From the San Francisco Chronicle
Craigslist removes ads for adult services
By James Temple
(09-04) 18:21 PDT San Francisco -- After years of mounting public pressure, Craigslist appears to have surrendered in a battle over sexual ads on its website that some viewed as a test case for the boundaries of online freedom.
The popular San Francisco classifieds site removed its controversial adult services section late Friday, defiantly replacing the link with the word "censored." The move followed a torrent of legal threats and negative media reports that highlighted ads within the category that promoted prostitution and child trafficking, or led to violence against women....
Web publishers are generally protected by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and the Communications Decency Act from the illegal actions of third parties who use their sites, though there are narrow exceptions in the latter law when it comes to criminal statutes.
"The legal analysis hasn't changed," said Matt Zimmerman, senior staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation. "Craigslist isn't legally culpable for these posts, but the public pressure has increased and Craigslist is a small company. My guess is that they may have just decided that the public pressure was too big."
The broader concern is that making publishers responsible for the behavior of their users, whether through new laws or legal threats, will force them to adopt more conservative standards over what's allowed on their sites. That could have a chilling effect on online expression, said Brian Carver, an attorney and assistant professor at the School of Information at UC Berkeley.
"If you impose liability on Craigslist, YouTube and Facebook for anything their users do, then they're not going to take chances," he said in an earlier interview. "It would likely result in the takedown of what might otherwise be perfectly legitimate free expression."...