In Boston, the market where the “Craigslist killer” found his victim, there’s a new call for Craigslist to drop its ads for prostitution. In an editorial today, the Boston Globe, owned by The New York Times Co., said, “Craigslist should shut down its sleazy online sex shop and instead turn back to the legitimate forms of exchange that made it an Internet juggernaut in the first place.”

Peter M. Zollman

“Many other websites and publications run such ads,” the Globe notes, but Craigslist’s “unique national status” and its professed “public service mission” make it a larger target.

“While Craigslist should be lauded for having in place stronger safeguards than many other websites — and the classifieds sections of some newspapers and magazines — the site is, at the end of the day, profiting off of prostitution. And there’s a reason so many anti-child-exploitation and anti-human-trafficking groups have targeted Craigslist: In its current form the site is an attractive venue for predators to sell women and children against their will.”

In my personal view,  is actually a good thing, because essentially it creates a central database that can be used to track people who exploit children; pimps who force women (or men, or children) into prostitution against their will, and other criminal activity. If Craigslist drops its prostitution ads, does anyone really believe any of that activity itself will be eliminated? I don’t. It’ll just go elsewhere, and it will be much tougher to find and police.

My feeling? Craigslist should maintain its adult services ads, but donate all of the profits to non-profits and organizations, preferably those that fight exploitation of children; support law enforcement work in that area, and help people with AIDS and other diseases.

And here’s the key, in my opinion: Craigslist, which calls itself a “relatively non-commercial [site with a] public-service mission and non-corporate culture” should be 100 percent transparent in its donations. It should report to its “community” annually about every donation, and every $10 received and spent: how much money, where it went, what the organizations that received the money agreed to do with it, and how the donees were chosen.

Craigslist founder Craig Newmark and CEO Jim Buckmaster certainly don’t need the proceeds from the $36 million or so  in prostitution ads that they’ll run in 2010. EBay, the other shareholder in Craigslist Inc., is distancing itself as fast as possible from “adult services” ads, so presumably it doesn’t need or want the money, either. If no one wants it, why doesn’t Craigslist just stop keeping it and instead give it away for the good of the Craigslist community, and the community at large?