• NY Times, Monday, March 6, 2006 10:30 AM

Legal precedent sides with Craigslist in its lawsuit with a fair housing group in Chicago, says The New York Times. The housing group claims the online classifieds provider violates the federal Fair Housing Act by allowing posts like "African Americans tend to clash with me" on its Web site. The precedent for court cases dealing with defamatory statements and public free speech on the Internet have almost universally sided with the companies that publish what others say. Due to the 1996 Communications Decency Act, the Internet is open season all the time for consumers to say exactly what they want, and Web companies cannot be held liable for invasion of privacy, fraud, breach of contract, libel and yes, housing discrimination. This means companies like Amazon and eBay cannot be sued for publishing millions of user reviews of products by the sellers who sell the products, and MSN and AOL cannot be held responsible for the entries posted on its message boards. However, fair housing advocates argue that such immunity is too broad. On Tuesday, James Perry of the Greater New Orleans Housing Action Center claimed the discriminatory postings on Craigslist's New Orleans site are the "most concerning issues" the city has faced since Hurricane Katrina. Perry told the court "Discriminatory advertising is distinctly different," from the protections of the 1996 law. Meanwhile, Jim Buckmaster, the chief executive of Craigslist, said imposing liability on the site would effectively ruin it. But consumers don't seem to mind: "We have received virtually no complaints about fair housing issues," Buckmaster said.

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