There have been a number of lawsuits in the last 24 months or so that basically seek to determine the responsibility an online delivery mechanism has for the content it carries.

There’s the fashion model, Liskula Cohen, who sued Google for a number of personal remarks that a blogger wrote using Blogger – a Google property.

Or one of my personal favorites, AuditAdmit.com, which raced to wipe its system of the IP addresses after comments about Yale law school students (females) became so vicious that the victims sued.  They got somewhere, but mostly because the two owners of the site cracked under pressure.

Note to Ms. Cohen: Google isn’t likely to crack under pressure.

The latest, of course, is the call for Craigslist.org to eliminate its “erotic services” section, following the murder of a woman who went to a hotel and meet a man she first encountered on the site.  And now there appears to be attempted copycat crimes, as well.  And it’s pile-on time now, too: people who try to sell stuff on the site and subsequently are assaulted by would-be buyers they met on the site, etc.

It’s all pretty awful.  The question is: who’s responsible and – once we determine responsibility – does it matter? Do the attorneys general urging Craigslist to remove the section really care about the legal backing they have for asking the site to cut the section?  I’d say no.

It’s challenging for me to fault Craigslist for individuals knowingly and legally advertising their services and then coming to some harm in the fulfillment of those services (the illegal ads gotta go).  Craigslist is the Internet version of all the personals and “massage” advertising that’s run at the back of local newspapers and magazines for decades. 

I’m processing this, but my first conclusion is that there is no reason that Craigslist couldn’t start a ratings system much like Amazon’s – so you know something about the “seller” and the “buyer” – and also make it very clear that IP addresses are kept and will be turned over to authorities if any illegal activities result.  There’s clear precedent for the former, and the latter… Craigslist would merely be enforcing its existing TOU (Item 6).   This is “bare minimum” stuff.

This isn’t over, as it’s no different that the contentious debates over free speech that take place in the “real world” today.  Do I believe in the First Amendment?  Absolutely.  Would I want to be Google or Craigslist when the mother of a dead girl goes on national television claiming that (perfectly legal) content on my site killed her child?  Absolutely not.