Preface
I am not a lawyer. Do not take this as legal advice.
It was brought to my attention that Roommates.com was sued for violating the Fair Housing Act (FHA). This was of extreme interest to me because of my similar roommate finder application, and how it may effect the future of it. The ruling concluded that Roommates.com was not immune by section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. Although a ruling of weather or not they are guilty of violating the FHA has not been decided, it has been decided that they are not immune.
Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act
Section 230 is what allows a website operator to not be held liable for content that they did not make. Without such a law, the Web 2.0 revolution would not exist. Imagine Reddit.com being sued for a comment someone makes, or Flickr being sued for a picture someone didn’t like.
How It All Began
Before there was section 230, there existed this marvelous new thing called “The Internet”. In order to access this mysterious place, most people had to use a dial up account through a provider. One of those providers happened to be called Prodigy. Prodigy had a message board for various purposes, and from time to time, a moderator would remove offensive posts. Because they were actively monitoring their service, they were put in the same territory as a newspaper publisher and thus legally responsible for all the content that they did not delete. Another provider, CompuServe, did not delete any information, and therefore was not liable for the postings of its users.
After reviewing this case, Congress sought to allow computer services the ability to edit user-generated content without becoming liable for all the content.
Service Providers vs Content Providers
A service provider can be thought of as any interactive site that allows 3rd party user generated content, while a content provider is the actual person/company that generates the content.
Under 230c, a service provider is immune from content generated by a 3rd party provided that
- The 3rd party content was not created by the service provider itself
- It is not responsible in whole or in part as to what content is shown
- Maybe other things… (IANAL)
So Roommates.com can be liable for the content of fake accounts that they create or a drop down menu, but not freely generated responses such as in someone’s description.
The entire reasoning behind section 230 is such that a service provider is immune from removal of user generated content, but not immune from the creation of content.
Why Roommates.com Got The Short Stick
Roommates.com drew the short stick basically because it required users to disclose sensitive information to register and that there was no ability to hide the information. The Fair Housing Council claimed that, “[Roommates.com] created the questions and choice of answers, and designed its website registration process around them. Therefore, Roommate is undoubtedly the ‘information content provider’ for posting them on its website, or for forcing subscribers to answer them as a condition of using its services. as to the questions and can claim no immunity [under section 230].”
What About The Future?
Seeing headlines like this can make a web developer extremely uneasy, especially for someone who is unfamiliar with the law, or who cannot afford a lawyer. Thankfully, in the ruling, they make it pretty clear as to how to be sure that you will be granted immunity under section 230c: “We got it right in Carafano, that ‘[u]nder § 230(c) . . . so long as a third party willingly provides the essential published content, the interactive service provider receives full immunity regardless of the specific editing or selection process.’”
So what I’m going to do in the future is make sure that a user must specifically allow the viewing of such information, or provide a “not specified” option.
* IANAL, get a lawyers opinion as this is not legal advice! *