Scandal!: The Craigslist Experiment

Controversy runneth over on the interweb today thanks to that Craigslist "prank" we mentioned last week, which has since has exploded into a full-fledged blog war. To get you up to speed: Blogger Jason Fortuny "borrowed" an explicit ad from a woman looking for rough sex, re-posted it in the Casual Encounters section of Craigslist Seattle, then took the nearly two hundred responses he received and posted those on the net ... including full email addresses and naked photos of the duped men. Naturally, they weren't happy about it, and it may ruin many a life—including Jason's, if certain threats turn out to be real. Responses from others have ranged from "these perverts got what they deserved" to "Jason is a sociopath whose severely beaten body should be sued for damages." While the "experiment" strikes us as sort of pointless—is it any surprise that there are people out there who are into rough sex fantasy play and that they answer personal ads?—it still serves as a hard lesson in online privacy (= you don't have any) and will no doubt to lead to some interesting legal challenges. In the meantime, we'll continue looking for people who actually are into rough sex instead of their imposters. Leave this stuff to the professionals. (P.S. This would be an excellent time to break out your spiffy new comment privileges and tell us what you think. We're just saying.)

· The Craigslist Experiment (original post @ livejournal.com)
· "RFJason CL Experiment" (encyclopediadramatica.com)
· "Craigslist" + "Online Mob 'Justice'" (wired.com)
· "The Seattle Craigslist sex scandal" (tinynibbles.com)
· "Who is Jerry Cummings (besides a guy holding his dick in the office?)" (Valleywag)
· "Perhaps you'd be interested in a "casual encounter" with my attorney?" (siliconvalley.com)