Intermediaries: The FHA and Blogging Discussed in Terms of ISP Liability

Last week in class we discussed the Communication Decency Act (CDA) and how ISPs are not liable for the actions of their users. We also learned about the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) and its protections for ISPs.  Finally, we briefly touches on the Fair House Act (FHA) and how the CDA works in conjunction with the FHA.
My property professor stressed the importance of the FHA in providing equal housing to those who may be discriminated against based on their race, religion, familial status, etc. In our class, my professor repeatedly told us that on several occasions the use of advertisements for housing that stated, “Seeking Roommate: Single White Female for 2 bedroom apartment” violated the FHA.
The distinction between Chicago Lawyers’ Committee v. Craiglist and Fair Housing Council v. Roomates.com is interesting. I understand that websites like Craiglist are literally like giant bulletin boards, whereas a website like Roomates.com had drop down menus with pre-filled requests, but I’m troubled that the court would find that drop down menus are more discriminatory than blank space for writing whatever one desires when seeking a roommate. It seems like websites like Roomates.com could better police use of the website in violation of the FHA with drop down menus, than an open bulletin board-style website could.
I also wonder how the law looks at individuals who search for roommates through college campus services or roommate services in the real world, not cyberspace. I know when I was looking for a roommate in college I was asked to fill out a questionnaire for roommate matching. My dorm was an all girls private dorm on campus, but not funded by the University. However, it did limit its tenants to women attending either my university or a neighboring university. Interestingly, my application for the dorm did not ask sexual orientation, race, religion, etc. but did require that I submit a photo. I have always wondered whether legally my all girls private dorm could make such a request. Isn’t that a violation of the FHA? One can determine not only age and race from a photo but also discriminate based on more trivial matters like appearance.
After long thought, I have also questioned whether blogs that host guest writers can be liable for what their guest writers choose to write. For example, I write for Social Media Law Student, as I’ve mentioned several times before, and I am curious if the founder of my blog let us freely post information on the blog without first screening it, if he could be liable for what we write. I can obviously see how the founder of my blog would be liable for what was written on his blog if he screened the material first, but if he didn’t, could he still be liable for what’s written on the blog?
If ISPs are not liable for the content that their users post to their websites, then how can the user who created a blog be liable for what guest bloggers write on his blog? The found of my blog has the same opportunity and ability to remove content that ISPs do, however ISPs are not liable for the content their users post.
The reasonsing behind the exemption from ISP liability is fueled by public policy and the fact that it would be overly burdensome for an ISP to screen all the content their users place on the web prior to publishing it. However, newspapers are held to this same standard and so are bloggers who allow guest writers. I’m sure the founder of my blog could have 50,000 guest writers and would still be held liable to the content posted by those guest writers by the sheer fact that he created, founded and performs regular maintenance to the blog.
The trouble with this reasoning is that a webpage or a blog is similar to a bulletin board. When Yahoo created its message boards, it was not only the ISP but the creator of the site. Where is the line drawn between creator and ISP? Because technically, the founder of Social Media Law Student could argue he is more analogous to an ISP, providing the space for his writers to post “messages” similar to a message board and therefore should not be liable for the content placed on his site that may violate the law.
What are you thoughts?