CDA 230

News reports (here, here) indicate that New Jersey Superior Court Judge Jamie S. Perri dismissed Barbara Bauer's defamation lawsuit against the Wikimedia Foundation yesterday. In what appears to have been an oral ruling from the bench, the court relied on section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (CDA 230), which protects providers and users of interactive computer services from state-law tort liability for publishing the statements of third parties, to dismiss Bauer's claims. (For more on CDA 230, see our Primer on Immunity and Liability for Third-Party Content Under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act).   read more »

Following on the heels of a Virginia lawyer being sanctioned for improperly using a subpoena to silence a critic, we hear about a lawyer in California who is threatening to use a meritless lawsuit to force Julia Forte, who runs a forum for consumer complaints about telemarketers, to remove user-submitted comments that are critical of his client.

Paul Alan Levy at the Public Citizen Litigation Group, which represents Forte, has the story:

In a recent series of demands, a purveyor of “nutraceuticals” called mynutritionstore.com threatened to sue Julia Forte over consumer criticisms appearing on her web site 800notes.com, a forum for identification and discussion of telemarketers based on their phone numbers.  (The specific dispute is summarized here)  My Nutrition Store’s expressed concern was that the comments about it show up in Google searches.   read more »

Last Friday, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit affirmed the dismissal of negligence claims brought against MySpace by the family of a teenage girl who used the popular social networking site to communicate with and arrange to meet a nineteen-year-0ld boy who sexually assaulted her. The district court held that section 230 of the Communications Decency Act ("CDA 230") barred the teen's claims based on MySpace's alleged failure to take basic safety measures to prevent sexual predators from communicating with minors on the site. See Doe v. MySpace, 474 F.Supp.2d 843 (W.D. Tex. 2007). Agreeing with the district court, the Court of Appeals concluded that the plaintiffs' claims, while ostensibly focusing on website safety, were essentially based on publication of third-party content and were thus defeated by CDA 230:   read more »

By now you've heard that the Ninth Circuit, sitting en banc, reaffirmed the previous Roommates.com decision. There's lots of excellent coverage out there -- some notable examples include the Online Liability Blog, Info/Law, Internet Cases, and Eric Goldman's Law & Technology Blog. The new decision, written by Judge Kozinski, may have exploded forever the longstanding assumption (among Internet lawyers, at least) that website operators would always be immune under section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (CDA 230) for publishing and organizing content provided by their users, so long as the underlying claim didn't involve intellectual property, federal criminal law, or the Electronic Communications Privacy Act. Nevertheless, we can read the case narrowly, and its impact could be inconsequential if limited to its facts. Unfortunately, aspects of the opinion make a more expansive reading possible.   read more »

In what appears to be the first case of its kind, a federal court in New Hampshire has ruled that the immunity provisions in section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (CDA 230) do not bar a state law claim for a violation of a person's "right of publicity." In so holding, the court expressly disagreed with the Ninth Circuit's decision in Perfect 10 v. CCBill LLC, which held that CDA 230 exempts only federal intellectual property law claims from its protections.   read more »

The case involves the typically disturbing facts that often arise in the CDA 230 context. The plaintiff, proceeding pseudonymously, sued defendant Friendfinder Network, which operates a number of websites, including “AdultFriendFinder.com” that bills itself as “the World’s Largest SEX and SWINGER Personal Community.” To participate, users register by entering a variety of personal information, creating online profiles that can be viewed by other members of the community.

New Jersey prosecutors have subpoenaed the controversial gossip site JuicyCampus as part of an investigation into whether the site is violating the New Jersey Consumer Fraud Act. Reports (here, here, and here) indicate that prosecutors believe that the website may be running afoul of the law by suggesting in its Terms & Conditions that it does not allow the posting of offensive material but providing no enforcement of that rule or way for users to report objectionable content. (New Jersey authorities also subpoenaed AdBrite and Google for information about how JuicyCampus represented itself to these advertising services.) Assuming the investigation moves forward, this case is sure to be a flashpoint for further debate about section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (CDA 230).   read more »

A Vermont judge has dismissed the libel lawsuit filed against Chris Grotke and Lise LePage, co-founders and owners of iBrattleboro.com, a widely acclaimed community journalism site based in Brattleboro, Vermont, ruling that Grotke and LePage are immune from liability under section 230 of the Communications Decency Act ("CDA 230").

The lawsuit, which was filed by Effie Mayhew on November 16, 2007, alleges that David Dunn, the former executive director of Rescue Inc., an emergency medical services organization where Mayhew works as a volunteer, libeled her in a comment on the site. While Mayhew's complaint didn't make any allegations that Grotke or LePage authored the allegedly defamatory statements, her lawyer (as well as several commentators in Vermont) asserted that iBrattleboro.com should be liable because the site admins failed to edit or remove Dunn's comment.   read more »