Craigslist to close erotic services category

Pressure from US government has forced Craigslist to pull the shutters down on its controversial sex adverts in favour of a new, closely-monitored system.

"Sometimes a bad guy of some sort tries to pull a fast one on our site," he said in an interview that aired Friday night on ABC News. "We don't want it there, it's wrong, and that's why we have the help of the general community and the law enforcement community getting rid of things like that." said founder Craig Newmark.

Effective today, a new category entitled "adult services" will be opened for postings by legal adult service providers.

"Each posting to this new category will be manually reviewed before appearing on the site, to ensure compliance with Craigslist posting guidelines and terms of use," said Buckmaster. "We are optimistic that the new balance struck today will be an acceptable compromise."

Each posting will be manually approved before posting on the site to ensure compliance with guidelines and terms of use. Each posting will cost $10 and reposting will be charged $5 - although it has said that all of the revenue made from the Adult Services listings goes to charity.

However, the website has consistently rejected claims that it encourages prostitution, saying that it had often assisted law enforcement in their investigations and kept records of everybody who had advertised on the site. Despite such protestations, however, the attacks sparked a period of concerted pressure.