The popular online classifieds listing service, Craigslist, has been declared not liable for content in postings. On March 14, the seventh US Court of Appeals ruled that Craigslist is not a publisher but rather an online service provider.
Craigslist.org has over 30 million postings each month, according to the Associated Press, and a number of its housing ads contained discriminatory phrases such as "No Minorities," "Requirements: Clean Godly Christian Male" and "Only Muslims apply."
The suit began in Feb. 2006 when the Chicago Lawyer's Committee for Civil Rights Under Law said that Craigslist was in violation of federal housing laws prohibiting discrimination against potential dwellers based on race, gender, or religion, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.
The rationale that car manufactures, for example, are not held liable for those that drink and drive is the same concept that is expressed in the court ruling. "One might as well say that people who save money 'cause' bank robbery, because if there were no banks there could be no bank robberies," the court stated.
"We're pleased the Court agreed that online service providers like Craigslist should not be held liable as publishers' of content submitted by their users, and view this outcome as a win for the general public's ability to self-publish content (such as free classified ads) on the Internet," said Craigslist Chief Executive Officer Jim Buckmaster in a statement regarding the ruling.
Mark Bartholomew, an associate professor in the UB Law School, thinks that as the Internet becomes more important and more familiar to people, judges are less likely to find sites responsible for their content.
"When the Internet first came along, a lot of cases were the opposite. Courts were very ready to impose liability on service providers. The Internet was new so they didn't understand it," Bartholomew said, as an avid Craigslist user. "Since then, we've become more reliant on the Internet, judges are more familiar with it and don't want to kill the goose that's laying the golden eggs."
Justin Jones, a sophomore communication major, had not heard of Craigslist, but thinks the site should be responsible for postings.
"They should have guidelines and should have restrictions as to what can be posted and what can't be posted," Jones said.
Thomas Ryan, a sophomore aerospace engineering major and Craigslist user, has mixed feelings about the ruling.
"If it's the landlord that is posting, that's wrong. Discriminatory postings shouldn't be allowed on the site. However, if I own my own house and am renting it out to share, looking for roommates, then I don't want someone I won't get along with," Ryan said.
John Bragg, a junior political science major who regularly uses Craigslist to buy and sell items, thinks the ruling was just and there is no way to regulate such a large public posting site.
"They can't monitor everything that goes on the site, in every city, so how is anyone supposed to regulate that?" Bragg asked. "That would be the same as someone regulating the entire Internet saying you can't use racist comments - you'd never be able to police that."
However, Bartholomew doesn't think people should read too much into this particular ruling because it was only based on one statute: the Federal Housing Act.
Also, courts have made it a point to not decide how much illegal use warrants a need to stop a certain technology. For example, in the high-profile Grokster case, the company was shut down for allowing users to share music for free.
"The more decisions we have that suggest that open playing field for ISPs (Internet Service Providers), the better news that is for new and upcoming technologies," Bartholomew said.
Photo: Courtesy of Laron Fomby
