Post by kelnos » Sat, Sep 04, 2010, 7:24 PM UTC

thailandstartup wrote: post #47

yummyfajitas wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have evidence for this? (Note: I'm looking for something a bit stronger than "Country X has gun prohibition, a different social structure, different demographics and different laws, and has lower homicide rate than Country Y which does not have gun prohibition.")

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_gun_owners... Countries that have prohibitions on firearms have fewer firearms. It's a huge difference in the numbers and that's an example of prohibition working. I don't know that countries that have prohibitions on drugs reduce drug taking by the same amount, or countries with prohibitions on prostitution reduces prostitution by a similar amount. Mexico is an outli…

> Countries that have prohibitions on firearms have fewer firearms. It's a huge difference in the numbers and that's an example of prohibition working.

Who cares? You're working from a premise that having fewer firearms is a good thing. I'm not going to say I disagree, but I'm not sure I agree either.

The real metric is whether or not firearm-related crimes are significantly reduced in countries where there are prohibitions on firearms.

There's also the question of whether firearm use matters in some crimes. Take these two scenarios:

1. Burglar commits armed (firearms) robbery of a house. Owners of the house are suitably frightened but give in to the burglars. Stuff is stolen but no one gets hurt.

2. Burglar commits armed (knives) robbery of a house. Owners of the house are suitably frightened but give in to the burglars. Stuff is stolen but no one gets hurt.

They are essentially the same crime, but now #2 is not lumped in with the "firarms-related crime" group.

And let's try keeping #1 as it is, but now #2 is this:

2'. Burglar commits armed (knives) robbery of a house. Owners of the house think a knife isn't too scary and fight back. One owner gets stabbed and dies.

I don't know about the frequency of stuff like this, but it's certainly not a quick "look at the numbers" thing to decide which is better.

Re: Craigslist Censored: Adult Section Comes Down

#57

Post by Symmetry » Sat, Sep 04, 2010, 7:51 PM UTC

korch wrote: post #20

The best way to get a bad law repealed is to enforce it strictly. —Abraham Lincoln First, the only question that truly matters: Cui Bono? What industry made ~40% of their revenues from classified listings within the last decade? What industry has been slyly running hooker ads and profiting off prostitution for decades? What industry has been anti-Internet from the start? What industry has been running sensationalist,…

" As a society, what is our solution to this so-called problem? We add another layer of victimization on these innocent women who are already victimized!"

'Fun' fact, one out of every 50 times a prostitute in Chicago has sex she's doing it with a cop for no money so he doesn't arrest her.

Re: Craigslist Censored: Adult Section Comes Down

#58

Post by barrkel » Sat, Sep 04, 2010, 7:55 PM UTC

kelnos wrote: post #56

thailandstartup wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_gun_owners... Countries that have prohibitions on firearms have fewer firearms. It's a huge difference in the numbers and that's an example of prohibition working. I don't know that countries that have prohibitions on drugs reduce drug taking by the same amount, or countries with prohibitions on prostitution reduces prostitution by a similar amount. Mexico is an outli…

> Countries that have prohibitions on firearms have fewer firearms. It's a huge difference in the numbers and that's an example of prohibition working. Who cares? You're working from a premise that having fewer firearms is a good thing. I'm not going to say I disagree, but I'm not sure I agree either. The real metric is whether or not firearm-related crimes are significantly reduced in countries where there are prohi…

The real metric is whether or not firearm-related crimes are significantly reduced in countries where there are prohibitions on firearms.

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_mur_wit_fir_percap-cri...

Contrast US with UK and Ireland.

Actually, I think US cultural exports are a large factor in the increase of gun crime in the UK and Ireland, a certain glorification of the weapon that gang members feel they need to live up to.

Re: Craigslist Censored: Adult Section Comes Down

#59

Post by whopa » Sat, Sep 04, 2010, 8:01 PM UTC

kelnos wrote: post #54

ramchip wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm confused here - according to Wikipedia, (coital) prostitution is illegal in Japan. And so is gambling, yet you'll find plenty of pachinko parlours or soaplands/"health salons" announced very explicitly. I believe the main reason is that many of these places are run by Yakuza (organized crime), and police would rather not stir up the hornet's nest - there's a sort of tacit agreement.

You've missed the point. The original premise from patio11 was that legalizing prostitution doesn't automatically make it all safe, aboveboard, and free from crime. Then he used Japan as an example... except that prostitution isn't legal there. Regardless of how it's treated by the police, the point is that it's not legal, and that skews how the illegal operations work. (Regardless, my feeling is that Japan's attitud…

A lot of places where prostitution is legal, pimping is not, e.g., Germany, Canada, Australia, New Zealand. There's less of a trafficking problem in those places, since it can and does get prosecuted (though there still are problems, since here sadly is demand for underage prostitutes etc.)

In the Netherlands, pimping is legal though, which may contribute specifically to the problems they are seeing. I'm not the only one who thinks so:

http://static.rnw.nl/migratie/www.radionetherlands.nl/curren...

I don't think the ban ever happened though.

Re: Craigslist Censored: Adult Section Comes Down

#60

Post by wnoise » Sat, Sep 04, 2010, 8:03 PM UTC

patio11 wrote: post #55

weeksie wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't paint every country with the same brush. In Australia it's legal and regulated. Sure, there are dodgy brothels (usually the asian ones) but the normal ones are mostly college girls who are earning a bunch of extra cash.

Sure, there are dodgy brothels There are "dodgy" brothels like the American South had "dodgy" cotton plantations in the 19th century. the normal ones are mostly college girls who are earning a bunch of extra cash This is a myth which society uses to let it sleep at night about them. (The same myth is widely held about strippers in the United States, and is equally false there.) Prostitution, nice clean business, step…

> Only about a quarter of brother prostitutes either have a degree or are enrolled in college

Yeah, and that's about the same proportion as the general population who have a college degree.

http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/subscriber.nsf/log?openagent&...

(I don't know how long that link will work. It's "6227.0 - Education and Work, Australia, May 2008"), page 4 "more than one in five (22%) had a highest level of attainment of Bachelor Degree or above"