Appeals Court Denies Safe Harbor for Roommates.com 253
Mariner writes "The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals denied Roommates.com Safe Harbor status under the Communications Decency Act in a lawsuit brought by the Fair Housing Councils of San Fernando Valley and San Diego. Roommates.com was accused of helping landlords discriminate against certain kinds of tenants due to a couple of questions on the Roommates.com registration form: gender and sexual orientation. 'Though it refused to rule on whether Roommates.com actually violated the Fair Housing Act, the Court did find that it lost Section 230 immunity because it required users to enter that information in order to proceed. As Judge Alex Kozinski put it in his opinion, "if it is responsible, in whole or in part, for creating or developing the information, it becomes a content provider and is not entitled to CDA immunity."'"
Roommates.com (Score:2, Interesting)
Seemingly verrides Carafano v. Metrosplash.com (Score:5, Interesting)
As regards violating the Fair Housing Act, there is a shared living exception [hud.gov]. It seems to me that if roommates.com added a "shared living" checkbox to its form, it could AJAX-open the additional fields regarding gender and sexuality, and thus avoid falling afoul of the FHA. Roommates.com would still not be covered by the Section 230 exception of the Communications Decency Act, but it wouldn't need it.
Personal question, if you don't mind (Score:3, Interesting)
That's not what they're doing (Score:3, Interesting)