I tried to avoid alarmist language, but Declan McCullagh of CNET has me thoroughly alarmed:

A year ago, Craigslist founder Craig Newmark was busy touting e-government, promoting neighborhood social networks, and blogging about squirrel-proofing his bird feeder.

But now the 57-year-old entrepreneur is spending his days in more nerve-wracking pursuits: responding to attacks from ambitious attorneys general, legal threats from antiprostitution advocacy groups that sometimes seem to be actually anti-Craigslist, and critical articles written by journalists employed by the same newspapers that his company is helping to slowly eviscerate.

And now, two sources have told CNET, a congressional committee has asked Newmark to testify at a hearing in Washington, D.C. on Wednesday afternoon on the topic of “domestic minor sex trafficking.” About the only thing that might make matters worse, perhaps, would be President Obama himself joining the anti-Craigslist fray.

Keep in mind that Craigslist, as McCullagh explains, is a company that employs 30 people and that has scrupulously avoided attempts to scale up dramatically in size. Though not quite a mom-and-pop, Craigslist is a business that has created far more consumer surplus than media organizations many times its size. Simply put, Craigslist doesn’t have the resources to defend itself against baseless attacks. It needs all of us who’ve benefited from its apartment listings, like yours truly, to stick up for it against political bullying. 

Incredibly, Craigslist is being blamed from crimes committed by people who use the service, despite the company’s aggressive efforts to root out criminal activity.  McCullagh goes into greater detail in his article. For me, the most worrying possibility is that this anti-Craigslist effort will cripple new entrants in social media:

Then there’s the option of persuading Congress to rewrite Section 230 of the 1996 Telecommunications Act, which says: “No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.” Translated, that means Craigslist isn’t generally liable for what its users do.

But the law that immunizes Craigslist from lawsuit also protects Facebook, Blogspot, Flickr, and innumerable other Web sites. It lets news organizations, including CNET publisher CBS Interactive, permit readers to post comments without prior approval by an editor. It’s probably no exaggeration to say that one sentence–inserted as part of negotiations over antiporn legislation–gave birth to Web 2.0 and modern social networks.

“Any attempt to reopen section 230 will inevitably invite a flurry of other proposals of how to deputize online intermediaries to handle any concern or pet grievance,” says Berin Szoka, a senior fellow at the free-market Progress and Freedom Foundation.”

Craigslist has been a quality-of-life boon for cities across the country. I find the prospect of Craigslist being strangled to death by political opportunists and rival businesses extremely depressing. 

So far I’ve skirted around a central issue, namely Craigslist’s adult services advertisements. danah boyd of Microsoft Research offers a convincing explanation of how the attack on Craigslist will aid sex traffickers, pimps, and other criminals. One of her most compelling points relates to how spaces like Craigslist can help law enforcement do its job:

Law enforcement is always struggling to gain access to underground networks in order to go after the bastards who abuse people for profit. Underground enforcement is really difficult and it takes a lot of time to invade a community and build enough trust to get access to information that will hopefully lead to the dens of sin. While it always looks so easy on TV, there’s nothing easy or pretty about this kind of work. The Internet has given law enforcement more data than they even know what to do with, more information about more people engaged in more horrific abuses than they’ve ever been able to obtain through underground work. It’s far too easy to mistake more data for more crime and too many Aspiring Governors use the increase of data to spin the public into a frenzy about the dangers of the Internet. The increased availability of data is not the problem; it’s a godsend for getting at the root of the problem and actually helping people.

When law enforcement is ready to go after a criminal network, they systematically set up a sting, trying to get as many people as possible, knowing that whoever they have underground will immediately lose access the moment they act. The Internet changes this dynamic, because it’s a whole lot easier to be underground online, to invade networks and build trust, to go after people one at a time, to grab victims as they’re being victimized. It’s a lot easier to set up stings online, posing as buyers or sellers and luring scumbags into making the wrong move. All without compromising informants.

Working with ISPs to collect data and doing systematic online stings can make an online space more dangerous for criminals than for victims because this process erodes the trust in the intermediary, the online space. Eventually, law enforcement stings will make a space uninhabitable for criminals by making it too risky for them to try to operate there. Censoring a space may hurt the ISP but it does absolutely nothing to hurt the criminals. Making a space uninhabitable by making it risky for criminals to operate there – and publicizing it – is far more effective. This, by the way, is the core lesson that Giuliani’s crew learned in New York. The problem with this plan is that it requires funding law enforcement. [Emphasis added.]

My guess is that sensible arguments like boyd’s will fall on deaf ears as politicians discredited by the economic collapse struggle to find new scapegoats.