cda – Page 3 – Attorney Evan Brown

March 15, 2016 Section 230

Communications Decency Act shields Backpage from liability for violation of federal sex trafficking law

backpage

Three Jane Doe plaintiffs, who alleged they were victims of sex trafficking, filed suit against online classified ad provider Backpage.com (“Backpage”), asserting that Backpage violated the federal Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act (“TVPRA”) by structuring its website to facilitate sex trafficking and implementing rules and processes designed to actually encourage sex trafficking.

The district court dismissed the TVPRA claims for failure to state a claim, holding that the Communications Decency Act, at 47 U.S.C. §230, provided immunity from the claims. Plaintiffs sought review with the First Circuit. On appeal, the court affirmed the lower court’s dismissal.

Section 230 principally shields website operators from being “treated as the publisher or speaker” of material posted by users of the site. In this case, the court held that plaintiffs’ claims were barred because the TVPRA claims “necessarily require[d] that the defendant be treated as the publisher or speaker of content provide by another.” Since the plaintiffs were trafficked by means of the third party advertisements on Backpage, there was no harm to them but for the content of the postings.

The court rejected plaintiffs’ attempts to characterize Backpage’s actions as “an affirmative course of conduct” distinct from the exercise of the “traditional publishing or editorial functions” of a website owner. The choice of what words or phrases to be displayed on the site, the decision not to reduce misinformation by changing its policies, and the decisions in structuring its website and posting requirements, in the court’s view, were traditional publisher functions entitled to Section 230 protection.

Does v. Backpage.com, LLC, No. 15-1724 (1st Cir., March 14, 2016)

Evan Brown is a Chicago attorney advising enterprises on important aspects of technology law, including software development, technology and content licensing, and general privacy issues.

September 5, 2015 Computer Crime, Section 230

Washington Supreme Court keeps victims’ lawsuit against Backpage.com moving forward

Plaintiffs – three minor girls – alleged that they were subjected to multiple instances of rape by adults who contacted them through advertisements posted on Backpage.com. Plaintiffs sued the website and its owner alleging various claims.

Defendants moved to dismiss the claims, arguing that Section 230 (47 U.S.C. § 230) shielded the website from liability arising from content posted by the site’s users. The lower court denied the motion to dismiss, finding that the site’s involvement went beyond passive hosting. Plaintiffs had claimed the website’s advertisement posting rules were intentionally designed to aid in evading law enforcement scrutiny, thereby facilitating the illegal trafficking and exploitation of minors. Defendants sought review with the court of appeals, which certified the question to the Washington state Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court affirmed the denial of the motion to dismiss. The court emphasized the necessity for further investigation into the website’s practices to determine the extent of its involvement in the alleged illegal activities. It found that plaintiffs’ allegations suggested that Backpage had specific content requirements and posting rules that, while outwardly appearing to comply with legal standards by prohibiting explicit content, were allegedly crafted in such a manner as to facilitate the concealment of illegal activities, including the sexual exploitation of minors.

J.S. v. Village Voice Media Holdings, LLC, 359 P.3d 714 (Wash., September 3, 2015)

April 4, 2011 Defamation, Right of Publicity, Section 230

Amazon and other booksellers off the hook for sale of Obama drug use book

Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act shields Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Books-A-Million from some, but not all claims brought over promotion and sale of scandalous book about presidential candidate.

Parisi v. Sinclair, — F.Supp.2d —, 2011 WL 1206193 (D.D.C. March 31, 2011)

In 2008, Larry Sinclair made the ultra-scandalous claim that he had done drugs and engaged in sexual activity with then-presidential candidate Barack Obama. Daniel Parisi, owner of the infamous Whitehouse.com website, challenged Sinclair to take a polygraph test.

Not satisfied with the attention his outlandish claims had garnered, Sinclair self-published a book detailing his alleged misadventures. The book was available through print-on-demand provider Lightening Source.

Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Books-A-Million (“BAM”) each offered Sinclair’s book for sale through their respective websites. (Barnes & Noble and BAM did not sell the book at their brick and mortar stores.) Each company’s website promoted the book using the following sentence:

You’ll read how the Obama campaign used internet porn king Dan Parisi and Ph.D. fraud Edward I. Gelb to conduct a rigged polygraph exam in an attempt to make the Sinclair story go away.

Parisi and his Whitehouse Network sued for, among other things, defamation and false light invasion of privacy. BAM moved to dismiss pursuant to Rule 12(b)(6) while Amazon and Barnes & Noble moved for summary judgment. The court granted the booksellers’ motions.

Section 230 applied because booksellers were not information content providers

The booksellers’ primary argument was that Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act shielded them from liability for plaintiffs’ claims concerning the promotional sentence. The court found in defendants’ favor on this point.

Section 230 provides in relevant part that “[n]o provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.” The major issue in this case was whether the online booksellers had provided the information comprising the promotional sentence. The court found that the pleadings (as to BAM) and the evidence (as to Amazon and Barnes & Noble) did not credibly dispute that the booksellers did not create and develop the promotional sentence.

But not so fast, Section 230, on some of those other claims!

The court’s treatment of Section 230 in relation to plaintiffs’ false light claim and the claims relating to the actual sale of the book were even more intriguing.

Plaintiffs argued that their false light claim was essentially a right of publicity claim. And Section 230(e)(2) says that immunity does not apply to claims pertaining to intellectual property. There is some confusion as to whether this exception to immunity applies only to federal intellectual property claims or to both federal and state IP claims. On one hand, Perfect 10, Inc. v. CCBill says that only federal intellectual property claims are excepted from immunity (which would mean that state law IP claims would be barred by Section 230). On the other hand, cases like Atlantic Recording Corp. v. Project Playlist, Doe v. Friendfinder Network and Universal Communication System v. Lycos suggest that both state and federal IP claims should withstand a Section 230 challenge.

In this case, the court indicated that it would have sided with the cases that provide for both federal and state claims making it past Section 230: “I am not inclined to extend the scope of the CDA immunity as far as the Ninth Circuit. . . . ”

But ultimately the court did not need to take sides as to the scope of Section 230(e)(2), as it found the use of plaintiff Parisi’s name fit into the newsworthiness privilege. One cannot successfully assert a misappropriation claim when his name or likeness is used in a newsworthy publication unless the use has “no real relationship” to the subject matter of the publication.

The court also seemed to constrain Section 230 immunity as it related to the online booksellers’ liability for selling the actual book. (Remember, the discussion above, in which the court found immunity to apply, dealt with the promotional sentence.) The court rejected defendants’ arguments that the reasoning of Gentry v. eBay should protect them. In Gentry, eBay was afforded immunity from violation of a warranty statute. But it merely provided the forum for the sale of goods, unlike the online booksellers in this case, which were the distributors of the actual allegedly defamatory book.

Even though Section 230 did not serve to protect BAM, Barnes & Noble and Amazon from liability for defamation arising from sales of the book, the court dismissed the defamation claim because of the lack of a showing that the booksellers acted with actual malice. It was undisputed that the plaintiffs were limited-purpose public figures. Persons with that status must show that the defendant acted with actual malice. That standard was not met here.

March 23, 2011 Spam

Yahoo not liable for blocking marketing email

Section 230 of Communications Decency Act (47 U.S.C. 230) shields Yahoo’s spam filtering efforts

Holomaxx v. Yahoo, 2011 WL 865794 (N.D.Cal. March 11, 2011)

Plaintiff provides email marketing services for its clients. It sends out millions of emails a day, many of those to recipients having Yahoo email addresses. Yahoo used its spam filtering technology to block many of the messages plaintiff was trying to send to Yahoo account users. So plaintiff sued Yahoo, alleging various causes of action such as intentional interference with prospective business advantage.

Yahoo moved to dismiss, arguing, among other things, that it was immune from liability under Section 230(c)(2) of the Communications Decency Act. The court granted the motion to dismiss.

Section 230(c)(2) provides, in relevant part, that “[n]o provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be held liable on account of … any action voluntarily taken in good faith to restrict access to or availability of material that the provider or user considers to be obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable.”

Plaintiff argued that immunity should not apply here because Yahoo acted in bad faith by using “faulty filtering technology and techniques,” motivated “by profit derived from blocking both good and bad e-mails.” But the court found no factual basis to support plaintiff’s allegations that Yahoo used “cheap and ineffective technologies to avoid the expense of appropriately tracking and eliminating only spam email.”

The court rejected another of plaintiff’s arguments against applying Section 230, namely, that Yahoo should not be afforded blanket immunity for blocking legitimate business emails. Looking to the cases of Goddard v. Google and National Numismatic Certification v. eBay, plaintiff argued that the court should apply the canon of statutory construction known as ejusdem generis to find that legitimate business email should not be treated the same as the more nefarious types of content enumerated in Section 230(c)(2). (Content that is, for example, obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing).

On this point the court looked to the sheer volume of the purported spam to conclude Yahoo was within Section 230’s protection to block the messages — plaintiff acknowledged that it sent approximately six million emails per day through Yahoo’s servers and that at least .1% of those emails either were sent to invalid addresses or resulted in user opt-out. On an annual basis, that amounted to more than two million invalid or unwanted emails.

October 2, 2010 Anonymity, Defamation, Section 230

Section 230 shields Google from liability for anonymous defamation

Black v. Google Inc., 2010 WL 3746474 (N.D.Cal. September 20, 2010)

Back in August, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California dismissed a lawsuit against Google brought by two pro se plaintiffs, holding that the action was barred under the immunity provisions of 47 USC 230. That section says that “[n]o provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.” Plaintiffs had complained about a comment on Google (probably a review) disparaging their roofing business.

Plaintiffs filed and “objection” to the dismissal, which the court read as a motion to alter or amend under Fed. R. Civ. P. 59. The court denied plaintiffs’ motion.

In their “objection,” plaintiffs claimed — apparently without much support — that Congress did not intend Section 230 to apply in situations involving anonymous speech. The court did not buy this argument.

The court looked to the Ninth Circuit case of Carafano v. Metrosplash as an example of a website operator protected under Section 230 from liability for anonymous content: “To be sure, the website [in Carafano] provided neutral tools, which the anonymous dastard used to publish the libel, but the website did absolutely nothing to encourage the posting of defamatory content.” As in Carafano, Google was a passive conduit and could not be liable for failing to detect and remove the allegedly defamatory content.

September 9, 2008 Defamation, Section 230

No CDA immunity for letting co-defendant use computer to post material

Capital Corp. Merchant Banking, Inc. v. Corporate Colocation, Inc., No. 07-1626, 2008 WL 4058014 (M.D.Fla., August 27, 2008)

Professor Goldman points us to a recent decision in a case where the plaintiff alleged that one of the individual defendants “allowed [a co-defendant] to use ‘a computer registered in her name’ to make . . . defamatory statements.” The defendants filed a 12(b)(6) motion to dismiss, arguing that the Communications Decency Act (CDA) at 47 U.S.C. 230 barred the claims. The court denied the motion.

With little analysis, the court cited to the 9th Circuit’s Roommates.com decision, holding that “[t]he CDA provides immunity for the removal of content, not the creation of the content.” While that is not an incorrect statement, it is troublesome in this context inasmuch as it tells half the story.

Yes, 47 U.S.C. 230(c) does provide protection to “Good Samaritan” operators of interactive computer services who remove offensive content. The user whose content has been removed would not have a cause of action against the operator who took down the content in good faith. See 47 U.S.C. 230(c)(2).

But 47 U.S.C. 230(c)(1) provides that no provider of an interactive computer service shall be treated as a publisher or speaker of any information provided by a third party. Courts have usually held that when a defamation plaintiff brings a claim against the operator of the computer service used to post defamatory content (who was not responsible for creating the content), such a claim is barred, as the plaintiff would not be able to satisfy the publication element of a defamation prima facie case.

Maybe in this situation the court found that the defendant who let a co-defendant use her computer did not meet the definition of a service provider as contemplated by the CDA. But it would have been nice to see that analysis written down, rather than having to merely surmise or speculate.

December 22, 2005 Defamation, Section 230

Communications Decency Act shields web host as “distributor” of defamatory content

Plaintiff Austin, the owner of a travel-related business, accused the owner of one of his business’s competitors of posting defamatory content on the competitor’s website. Austin filed a defamation lawsuit against the company that hosted the website, claiming that it was liable for refusing to take down the alleged defamatory statements.

The web hosting company successfully moved for summary judgment, citing to 47 U.S.C. §230, a portion of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 which provides, in relevant part, that “[n]o provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.” Austin sought review of the trial court’s decision.

Austin argued that the plain language of §230 provides a shield only for liability that would result from being a publisher of defamatory material. Because the web hosting company was a distributor of defamatory content, Austin argued, §230 should not apply, and thus the lower court erred in granting summary judgment on that basis.

The appellate court rejected Austin’s argument, relying heavily on the decision of Zeran v. America Online, Inc., 129 F.3d 327 (4th Cir., 1997). As in Zeran, the court found that Congress had spoken directly to the issue by “employing the legally significant term ‘publisher,’ which has traditionally encompassed distributors and original publishers alike.” The court held that because distributor liability is a subset of publisher liability, it is therefore specifically foreclosed by § 230.

Austin v. CrystalTech Web Hosting, 125 P.3d 389, 2005 WL 3489249 (Ariz. App. Div. 1, December 22, 2005).

Technorati:
Law
Defamation
Communications Decency Act