In another win for interactive service providers under the Communications Decency Act, a federal judge in Illinois has granted Craigslist's motion for a judgment on the pleadings in a suit over the website's former "erotic services" listings.

In the lawsuit, Thomas Dart, the sheriff of Cook County, Illinois, alleged that Craigslist's erotic service category facilitated prostitution and constituted a public nuisance.  Dart asked for an injunction prohibiting Craigslist from publishing erotic services listings, and sought to recover the money that his office has spent investigating prostitution occurring on the site.

Lending Tree, the online mortgage loan aggregator, has been going through a rough time lately.  First, it learned that Google plans to start its own loan information service.  That alone would be bad enough since it's pretty tough to beat Google in the search-for-information game. 

But to make matters worse, Lending Tree also found out that Mortech, its preferred provider of pricing services for its lenders, was throwing its hat in with Google and providing the search giant with information about mortgage offers.

In a gift to legal bloggers everywhere, the Supreme Court has made sure that we will have Janet Jackson's infamous "wardrobe malfunction" to write about for some time to come.

The Court vacated a judgment of the Third Circuit Court of appeals and remanded the case back to the lower court for reconsideration in light of FCC v. Fox Tel. Stations, Inc., last week's opinion that upheld the FCC's decision to change its regulations of fleeting expletives.

The FCC fined CBS $550,000 for Jackson's breast-baring halftime show performance, but the Third Circuit overturned the fine after it determined that the agency had violated its own policy of treating words and images under the same standards for when considering claims of indecency.