At first glance, the posting looked like any number of Internet classified ads explicitly seeking sex. But instead of the 27-year-old woman with long brown hair who was advertised, a male, Seattle-area graphic designer collected the replies and posted them online -- with photos, names and contact information.

"It's a sad commentary overall," said Lauren Weinstein, a veteran computer scientist and privacy advocate. "It's one of those situations where both sides look bad. ... From an ethical standpoint, this isn't brain surgery."

It all began with Jason Fortuny's posting on the online community called Craigslist. According to his Web journal, Fortuny took a real ad and reposted it so that responses went straight to him. Among the 178 responses were 145 photos of men "in various states of undress." The replies included e-mail addresses, names and in some cases, instant-messaging accounts and phone numbers.

Internet vigilantes have engaged spammers and scam artists and posted results of their conversations online. Others expose sexual predators they purposely seek out in chat rooms.

In this case, however, 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 Jonathan Zittrain, a law professor at Oxford and Harvard universities.

Fortuny did not immediately respond to e-mails seeking comment, and calls Monday to his telephone number generated a message saying the subscriber "is not in service."

Craigslist Chief Executive Jim Buckmaster said in an e-mail that Fortuny's actions violated the site's policies. He noted that the ad in question was removed several times, only to be reposted.

Kurt Opsahl, staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said Craigslist would be protected under federal law exempting service providers from liability for what their users do.

Weinstein said the action could potentially make Internet users more likely to question the legitimacy of Craigslist ads and more reluctant to participate. "Once you've lost that trust," he said, "a large part of the utility of what those services were there for in the first place is lost."

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