Recently a web site, roommates.com got slapped down by the courts for discriminatory practices, see http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1207219563829for a discussion of the decision. People are all in a snit about the liability of the hosting website. People need to get their heads on straight. You can’t do something on the Internet that’s illegal in the real world and anticipate that activity to be exempt on the World wide web.
What this site did was ask questions about a potential roommates/renter that a landlord couldn’t do in person (race, sexual orientation, etc.). When they were taken to court they cried immunity because they were merely hosting the site. Users asked the questions. NOT!
This was a very thin attempt to foster discriminatory practices that have been prohibited for decades. The website owners were just stupid to think they could get away with this.
If you stay on the right of the laws of the real world chances are you will be fine on the World Wide Web. A good attorney would have told them this when he or she met the site owners on the first day.
Just another case of the lawyer running up the bill because they have the ability to.
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