Craigslist drops erotic services ads

The manual screening - the first in the website's history - comes after Boston University medical student Philip Markoff was charged with the April killing of masseuse Julissa Brisman. Police said Markoff met Brisman through the erotic services section on Craigslist. Markoff has pleaded not guilty to charges that include armed robbery and murder.

As of Tuesday night, Craigslist stopped accepting erotic services listings for US cities, and all remaining ads will expire within seven days. The new adult section bans ads suggesting or implying an exchange of sexual favors for money, and nude pornographic images or images suggestive of an offer of sexual favors are also prohibited.

"We're trying to strike a balance," Craigslist chief executive Jim Buckmaster said yesterday. "We've gotten a lot of feedback on this issue."

Buckmaster said each posting to the new adult category will be manually reviewed before appearing on the site to make sure it complies with Craigslist posting guidelines and terms of use, which prohibit posting, e-mailing, or otherwise making available content that is unlawful or pornographic or advertises illegal services. The guidelines do not specifically address massages.

New listings will cost $10, but once approved, will be eligible for reposting at $5. Buckmaster, who runs the country's largest online classified website, said he did not know how much this new initiative would cost Craigslist nor how much additional staff he would need to hire. The company generally does not release financial details.

Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan, who wrote a letter to Buckmaster in April calling on Craigslist to shut down the erotic services section, said in a statement yesterday: "It's clear to everyone that Craigslist's erotic services section was nothing more than an Internet brothel. I'm encouraged that Craigslist has agreed to fundamentally change how they operate and monitor the site."

Buckmaster, in a phone interview yesterday, appeared to back away from earlier e-mailed statements he made to the Globe in response to a question about how much of Craigslist's traffic is dedicated to the erotic and sex-related portions of the site: "I would not describe any section of our site as 'sex related,' " he wrote in the e-mail last month.

When asked why he would eliminate the erotic services section if he believed no section was "sex related," Buckmaster said yesterday: "That particular content was taken out of context in my view, misused as a lead. And I'd rather not go down that route."

Until now, listings for erotic services accounted for about 1 percent of the 40 million classified ads posted to Craigslist every month. Buckmaster said the number of ads in this section has declined about 90 percent since last year when, as part of an agreement with 43 attorneys general, Craigslist began requiring people posting erotic ads to pay a $5 to $10 fee with a credit card to enable law enforcement to trace the listing.

Buckmaster said he did not believe the latest changes would result in an additional loss of business. When asked if that meant he believed the posters would find other places on Craigslist to advertise the content, Buckmaster said: "Any ad that's going to be posted to the adult services site is going to be fully compliant. As always, the various tactics we have, plus community flagging, will address ads that people try to post in the wrong category, should they try to do so."

Rhode Island Attorney General Patrick C. Lynch applauded Craigslist for shutting down the erotic services section. "Everybody who uses the Internet, whether they're part of the Craigslist community or not, needs to know that they're always just a mouse-click away from questionable or repulsive content, and from danger, and they need to be responsible for their actions as well," he said in a statement.

The attorneys general from Massachusetts and Connecticut both said in separate statements yesterday that it's too soon to tell whether the changes on Craigs list will eliminate postings involving illegal activity. They both said that they would continue to review the site.

"We will be monitoring closely to make sure that this measure is more than a name change from erotic to adult and that the manual blocking is tough and effective to scrub prostitution and pornography," said Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal.

Although Craigslist is stepping up its involvement by manually reviewing the posts, the company likely will not take on any more liability, according to several legal analysts. Craigslist is protected from liability for posting listings for illegal activity under the 1996 Federal Communications Act, which gives companies immunity for content they had no role in creating.

"Unless they create the content, they're not liable for it," said T. Barton Carter, a communications and law professor at Boston University.

When asked why Craigslist has not previously screened erotic postings if it believed it was not taking on any more liability, Buckmaster said: "One's approach evolves over time."

But a ruling last week from the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit could have potential legal risk for Craigslist, according to David Ardia, director at the Citizen Media Law Project at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University. In that case, the court ruled a woman could proceed with a lawsuit against Yahoo for promising to remove fake profiles with nude photos of her and solicitations for sex and then failing to do so.

"By agreeing to engage in this manual moderation, it has increased Craigslist's legal risk to some degree," Ardia said. "Craigslist has now promised not to post content that violates its terms, and if they fail to properly remove postings that don't meet the conditions, they could potentially face liability for it."

Carter, of Boston University, said he believes Craigslist eliminated the erotic services section and promised to moderate postings as part of a public relations effort following the recent killing in Boston.

"To have a person accused of murder constantly referred to as the Craigslist killer is not good for their image," Carter said. "They may have felt some pressure to take some steps in that area."

Buckmaster defended the company's changes, saying, "It's certainly not a PR move."

Jenn Abelson can be reached at abelson@globe.com.