Village Voice Media’s general counsel Liz McDougall sent a statement to The Politicker today calling the effort by City Council members Melissa Mark-Viverito and Brad Lander to shut the controversial “adult” section of their classified ad site Backpage.com “misguided.” Ms. Mark-Viverito and Mr. Lander announced a resolution yesterday calling for the site to be closed because it “serves as a platform to traffic minors for sex.” Ms. McDougall, acknowledged children are trafficked in ads on the site, but she argued policing the traffickers will be harder if the ads move elsewhere.

“The demand to shut down this section on Backpage.com will simply drive such content to other Internet portals who will move their advertising websites into offshore entities and out of reach of US law enforcement — and the ability to trace the traffickers and the children that they are trafficking for rescue and prosecution will be lost,” Ms. McDougall said. Read More