Suit filed in Federal court against Craigslist claims discriminatory housing ads

[mandy]

A Chicago-based public interest legal group has sued Craigslist over hundreds of housing posts that have included race, gender or other discriminatory restrictions.

The Chicago Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law filed suit in federal court Monday, charging that the posts on the popular Internet site violate federal fair-housing rules, which forbid excluding possible tenants on the basis of race, gender, family status, religion or other protected categories.

Attorney Stephen Libowsky, who's handling the case for the civil rights group, said that Craigslist provided a good service but should be held to the same standards that newspapers and other publications have met over the past few decades.

full article: http://news.com.com/Suit+against+Craigsl...g=nefd.top

[mandy]

A related article in yesterday's New York Times explores the issue of online accountability and whether there is a need to re-examine laws that allow web sites like Craigslist, eBay, and this forum  :twistedevil: to escape liability for the words and actions of their users.

If this newspaper were to publish a classified advertisement for an apartment rental that said, say, "African Americans and Arabians tend to clash with me so that won't work out," it would be liable for housing discrimination under the federal Fair Housing Act.

Yet Craigslist.org, the enormous online forum, posted that very ad in July, and most legal experts say, as the law stands today, Craigslist bears no responsibility for it.

That is the result of a social bargain made 10 years ago, meant to nurture what was then a strange and nascent thing called the Internet. A part of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 said that online companies are not liable for transmitting unlawful materials supplied by others...

Court decisions so far have almost universally rejected claims against online companies that publish others' speech. Internet companies have been held immune from suits for libel, invasion of privacy, fraud, breach of contract and housing discrimination.

That means Amazon cannot be sued for its users' millions of reviews of the books and other products it sells. America Online is not responsible for the six million new entries posted on its message boards each month. EBay is not liable for damaging statements among the more than 2.4 billion feedback comments its members have posted...

full article: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/05/weekin...k.htm?_r=1&oref=slogin

[dnc_ont]

That is the result of a social bargain made 10 years ago, meant to nurture what was then a strange and nascent thing called the Internet. A part of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 said that online companies are not liable for transmitting unlawful materials supplied by others...

And that's because back then the average IQ of an Internet user was sufficiently high enough that we didn't get our widdle feewings hurt if someone said something politically incorrect, or told you to STFU.
Nowadays, though... Say anything remotely risque, and everyone either or 

[regic]

[quote author=mandy link=topic=2564.msg10433#msg10433 date=1141658785]
A related article in yesterday's New York Times explores the issue of online accountability and whether there is a need to re-examine laws that allow web sites like Craigslist, eBay, and this forum  :twistedevil: to escape liability for the words and actions of their users.

[/quote]

A commentary in TechDirt has a few criticisms of that NY Times article 

The law is protecting a service provider from being liable for the content that someone else puts on their service -- which makes sense. The service providers are simply providing the platform, not the editorial control. The person who should be liable isn't the service provider, but the person who actually posted the content. Nowhere in the NY Times piece does it note this. There's no indication that the reporter even looked into whether or not those who are upset by these postings even tried to go after those who actually did the posting.

full article: http://www.techdirt.com/articles/2006030...17_F.shtml

related topic: New Jersey Bill Would Ban Anonymous Blog, Forum Posting http://community.tuliptools.com/index.ph...928.0.html

[xppman]

I'd like to go to ebays pp boards and use acronyms like STFU and FU and WTF.
Or be able to call some of the trolls and contracted help they have:
idiots, morons of butt kissers but ebay's
host will slap me down.

Oh wait I did do that.

[vitalfinds]

I wonder if personal ads would ever be called "discriminatory" with things like "SWF looking for SWM" or even "no mental cases need apply."  I can't stand political correctness.

[jezebel]

[quote author=vitalfinds link=topic=2564.msg10512#msg10512 date=1141773788]
I wonder if personal ads would ever be called "discriminatory" with things like "SWF looking for SWM" or even "no mental cases need apply."  I can't stand political correctness.
[/quote]

Preventing people from specifying traits in a mate is politically incorrect  :twistedevil:

[mandy]

Update: lawsuit dismissed

The popular Craigslist Web site is not legally liable for allegedly discriminatory housing ads posted by its users, a federal judge in Chicago ruled in a case pitting landmark internet and fair housing laws against each other.

The decision was a victory for online civil liberties supporters. It was a setback for housing civil rights advocates, though they still found some hope in the judge's ruling...

The 1968 Fair Housing Act bars housing discrimination, and newspapers and other publishers of ads deemed discriminatory can be held liable for violating the law.

But the 1996 Communications Decency Act (CDA), in an attempt to promote unfettered free expression online, shields web forums from liability for ads and opinions posted by their users.

That's what Craiglist argued in its defense in the Chicago case...

full article: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/custo...y?ctrack=1&cset=true

[mandy]

Another appeal and a further reaffirmation of 47 USC 230.  The court rules Craigslist is a service provider and therefore not liable.

It will be interesting to see how this opinion affects the Ninth Circuit's en banc consideration of the Roommates.com case. After all, the legal issues are identical, and Easterbrook's Doe v. GTE ruling was a key precedent for the plaintiffs. Now, with Easterbrook having said (decisively) that 230 preempts claims for the Fair Housing Act, it seems like the Doe precedent is effectively worthless to the Roommates.com plaintiffs. As a result, the only solid way for the plaintiffs to distinguish the uniformly defense-favorable precedent is by hammering on the fact that Roommates.com provided structured categories for user content--a fact that might be enough to craft an exception to 230, though I think it shouldn't...

full article: http://blog.ericgoldman.org/archives/200...t_gets.htm

related topic:
Court Denies Roommates.com USC 230 Safe Harbor Status
http://community.tuliptools.com/index.ph...796.0.html