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Net Regulation
March 21, 2006 ( Hactivismo | politics )
The Miami Herald has an interesting article on some emerging problems of regulating things such as discriminatory housing ads on the Internet, particularly CraigsList:
The Chicago Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights recently filed a lawsuit against Craigslist for allowing ads the group deems discriminatory.The suit argues that since July 2005, Craigslist has allowed more than 100 ads to run unchallenged on its Chicago-based site. The ads include such language as ''No Minorities'', ''Christians only'' and ''Non-Women of Color need Not Apply.'' Similar ads have appeared in South Florida postings on Craigslist.
$375 -- Christian Female to Share 1-Bedroom Miami Beach Apt.
I am looking for a Christian female to share a clean and simple 1-bedroom apartment two blocks from the beach.
Internet companies have long argued that they are immune from any liability based on a section of the 1996 Communications Decency Act.
Their interpretation of federal law: Internet providers are not liable for users' postings because the sites are merely facilitators and not publishers. Although sites such as Craigslist derive income through partnerships with other Internet companies, many of the services provided are free.
Of course, who's to blame? CL doesn't moderate posts, CL users do, sporadically, and generally only for the worst offenders. It seems like the posters themselves are the most liable party, but then the burden of prosecuting it will be piled on the person discriminated against.
Buckmaster posted on the site a lengthy defense to the lawsuit: ``These lawyers demand that we impose ill-conceived, mistake-prone and potentially illegal controls on the Craigslist community, which if adopted would actually reduce fair housing opportunity while eroding important free speech and privacy rights.''The suit, Buckmaster writes, ``ignores the fact that Craigslist is not a publisher but, rather, a community-moderated commons run by its users, who self-publish and . . . use a flagging system to police the site.'
[...]
The lawsuit has rekindled the debate about how best to regulate the Internet -- if at all.
Michael Masinter, a law professor at Nova University who specializes in constitutional, civil rights and anti-discrimination law says Congress -- not the courts -- should make such decisions.
Until then, Craigslist and others should be allowed to exist as they are, Masinter said. ``The Internet has to be permitted to flourish, otherwise we would all be reduced to an Internet serviceable to 12 year olds. If they were required to prescreen the millions of ads posted on their site, it would be the end of Craigslist.'''
Requiring moderation would definitely kill CL's business model, and in fact most of "Web 2.0," where the motto is to let the user do all the work. Suing CL would be like suing the owner of an unprotected community bulletin board because someone had posted a racist housing ad on it. Suing the posters of these ads, similarly, is a difficult proposition, as it ends up placing the burden on the already-discriminated-against. I'd argue further that for the peer-to-peer world of craigslist, why bother? Even if the selection process for a new roommate was colorblind, I can't imagine many people interested in living in such a hostile environment. As a white male I wouldn't want to live with some mouthbreathing racist (though admitedly, I'm speaking from the position of being a white male, with very, very few housing opportunities being ruled out for me because of that (OK, the Christian ones would fail to get me, but I could potentially lie about that situation).
The obvious underlying problem is racism, which, sadly, will take education and contact/familiarity to get past, which these people are depriving themselves of. From a policy standpoint, however, focus should be on systematic racism (does an apartment complex have racist policies?) over people looking for roommates (or mates, for that matter -- does a dating service that allows filtering based on race/religion cross the same line? Shouldn't it?). This is hard for me to say, though, because it's still unfair, and it presumes that there are other viable housing/roommates options, which may not be the case in some (many? most?) areas.
For CraigsList, perhaps it should further the effort to remind not just posters, but people browsing the housing ads about the illegality of race in housing decisions, and enable/encourage the user community to flag these racist posts as such.
Posted by griffjon at March 21, 2006 09:09 AM
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