Tim White, the operator of Craigslistblog.org, an unofficial blog about the free classifieds site, is throwing in the slightly soiled towel. Craigslist, which launched its official blog well after White launched his in March, threatened him with legal action over its name in April. Craigslist's lawyers and White have been going back and forth since then. White tells Valleywag Craigslist has now offered him a settlement: If he agreed not to sell the domain name or run advertising, they'd let him keep the site. Instead of agreeing to it, he's shutting down the site."That particular blog was never about the money, but it definitely makes things more difficult if I have no chance of paying the writers," says White. "I’m torn because there’s so much news every day about them and I’d like to see someone cover it closely." We'll do what we can, Tim. The site's disappearance is disappointing. But the whole episode served to reveal Craigslist CEO Jim Buckmaster as a control-freaky jerk who's sensitive to criticism, and not averse to litigation when he doesn't get his way. That's good information for people to have — and we wouldn't have learned it without White.

Are you one of those horrible thoughtless New Yorkers who no one can stand to be around and yet you believe everyone else is the problem? Are you a woman? And single and looking for some free meals? Craigslist to the rescue again! It seems that the poster is fed up with his sister's mega-douche boyfriend and is seeking a female version of the obnoxious bounder so that his beloved sis can see for herself what it's like to have a sibling swallowed up by the black hole of a shit relationship. "Candidates should be painful to be around, obnoxious, thoughtless and immature. She should use terms like, 'tragic,' 'as if' and various internet terms like 'omg,' 'lol,' 'jk,' etc." Click through for more qualifications and a bigger pic.

A Sacramento-based "high-tech pimp" who advertised sex with underage women for pay on Craigslist is now in custody. Federal investigators were able to bust 22-year old Stephen McKesson after one of the young women's friends saw her photo in Craigslist's Erotic Services section for panderers. Nobody will see the benefit to the community in this: In terms of ensuring the health and safety of teenage prostitutes, or in terms of good publicity for Craigslist. CEO Jim Buckmaster and founder Craig Newmark get all the blame for offering a space for sex trade ads, but none of the credit for the accidental public service such space offers. As if there were no unwilling minors in prostitution before abusive but charismatic hustlers got laptops?It's unlikely that Buckmaster and Newmark would ever embrace the role of sex trade stewardship in the public square. Because they don't need to in order to remain successful. But to walk the laissez-faire line towards sex work they do can only take their image as "The Good Guys" (or at least, "The Not Quite So Greedy Guys") so far. There's no denying that Erotic Services never was just an innocent home for legal, consensual fantasy-for-hire. So Craigslist collaborates with law enforcement to police the site's own users. But Craigslist users are not some special breed of "pervert" or "paedophile" preying on children — the traceability of online behavior just makes it easier to see what already took place behind closed doors. After all, McKesson also used old-timey calling cards with salacious photographs to market his services in a throwback to Storyville's heyday. This is the "saddest part" of these stories, not the laptops and the blurred-face photos the media and law enforcement trot out fetishistically. The next time Craigslist or any online service is called to task to explain what they are doing to end the exploitation of minors, they should start by explaining its ancient history, not new surveillance technology.

Gosh—are the Emmy Awards here already? While we make the last arrangements for our fabulous Emmy Awards Liveblog Extravaganza and eco-themed after-party Sunday (hey—who seated America Ferrera next to Blake Lively? There's gonna be so much eye-rolling going down, it's gonna be like it's all Scanners up in he-yuh!), we thought we'd do our part for anyone else out there scrambling to pull things together in time. We dutifully pass along, then, this Craigslist ad seeking a highly specific brand of companionship for the big show:

One thing that is difficult about capturing the pathos of this Lehman crisis, aside from the obvious fact that media people are to the prospect of unemployment as Michelle Duggar is to the prospect of having to wet nurse something, is that Lehman employees seem so intent on having a good time. Ten thousand or so bankers (like the photogenic London based couple pictured here) will lose their jobs, and already there are like 296 Craigslist ads up now offering casual sex to be performed on/by them. And none of the ads seem clever enough to be fake! (And we even adjusted our creativity expectations downward in accordance with industry norms; for instance, if this guy asked if you wanted to get licked like, say, a hamburger, we might be suspicious.) Then there are these guys…

If you've ever had the overwhelming desire to get busy in front of a "professional journalist," now is your chance. Seen recently on Craigslist, a heartfelt entreaty:

Another trio of small-time crooks have been charged with extortion for threatening to expose a California client of an online prostitute. These Fresno-based operators, working with an escort who used Craigslist to meet her client, demanded cash in exchange for keeping his prostitution habit a secret. Is this a copycat crime, inspired by the three scammers who told a Bay Area tech executive they'd leak a sex tape of him with a prostitute unless he paid them off? If the accused Silicon Valley extortionists were reminiscent of The Big Sleep, with their requested $250,000 bribe, the Central Valley guys are more The Big Lebowksi. They said they'd keep mum for a mere $3,000, to be left "in a shopping cart in a parking lot" of a local mall.

There's so many reasons to run away from this as-yet-unknown Portland startup's "gigs" ad on Craigslist. The founders say their app was written "I think [in] C#." They're "so disruptive" that they've "already been approached by TechCrunch" — without a product release yet. And for the right full-time programmer, they'll give you a nice room, Wi-Fi, and food. Stock? You can find as many sheets of that as you like in the bathroom. "No drugs or alcoholics!" Good god, how else are you supposed to blow off this sweatshop steam? The full ad continues:

We need more gushy "Internet rich dudes, they're just like us!" star profiles, don't we? The problem is, in the Valley, too few are willing to flaunt their success. Take this piece of fiction about Jim Buckmaster, Craigslist's CEO, in the Times of London: "He lives in a modest, rented apartment not far from the company’s global headquarters, a rickety 19th century house tucked between a pizza restaurant and a junk shop in San Francisco." If a "modest apartment" is a freestanding house — a rarity in San Francisco — which can accommodate 40 people for Thanksgiving, then sure. The article also repeats an old canard about how Newmark doesn't have a place to park his car — when he's had parking behind the house he owns for years.The humility of billionaires! No, the real "nerd values" on display are the ones responsible for this wealth. Like the $16 million Buckmaster and founder Craig Newmark got in brokering a deal to let eBay buy a 28 percent stake in their company. Yet they still make a point of posing as heroes of the ultraliberal working class, second-hand Prius and all. Worse yet, people continue to buy it. And not just gullible reporters parachuting in from London, either. Larry from Minneapolis writes in a comment:

A rash of solar panel thefts has hit the Bay Area and Sacramento according to a report from local news station KPIX. Recently hit was the Hearst Elementary School in Pleasanton. Best part of the story? The main suspect in the case, a Pittsburg, Calif. resident, is alleged to have used Craigslist to fence the goods. According to reporter Jeffrey Schaub, each panel can fetch from $800 to $1000, much more than stolen copper piping or the platinum from catalytic convertors in car mufflers, which are also hot items. Putting it all together — the East Bay, late-night theft and Craigslist — my money is on meth addicts.

Despite crafting an elaborate plan involving a system of rope lines, helicopters and intensive flash photography, Suri Cruise was unable to make a clean getaway from parent Katie Holmes in New York on Tuesday night. Suri admitted that she failed to account for one thing: her mother's sunglasses. Cruise said, "I always forget about her sunglasses. I thought maybe for once she would be a normal person and not wear them since you know, it's night. Nope, mommy wanted to pretend she was a rock star yet again." Cruise place a share of the blame on the actors she hired for the failed attempt on Tuesday night. Cruise added, "You get what you pay for when you use Craigslist. I was paying in pizza rolls and I got a bunch of dudes from New Jersey." Cruise still remains optimistic and plans on making another getaway in the near future, perhaps during a snowstorm.

Happy holiday weekend from the Alameda County Sheriff's office! They're already ahead of your Labor Day discount sex-shopping plans. Police answered Craigslist ads in the "erotic services" section and set up appointments in Dublin and Castro Valley hotels, posing to the prostitutes as clients looking for a late-night session. At 2:30 a.m. and 9 a.m. on Wednesday, between both stings, the cops made 57 arrests, the majority for prostitution and "suspicion of aiding or facilitating prostitution."Aiding the cops: their search button. This is one of the bigger busts off Craigslist this year, with two twists: targeting the late-night working girls, and doing it when rent is due and women are more prone to risk using Craigslist, which makes them easy targets for vice cops. For all they want to call their raid a remedy to "cyberpimping," the cop strategy is as old-fashioned as it gets.

Hah. He's 40 (40-year-old blogger! sad!), 5'11", and "went to one of those selective East Coast schools." Always important when looking for anonymous tail in a strange town! Guesses? We honestly don't even want to hazard one. (If Doree's list is representative, Craigslist Denver seems to be crawling with dudes looking to "pleasure" those hot lady Obama voters.) [Craigslist via NYO]

Hey lesbos and bi-curious ladytypes! We have got the perfect girl for you. She fancies herself the bisexual Carrie Bradshaw! You see, she's short but head-turning, she goes to fancy parties, and she hates fat people! (And Latinos and people with children.) We're not exactly sure why she's chosen to look for a woman at this point rather than a fella, but she sent us an email of a post that she put up on internet carnival Craigslist so we've decided to help her out. It's hideous! You should totally read it after the jump. Good luck ladies!

Because there's nothing we like more than to connect eco-conscious Southland commuters with vehicle-equipped skirtlessness-enthusiasts, we now pass along this Craigslist ad featuring a fresh spin on shared rides:

There seems to be no role left in book publishing that an author can't outsource. Ghost writers are commonplace. Laura "JT LeRoy" Albert pioneered the use of a surrogate in book-tour appearances. And judging by the Craigslist ad after the jump, writers are even hiring forgers to affix their autographs to new releases, because signing books is just way too much work. With all the celebrity titles in circulation, this surely can't be a brand-new phenomenon, but has anyone ever been quite so cheap and brazen about it?

Look at it this way. Chill with the old dude a couple nights a week, donate his $10,000 to Meals on Wheels, and then write about your life-changing experience on the front page of The New York Times Magazine. Next, you parlay that little gem into best-selling memoir. The critics don't know how not to rave about such a thing. You'll get on Oprah, housewives will throw money at you. And, most importantly, you just might learn a thing or two about the little bundle of troubles that is you. Click through for full-size image. [Craigslist]

An eagle-eyed, Craigslist-scavenging informant today points us to a compelling career opportunity for the ambitious dreamer in you: A "high-ranking staffer on a hit dance reality show" is in dire need of a new assistant after the last one apparently agreed to assist him (or her, we suppose) full-time in bed:

In 2006, Jason Fortuny — one of the so-called "Internet trolls" featured recently in the New York Times Magazine — placed an ad on Craigslist in which he pretended to be a woman seeking sex. Later, he posted photos and emails sent to him by the ad's respondents. Now, one of them — image and response pictured above — is suing him for $75,000. This John Doe claims Fortuny's post caused him to "suffer and continue to suffer from humiliation, embarrassment, lost opportunity of keeping his family together, and emotional distress." The plaintiff claims Fortuny violated his copyright, wrongfully disclosed private facts and intruded upon his seclusion. By way of response, Forturny wrote an eight-page letter to the judge in his own defense . It's much to long for even the most concerned citizen to read, but since its contents so seriously affect the legal system of our nation-state, we've shortened it down to the crucial bits, below.

Earthquakes can't stop us now. Under "Writing Gigs" at Craigslist, some optimistic editor or publisher has posted an uber-excited notice about a "free" daily paper launching in L.A. that will boast a circulation between 250-300,000, with a cool half mil for the Sunday edition. "You will not be paid for this time now but, you may be considered for what will likely be the most coveted media jobs in the country." Five stages of media grief: Denial, Anger, Blogging, Delusions of Grandeur, Law School. Full ad below: