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CL Erotic Services Users: Yesterday was your Black Thursday. (Well, maybe, the screencap above is from 5:40 Thursday night.) The end of the world as you know it. Here’s the bad news as passed along by the New York Times:

The online classifieds company Craigslist said Thursday that it had reached an agreement with 40 state attorneys general and agreed to tame its notoriously unruly “erotic services” listings. Prostitutes and sex-oriented businesses have long used that section of Craigslist to advertise their services. Along with their ads, they often include pornographic photos.

Earlier this year, the attorney general of Connecticut, Richard Blumenthal, representing 40 states, sent a letter to Craigslist demanding that it purge the site of such material and better enforce its own rules against illegal activity, including prostitution. The two sides began a series of conversations about what Craigslist could do to prevent such ads from appearing. “They identified ads that were crossing the line,” said Jim Buckmaster, chief executive of Craigslist. “We looked at those ads, we saw their point and we resolved to see what we could do to get that stuff off the site.”

In March, Craigslist took the initial step of asking its erotic services advertisers to provide a valid phone number. An automated system then called these advertisers and read a series of digits, which the advertiser had to type into a Web page before their ad would appear on the site. Craigslist said that reduced a majority of the illicit material.

Under the broader agreement announced Thursday, Craigslist is going further, asking that advertisers provide valid identification. It said it will charge erotic services vendors a small fee — Mr. Buckmaster said around $10 — and require that they provide a valid credit card. It will donate the money to charities working on child exploitation and human trafficking issues.

On Wednesday, Craigslist also filed 14 lawsuits in San Francisco against companies that were helping advertisers circumvent the telephone verification system by generating Internet telephone numbers that could be used temporarily and then discarded.

Mr. Blumenthal said the new measures would discourage many sex operators from using Craigslist. “The mere act of authentication will be a very significant deterrent,” he said. “There are very few prostitutes who want to be called by Craigslist and asked to give additional identifying information.”

There is no sense of whether New York is among the 40 states and no word on whether Frankslist.org is on the way. We’re going to guess that someone, somewhere is going to find a work around here.