Murder and Prostitution Find Their Way Into Online Community

As I have mentioned before, one of the websites that I use(d) the most is Craigslist. Recently, Craiglist has come up against some interesting and serious issues: murder and prostitution.

The company is in a legal battle over pornographic pictures and prostitution ads on its South Carolina sites, and recently a woman was murdered when she responded to a Craigslist posting (the accused is being called “The Craiglist Killer — a PR nightmare to top the Dominos YouTube debacle).

As online communities begin to face the same problems as off-line communities, I wonder if there is a need for regulation of online activities. After reading the chapter from Lawrence Lessig’s Free Culture, I was all “let the creativity flow, man,” and I was outraged to think that the media could be stifling us without our knowledge. BUT at the same time I am not totally opposed to the idea of the government openly restricting online activity. I see the need for protection in the web world — both for individuals and companies.

Here’s an article on state regulation of MySpace and a more informal story on state regulation of online communities in general. And here is a paper on social self regulation and Wikipedia.

When I sat down to write our code of conduct for UpUrAlley.com, I kept these articles in mind. In the end, I decided really I just hope people will treat the people in their online community the way they would treat people in their actual community. And personally, I’ve always thought the golden rule way a darn good way to the gauge the acceptability of behavior (for proof see UpUrAlley’s Code of Conduct). Maybe it’s just that simple???