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Wendy Boswell's Web Search Blog

By Wendy Boswell, About.com Guide to Web Search since 2004

Craigslist Sued Over Classifeds Policy

Thursday February 9, 2006
This via Lost Remote; Craigslist is getting sued over its classified ads policy (or lack thereof). Read more:
"In what is sure to be a landmark legal case, a Chicago fair-housing group has sued Craigslist for hosting ads that violate the federal Fair Housing Act. "African Americans and Arabians tend to clash with me so that won't work out," reads one of the ads cited in the lawsuit. The question is, should Craigslist be held to the same legal standards as traditional classifieds? If you ask me, the answer is a resounding no. Since Craigslist's ads aren't vetted, it should have guarantees under freedom of speech, just like news sites that allow open forums and blog comments. But I fear this will be a tough battle."
I totally agree - the reason we all love Craigslist is because there is such freedom of speech there. You want some interesting reading for a boring Saturday? Head on over to the Craigslist forums; you can thank me later. I'm hoping that the outcome of this suit is that it's thrown out for not being legally sound, but I am kind of thinking that it won't be.

Related: I chose Craigslist a while back as one of my useful sites; you can also read more about Craigslist as a job search engine, one of Time's Coolest Websites, or how FatLens includes Craigslist listings in its' shopping search.

Comments

November 17, 2007 at 11:39 pm
(1) Joe banana says:

Surely we can rent our stuff to whomever we want.And wake up some of us are bigots and we have rights also

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