Should Craigslist Be Treated Like a Newspaper?
Here in the Bay area we use Craigslist for everything: finding jobs, apartments, and caregivers for our kids, buying and selling furniture and cars, and meeting that special someone. Craigslist is essentially a community site for San Francisco (and other areas). An ad can be flagged by other users as offensive, and removed by the Craigslist powers-that-be for violating the terms of use that they’ve established, but for the most part you can post any advertisement you want.
In effect, this means that ads can be clearer about what is really on an advertiser’s mind (even if this offends some people). For example, if you want (or don’t want) a gay roommate or a roommate from Texas, you can say so plainly.
Now a Chicago fair housing group has sued Craigslist for allegedly publishing discriminatory advertisements in violation of Federal Fair Housing legislation.
It’s pretty clear that some of the backing for this lawsuit comes from newspapers, whose classified revenues have been decimated by Craigslist. With the legal system you never know, but for the most part websites have been treated as distributors rather than publishers, meaning Craigslist cannot be held responsible for the “community” content placed on its site (just as a newsstand owner, or library, is not responsible for the content of a newspaper). This view is supported by some of the provisions of the Communications Decency Act of 1996. (Did Orwell name this statute?) These provisions so far have stood up in court.
This conflict cuts to the heart of the communal nature of the web. Obviously, Craiglist is not the only company pleading that it doesn’t have responsibility. To a great extent, eBay leaves policing up to its community. Even Google abjures most responsibility for AdWords content. (Just try complaining to Google that you clicked on a scam link in a Google ad.)
I believe that Craigslist, eBay, and even Google couldn’t exist if they had to take legal responsibility for the content they present in the same way as “brick and mortar” publications do. Since I want my Craigslist, eBay, and Google, I don’t want this to happen. And I don’t think it will anytime soon. The specific lawsuit against Craigslist is a vain attempt to hold back the tide. Even King Canute couldn’t do that!
Posted by Harold Davis at March 7, 2006 02:53 PM
