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Twenty-four days after Blumenthal's first fax, an attorney for Craigslist replied with a four-page letter that effectively said, "Thanks, but no thanks." Lawyer Barry Reingold made clear that Craigslist was sympathetic to the woman's "desire to protect her children from personal advertisements that are intended for adult eyes only," but said it was quite frankly out of the company's hands. He suggested that she install a Web content filter, which, he pointed out, is "freely available, easy to use, and effective."
The law-and-order East Coast prosecutor and the Left Coast live-and-let-sin entrepreneur couldn't have been cut from more different cloths. Blumenthal was a sergeant in the Marine Corps; Newmark adopted a purple peace sign as the logo of his company. Blumenthal, a Brooklyn native, hails from a well-to-do family and holds degrees from both Harvard and Yale; Newmark, a Jersey boy, is more humble in stature as well as pedigree, having earned his computer science degree from Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland.
Over the course of the next several months, both factions bantered back and forth over conference calls, with Craigslist executives gradually growing more receptive to making some concessions. In early 2008, Newmark and Buckmaster agreed to amp up their enforcement of the site's terms of use and introduced a telephone verification requirement. As a result, the number of posts for erotic services in Hartford, Connecticut, dropped from about 400 per day to 50, according to Craigslist's Web metrics.
But when a Connecticut woman was arrested on March 19, 2008, for prostituting herself on Craigslist, Blumenthal jumped back on the case, livid that sex-worker ads were still polluting the site.
"I am astonished and appalled by Craigslist's refusal to recognize the reality of prostitution on its Web site—despite advertisements containing graphic photographs and hourly rates, and widespread reports of prostitutes using the site," he wrote the company. "Craigslist must determine now what type of site it is. If it's truly concerned about the issue, it must devote resources and technology to eliminate these postings from its site."
Frustrated by what he perceived to be stonewalling, Blumenthal went public. He was quoted in the daily New Haven Register as accusing Craigslist of profiting from prostitution. He then laid into Buckmaster and Newmark for allegedly dragging their feet in implementing the agreed-upon changes.
Baffled, Craigslist brass fired back on the site's blog. "We were disappointed that he chose to ignore our recent progress in dramatically improving compliance with our terms of use, shocked at the bizarre assertion that we are 'stonewalling,' and frankly stunned to hear Craigslist recklessly slandered as 'profiting from prostitution,'" Buckmaster wrote. "Craigslist will not be used as a punching bag for false and defamatory statements."
In July 2008, the sides arranged their first face-to-face sit-down. Buckmaster, along with two Craigslist attorneys, made the cross-country trek to Rye, New York, just beyond the Connecticut border, halfway between Hartford and New York City. They met Blumenthal and a few of his subordinates in a coffee shop and, over the course of a few hours, hashed out an agreement.
Under the accord, Craigslist began asking advertisers to provide valid identification, in addition to charging Erotic Services advertisers a nominal credit card fee ($5 to $10) per ad, enabling the company to confirm users' identities and establish a digital fingerprint. Craigslist also vowed to donate all profits from the sex category on the site to various charities, particularly those that address child exploitation and human trafficking.
The agreement, honed and refined throughout last fall, was made public in November. A total of 40 attorneys general endorsed the deal, including those from Tennessee, Washington, Colorado, and Arizona (notable exceptions include Florida, Texas, California, Missouri, Minnesota, and New York).
Craigslist CEO Buckmaster says the company is doing its best to comply with the attorney general's concerns. "There are far more — and far more graphic — images on all of the general-purpose Internet portals and general-purpose search engines than anyone is ever going to find on Craigslist," he says. "That said, we aren't comfortable with any pornographic images being posted on Craigslist, and we're committed to eliminating that."
Inside the Scott County courtroom, the parents of Katherine Olson sat across the aisle from the parents of Michael Anderson as though they were in a wedding they never wanted. Surrounding them were more Olson family members, friends, parishioners from Rolf's church, and law enforcement personnel involved with the case. The 40-seat gallery was filled to capacity.
Michael Anderson entered the courtroom in a blue suit and sat silently as his attorney, Alan Margoles, detailed his sex life. "Remember, Michael Anderson was a dumb kid," Margoles said. "He had no girlfriend, never dated, never went to a high school dance, and never held a girl's hand."
Margoles wanted to show that his client lured Katherine to the home in Savage for sex, and not, as prosecutors put forth, with the intent to kill.
The opening day of the trial saw Nancy Olson take the stand to tell the jury about the last time she saw her daughter. It was when Katherine was singing in the church choir. Prosecutors asked when she saw her daughter next.
"The next time I saw her, she was in a casket at Morris Nilsen Funeral Home," Nancy said. "And she was cold and smelled like chemicals."
The next day, Barbara Anderson took the stand. The soft-spoken mother wore her hair parted in the center, and politely detailed how, on the day of the murder, Michael had come home from work, just like any other day. "That's just Michael," she would say later. "He never really talked unless he had a fun time off-roading in his truck." Prior to the hearing, Craigslist had helped law enforcement by assembling a 127-page dossier on Michael Anderson's use of the Web site.
(It's not unusual for Craigslist to cooperate with law enforcement and supply information about users suspected of committing crimes to authorities. Last December, the California Highway Patrol served a search warrant on Craigslist to obtain the computer IP address of someone who was encouraging a mass suicide jump from an unspecified Bay Area bridge.)
