Another adult cyberbullying case in MO

A 40-year-old Missouri woman has been charged with felony cyberbullying for posting the photo and contact info of a 17-year-old girl in the "Casual Encounters" section of Craigslist, according to a report at CBSNEWS.com. Prosecutors said the posting, allegedly made by Elizabeth Thrasher of St. Peters in the St. Louis area, "suggested the girl was seeking a sexual encounter," and police said the girl "received lewd messages and photographs from men she didn't know and contacted police." They also said the girl is the daughter of Thrasher's ex-husband's girlfriend. Thrasher is the first person to be charged with felony cyberbullying under Missouri's one-year-old cyberbullying law, passed after the suicide of Megan Meier. Under that law cyberbullying is a felony "if a victim is 17 or younger and the suspect 21 or older," according to the report.

Criticism of, changes at Craigslist

Apparently responding to criticism that it was facilitating prostitution, online classified ads giant Craigslist is making some changes. It "will replace its 'erotic services' section with a new adult category that will be more closely monitored, the Washington Post reports. Craigslist, which gets "an estimated 20 billion page views worldwide a month" for a huge variety of ads, says every ad in the new category will be reviewed by a person, and there will be no sex-for-money ads or pornographic images. On the one hand, that doesn't stop people from placing inappropriate ads in other categories; on the other hand that would make such ads harder to find in a medium where there are many sites dedicated to adult content and services. Police cited in a separate article in the Post caution against (anyone) using the Web to arrange in-person meetings and going alone without notifying anyone. Later this week Craigslist sued South Carolina Attorney General Henry McMaster, "asking a judge to stop him from threatening to prosecute [the company's] executives ... on prostitution or obscenity charges," the Boston Herald reports. CEO Jim Buckmaster wrote in the Craigslist blog that "many prominent companies, including AT&T, Microsoft, and Village Voice Media, not to mention major newspapers and other upstanding South Carolina businesses feature more 'adult services' ads than does Craigslist, some of a very graphic nature," according to a report in the San Jose Mercury News.