Heat City

The top law enforcers from 21 states asked Phoenix’s Village Voice Media Holdings on Tuesday to shut down the adult services section of its popular Backpage.com, saying ads for prostitution and child trafficking “are rampant on the site.”

The call from the attorneys general comes just weeks after the online classified ad giant Craigslist reluctantly removed its own adult listings because of growing criticism from law enforcement and child advocacy groups nationwide.

“We sincerely hope Backpage, like Craigslist, will finally hear the voices of the victims, women and children, who plead with it to make this important change,” the attorneys general wrote in a letter sent to Village Voice attorney Samuel Fifer. “We believe that ads for prostitution — including ads trafficking children — are rampant on the site and that the volume of these ads will grow in light of Craigslist’s recent decision.”

The Phoenix New Times filed a federal lawsuit against a New York man running the “Best of Phoenix” website shown here. Click image for larger screenshot

There’s only one company allowed to decide which businesses are the “Best of Phoenix.” At least that’s the message the Phoenix New Times is sending to anyone hoping to use the trademarked name of the newspaper’s annual list of what’s hot in town.

The alternative weekly and its parent company, Village Voice Media Holdings, filed their second federal lawsuit in less than a week on Wednesday against someone who owns a website domain name using the phrase “best of Phoenix,” which the newspaper trademarked back in 1997.

The Phoenix New Times publishes an annual Best of Phoenix issue, like this one from 2009.

The Phoenix New Times is well on track to publishing its Best of Phoenix 2010 issue later this month, with billboards and ads already heralding its arrival. But it turns out the next two years of the newspaper’s annual hot list have already hit a road block.

The alternative weekly and its parent company, Village Voice Media Holdings, filed a federal lawsuit Friday against one of the newspaper’s former employees, accusing him of Internet piracy and trademark violations for cybersquatting on the website domain names bestofphoenix2011.com and bestofphoenix2012.com.

Bill Richardson

Of the many blogs written by outside contributors to the Arizona Republic‘s website, Bill Richardson’s was perhaps the most critical of the region’s police and their practices.

Now, the retired Mesa police officer says the the state’s largest newspaper has given in to outside pressure from those who wanted his criticism silenced. The newspaper closed down his blog, deleted all his old posts and blocked him from even commenting elsewhere on its website.