The mega-popular online classifieds site, Craigslist.org has been found not liable for discriminatory content placed in classified ads on the site by users. Last Friday, a federal appeals court reaffirmed a previous ruling finding Craigslist not guilty of discrimination. The judges agreed that Craigslist.org merely provided an open forum where ads could be posted, and could not be held personally responsible for the illegal content contained in the ads.
The case was brought in February of 2006 by the Chicago Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. The plaintiffs in the action had argued that Craigslist had violated the fair housing act because some users of the site had placed classified ads with a illegal terms such as “no children” and “no minorities.”
The plaintiffs also pointed out that many users were more subtle in their discrimination, and instead of specifically rejecting certain groups of people, would go to great lengths to emphasize that the property in question was next door to a Catholic church, for example.
According to section 230 (communications decency act, 1996), a web site which is classified as a “interactive computer service” has immunity from being prosecuted because of illegal content contributed by the web sites members or users. In the case of the Craigslist lawsuit, a federal judge had already ruled on the case back in November, 2006. But the prosecutors decided to appeal that decision, and this latest ruling reinforces the concept that web sites can not be held responsible for illegal content posted by users.
Where this ruling gets tricky is in the area of online file sharing, which depending on which legal scholar you speak to, may or may not fall outside of section 230. But the judges in the Craigslist ruling concluded that although the site does provide the opportunity for users to post illegal content, they cannot realistically be held responsible for the legality of every ad or posting to the site.
This latest ruling simply reinforces the concept of a free and democratic Internet, where no single web site or service provider can be charged for the actions of that sites contributing users. In the era of social networking, YouTube, and Web 2.0 user content-driven sites, this is great news. In fact, without this legal precedent, web sites such as MySpace or Facebook would constantly be at risk of prosecution because of the actions and contributions of their users. This would, no doubt, put an end to social networking sites online as we know them.
But even though the court reconfirmed Craigslist’s immunity to the charges, the court left the door open for the prosecution of individual users of the site, which means that people who place discriminatory ads for housing, etc. can still be singled out and charged with violating the communications decency act. Sounds fair to me.
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