Friday, July 11, 2014

Taking it from the streets to home computers and smart phones

Police have charged Alix Catherine Tichelman with manslaughter in the heroin overdose death of a Google executive on his yacht.

Jessica Guynn reports at USATODAY that
The glare of the national spotlight is on Silicon Valley sex workers after news broke this week that an alleged prostitute is charged with leaving a Google executive to die on his yacht in Santa Cruz, Calif., after shooting him up with heroin. The Internet is rife with anonymous websites that match sex workers with clients and help them avoid being arrested or assaulted. The websites have both broadened the sex market and helped customers hire prostitutes more discreetly. Scott Cunningham, an associate professor at Baylor University who studies the economics of prostitution, said the Internet has made the sex trade "extraordinarily efficient," taking it from the streets and red-light districts to home computers and smartphones. "Before the Internet, clients didn't know where to find the prostitutes and prostitutes did not know where to find the clients. If you think about it in an economic sense, the Internet has removed a lot of the friction from the market," Cunningham said. "And when you reduce search friction, you get a lot more searching and a lot more of that activity."
Read more here.

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