What is this 'craigslist,' and what does it want?

A legal battle is ongoing as to whether online community site craigslist is afforded federal protections for discriminatory housing ads posted by the site's users.

Oral arguments were heard in the case Friday (and can be heard here). Watch for an Inman News article on Tuesday (see past article here).

The case hinges on the Seventh Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals' interpretation of provisions in the Communications Decency Act, and on whether craigslist is considered a publisher, like a newspaper, that has associated liabilities for published content -- or whether the judges believe craigslist is more like a telephone service that has protections for users who use its services to conduct illegal activity (such as two bank robbers who plan a robbery using a telephone service or a bank of telemarketers who promote discriminatory messages).

The three judge's pondered aloud some of the issues in the case during the Friday arguments: like whether the staff at craigslist could adequately screen all of the millions of postings at the site for discriminatory content, whether screening could potentially go too far to block out words that aren't discriminatory by themselves (for example, should craigslist block the words "church" or "children" because an ad could potentially state "nearby Catholic church" or "no children allowed"),

The Real Estate, Real Competition and the Law blog has a take on the latest court developments here. Another fair housing-related lawsuit involving online site Roommates.com, is pending a decision, too.

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