Neither have I. But many people that have been 'taken' by scams had follow up communication. Apparently, you are saying that the operators of websites have no responsibility to ensure that what is posted on their sites is valid. On that we disagree.
If I rent a car from avis and use it to go to and get away from a bank robbery should avis be responsible because they made money off me?
Oh, please. That's a very poor effort at making an analogy. A better analogy would be for you to make arrangements to rent a car on Orbitz, then find out the car rental company was nothing but a scam, and that they were renting stolen cars. Who is responsible in that case? Does Orbitz bear any responsibility for making sure that companies who rent cars to consumers through them are validly operating firms? Or do you hold the person who rented the stolen car responsible for not knowing the car was stolen?
>>A better analogy would be for you to make arrangements to rent a car on Orbitz, then find out the car rental company was nothing but a scam, and that they were renting stolen cars.<<
That model is utterly different from CL. It is actually 180 degrees different.
As I have said in other posts, the CL model is the bulleting board in a store or restaurant with business cards and ads. And should be treated as such - by those posting ads and those answering ads.
Caveot emptor.
>>Apparently, you are saying that the operators of websites have no responsibility to ensure that what is posted on their sites is valid.<<
If their business model is like CL, then the answer is a resounding YES.
>>But many people that have been ‘taken’ by scams had follow up communication.<<
If that is true, they really ARE dumb. But that is not the sites fault:
http://www.craigslist.org/about/scams.html
This is posted at the top of every category. “There’s a sucker born every minute. And two to take him.” I do not want to live in a rubber padded world that eliminates all normal, rational human being’s freedoms to protect a few suckers that are gonna be suckers no matter what.
MEGoody, the law doesn’t agree with you.
Let me perhaps bring this a little closer to home for you.
Let’s say someone posts on Free Republic the following:
“Donate to the Republicans, they’ll shrink the size of government.”
So I donate. And then they do the opposite.
Under your theory, Free Republic would be responsible as it “participated” in the scam.
Under common sense, however... you can see where this would all lead.