I took a history of pornography class last year (it was an elective class for my communication major, don’t ask), and I became much more aware of the inappropriate material available way to easily online. At first I honestly despised that type of content. Kids use the internet. What happens when they stumble onto sites like that accidentally? It made me question how content should be monitored online. I decided that despite the fact I don’t support the material, I do support the freedom of being able to put any material online. Kind of a catch-22 I’ll admit, but I can’t turn by back on freedom of expression.
Well the sheriff of Cook County, Illinois begged to differ. Earlier this year Sheriff Thomas Dart sued Craigslist, the online advertising website in the United States, accusing it of allowing posts that market prostitution on their websites. A Chicago judge has thrown out the case.
After the lawsuit was filed, Craigslist reviewed all their listings and did a bit of clean-up regarding indecent posts. Even before the suit, Craigslist warned its users that it prohibited the solicitation of prostitution. In fact the website even warns you before you view any ads that may contain disturbing content. The page you see when you click on the ‘casual encounters’ link is shown below:
As stated in A Win for Internet Speech, one of the articles that publicized the Cook County case, The Communications Decency Act of 1996 “protects ‘interactive computer services’ — ranging from small bloggers to giant Internet service providers — from liability, in most cases, for speech they did not help create.” Congress ruled that it was unfair to expect an internet service provider or website to keep track of all the information put on their website.
This case even shockingly presented that these ads for prostitution actually turned out to be beneficial to Cook County. Sheriff Dart told the court that they made numerous arrests for prostitution by using the Craigslist ads. Go figure! The sheriff was suing a company that actually provided the means for him and his colleagues to protect the community. If that is the capability of every police department in every county in the U.S., then arguably, the prostitutes are putting themselves at risk by offering their services on a website like Craigslist.
Craigslist does still have the ‘personals section’, which obviously encourages a little foul play, but all in all, we are all active users. If you do not want to see the posts in the Craigslist ‘personal section’ then it is your right not to click that link when you are on the website. And if parents are worried about their kids finding this type of content, they need to be the censors for their kids, not websites or ISPs.
With warnings like this there is no way that people can sue websites or ISPs for indecent information. If the site is not meant to contain inappropriate content, but it is possible for that type of material to makes its way on it, the site will warn you. It would be like a warning sign being on an electric fence and then walking straight into it and blaming the makers of the fence. Just like you couldn’t sue the fence makers because they warned you, you can’t sue a website for the same reason. Clearly Congress has recognized us as active users and we have to start seeing ourselves the same way.
