Scott Smigler's BlogFounder of Exclusive Concepts and Conversions On Demand

Craigslist is being sued by the Chicago Lawyers’ Committee, a group alleging that Craigslist is violating the Fair Housing Act by “publishing” discriminatory housing ads on its website.

Here is some background information. Craigslist is a popular classifieds website that helps people in communities throughout the world find activity partners, jobs, roommates, and much more. If you want a tennis partner, you go to Craiglist and submit a post. If you’re looking to hire a copywriter, you go to Craigslist and submit a post. And, if you’re looking to find a roommate, you go to Craigslist and submit a post.

Craigslist has become the virtual bulletin board for hundreds of communities.

Craiglists’ beauty is in its simplicity, and its laissez-faire attitude towards its member’s posts. Craigslist does moderate spam and outright abuse of its service, but it does not censor ideas, statements, requests, or words in general. It becomes a reflection of the communities it serves because community members shape Craigslist without interference from its owners and operators.

As you might imagine, not every member, of every community, possesses the values that you and I may share. For example, if I were to use a service like Craigslist to find a roommate, the race or religion of my potential roommate would not matter to me. I would simply look for someone who would be a good fit for the living situation I desired. However, many users of Craigslist have a different philosophy. In roommate posts, some Craigslist users will single out specific groups of individuals as being undesirable. Simply put, they discriminate.

Here’s the crux. The federal Fair Housing Act prohibits newspapers from publishing discriminatory phrases like “whites only.” The goal of this lawsuit is to extend that law to apply to Internet websites like Craigslist. If successful, this lawsuit would, in fact, change the Internet. Craigslist, and other popular websites ranging from Yahoo to Ebay, would have to add a tremendous amount of staff to censor posts from users. Users, in turn, would be censored.

How could a site like Craigslist continue to be free (free of charge) if it has to monitor the post of every participant? It couldn’t. How would censorship affect the use of the Internet in general? It would stifle the free expression of ideas.

While I am disgusted that people would maintain discriminatory beliefs, the very concept that a law could justly inhibit the free expression of ideas (regardless of how putrid the ideas may seem), not only violates the promise of the Internet, it flies in the face of the constitution and the principles upon which our country was founded. I’m not going to bore you with my personal constitutional theory – I’m certainly not an expert on the constitution. But I am an expert on the Internet, and I can say without hesitation that the Internet will not continue to thrive as it has been if popular websites are forced to censor its users.

Craigslist is not a newspaper. The public does not trust Craigslist in the way that it trusts newspapers, and members of the public do have the right to live with whomever they want to live regardless of how their views may disgust me personally. Newspapers, as institutions, are meant to disseminate information in an authoritative way, and publishers/editors are expected to adhere to strict ethical standards and norms. Craigslist, on the other hand, is simply a forum. It’s a place to interact, not to learn. It’s a tool that brings the community together, not just online, but in life in general. The users are the publishers and editors. The users control everything.

Extending the reach of the housing act to cover Internet websites like Craigslist is nothing less than censorship by proxy. The government cannot legally censor the ideas of individuals, and so, if the Chicago Lawyer’s Committee gets its way, it will attempt to create rules that govern the tool that individuals use to communicate. Those restrictions affect the “tool owners,” like the owner of Craigslist, who will then censor the individuals. The bottom line is that the laws compel private citizens to censor other private citizens. It compels Craig from Craigslist to censor his users. It’s censorship by proxy.

The Internet is supposed to be a collaborative medium that serves the people. It does not judge the virtues of the people, it simply serves them. We can point out the worst manifestations of free speech and use them to justify rule-making, but in the end, lawmakers and the courts should just leave the Internet alone.