Craigslist ad controversy

The Craiglist ad controversy was an incident that took place in early September 2006, in which Jason Fortuny, a Seattle-area graphic designer and network administrator, posed as a woman and posted an ad to Craigslist Seattle seeking a casual sexual encounter with area men. On September 4, he posted to the internet all 178 of the responses, complete with photographs and personal contact details, describing this as the Craigslist Experiment and encouraging others to further identify the respondents. The posting was later mirrored on the satire website Encyclopædia Dramatica.

Although some online exposures of personal information have been seen as justified as exposing malfeasance, many commentators on the Fortuny case saw no such justification here. "The men who replied to Fortuny's posting did not appear to be doing anything illegal, so the outing has no social value other than to prove that someone could ruin lives online", said law professor Jonathan Zittrain
, while Wired writer Ryan Singel described Fortuny as "sociopathic".

The Electronic Frontier Foundation indicated that it thought Fortuny might be liable under Washington State Law, and that this would depend on whether the information he disclosed was of legitimate public concern. Kurt Opsahl, the EFF's staff attorney, said "As far as I know, they (the respondents) are not public figures, so it would be challenging to show that this was something of public concern."

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