Food and discussion begins at 12:30 pm. Everyone invited.

JuicyCampus.com, a site allowing students to comment anonymously on one another, has emerged (perhaps predictably) as a haven for hateful and unaccountable messages among students on several campuses. Students at Pepperdine have called on their university to block access to the site from the school’s network.

A similar site, AutoAdmit, found itself hosting vicious comments about several Yale law students, who sued, thus far unsuccessfully, to obtain the identities of their critics.

Operators of these sites have asserted immunity under the Communications Decency Act, which gives “service providers” special status as against traditional publishers. How far do provisions like this one actually extend? How far should they extend? Is it possible to protect genuine service providers without creating a moral hazard for irresponsible publishers?