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Craigslist's decision to shut down its "adult services" listings isn't likely to end the debate over websites' responsibility to filter user-created content. Late Friday, the San Francisco-based classifieds site placed a black "censored" label on its home page over the category that some law-enforcement and other critics said was becoming a virtual red-light district. A Craigslist spokeswoman declined comment on the action. The move, whether or not it's permanent, isn't likely to stem the proliferation of Web prostitution ads. Craigslist executives themselves previously predicted that such ads could gravitate to other sites or elsewhere on its site. Indeed, antiprostitution advocates noted that ads appearing to sell sex have already migrated to the Craigslist personals section, which has such subheadings as "casual encounters." An ad from Las Vegas on Sunday, for example, read, "I can be your friend, stranger for the night and or dinner buddies." "It looks to me like the pimps are in the process of moving over to 'casual encounters,'" said Melissa Farley, the executive director of Prostitution Research & Education and a Craigslist critic. Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, who helped organize a group of about 20 state attorneys general who demanded that Craigslist shut "adult services," said the apparent decision to close the category is an "important step" in addressing the sale of sex online but "not the end game." "There is not a single magic bullet," he said. "We will continue to pursue this issue with Craigslist if the problem persists, and will continue to insist on effective screening and filtering." Mr. Blumenthal said that he has focused much of his attention on Craigslist because of its prominence but that his office is also negotiating with other sites used by prostitutes. In an interview last week before the move, Craigslist Chief Executive Jim Buckmaster defended the site's adult services section. If Craigslist were to remove the category, "it is not as though we would be getting rid of the ads—we would be dispersing them through other parts of the site," he said. Such a shift could force Craigslist to start charging for and reviewing more ad categories, he said. He also framed the issue as one of free speech. "There are lots of legitimate service providers" targeting adults, he said, citing phone-sex lines. "If users are looking to place legal service ads, it seems they should be able to place them, and place them in a separate category where they can be well managed." At the core of the issue is a debate over whether and how a site like Craigslist should screen for ads that may be advertising illegal services. "I can't think of any serious legal exposure Craigslist faced from the adult-services category," said Eric Goldman, an associate professor at Santa Clara University School of Law. In a number of legal challenges, Craigslist and other sites including Yelp have shielded themselves against lawsuits involving content by citing the Communications Decency Act. That federal law has been interpreted to provide sites with blanket immunity for content created by users, but Mr. Blumenthal disputes that. "It does not override other laws which they may be violating," he said. "There are some very serious legal issues at stake here." Mr. Buckmaster said the challenge has been developing a system that filters out ads that are illegal or at odds with the site's terms of use. In May 2009, Craigslist created the adult-services category and began manually reviewing each ad in the category before it was posted. The site has employed dozens of U.S. lawyers to conduct those reviews, Mr. Buckmaster said, because he believed they would be more effective than offshore or automated review systems, which may not be able to parse the real meaning of the ads' text. He declined to say exactly how much Craigslist spent on the team of legal reviewers but said that the site was "sparing no expense." In the first 12 months after the additional screening measures were implemented, some 725,000 ads were rejected, Mr. Buckmaster said.

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