Online service provider law

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Online service provider law is a summary and case law tracking page for laws, legal decisions and issues relating to online service providers (OSPs), like the Wikipedia and Internet service providers, from the viewpoint of an OSP considering its liability and customer service issues. See Cyber law for broader coverage of the law of cyberspace.

Contents

United States

The general liability risk within the United States is low but it's necessary to review the laws and decisions of all other countries because the extraterritorial application of laws to content hosted in the US is a significant concern.

Libel, defamation

Immunity under Section 230 requires that: (1) the defendant is a provider or user of an interactive computer service; (2) the cause of action treat the defendant as a publisher or speaker of information; and (3) the information at issue be provided by another information content provider. Zeran, 129 F.3d at 330. Even completely ignoring a complaint has generally been found not to garner liability, so protection appears to be very comprehensive, though it still doesn't stop people from trying.

In 2002, the California Court of Appeal held that CDA Section 230 does not apply to distributor liability, meaning that a defendant who had notice of a defamatory statement must stop publishing it or face liability. Barrett v. Rosenthal, 114 Cal. App.4th 1379 (2002). The California Supreme Court, in a unanimous decision overturned, holding that Rosenthal was a "user of interactive computer services" and therefore immune from liability under Section 230. See also Grace v. eBay, Inc., 2004 WL 1632047 (Cal. Ct. App. Jul. 22, 2004) (no immunity against liability for a distributor of information who knew or had reason to know that the information was defamatory). Grace v. eBay was resolved without an opinion. The lower courts in Grace and Barrett had reached opposite conclusions when they were appealed to the California Supreme Court. In taking these cases, it was deciding to uphold or reverse Blumenthal v. AOL. Blumenthal, noted the conference report comment that the clear intent of the CDA was to overrule the state decision in Stratton-Oakmont v. Prodigy and opined that accepting distributor liability would expose them to liability that Congress had clearly intended to protect them from.

Patent, trademark, right of publicity, trade secret

The CDA does not "limit or expand any law pertaining to intellectual property" 47 U.S.C. Section 230(e)(2); see also Gucci America, Inc. v. Hall & Associates, 135 F. Supp. 2d 409 (S.D.N.Y. 2001) (no immunity for contributory liability for trademark infringement); Perfect 10, Inc. v CCBill LLC (No. CV 02-7624 LGB) (C.D. Cal. 22 June 2004) (state right of publicity claim is not covered by Section 230); but see Carafano v. Metrosplash.com, Inc., 339 F.3d 1119 (9th Cir. 2003) (dismissing, inter alia, right of publicity claim under Section 230 without discussion).

Courts have not yet addressed whether a state law trade secret claim is a "law pertaining to intellectual property."

The OCILLA can provide a safe harbor for OSPs who comply with its requirements. As noted above, CDA Section 230 does not provide protection against a copyright claim.

If the OSP does not fall under OCILLA's safe harbor, it still may be protected. In Religious Technology Center v. Netcom On-Line Communication Services, Inc., 907 F. Supp. 1361 (N. D. Cal. 1995), an internet services provider who merely transmitted material that infringed the plaintiff’s copyright was held not liable. See also CoStar Group, Inc. v. LoopNet, Inc., 373 F.3d 544 (4th Cir., 2004)

Security

The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act is one US law covering this area.

Australia

Defamation

Gutnick v Dow Jones US publisher, liable in Australia under the relatively new lex loci delicti rule (where the harm happens).

United Kingdom

Defamation

The permanent nature of the internet and the fact that regulation of what people post is almost impossible to maintain can lead to many dangerous situations. And when these slanderous accusations cause damage to an injured party, they can be classified as Online Defamation.

The first case considering online defamation was in Godfrey v. Demon Internet Service [1999] 4 All ER 342, [2001] QB 201 (QBD). An anonymous poster impersonated a physics lecturer and posted a defamatory comments on a Usenet newsgroup. The posting remained online for several weeks even after the real lecturer made requests to take it down. The issue was whether the service provider had 'published' the posting. The Court held "ISPs do not participate in the process of publication as such but merely act as facilitators...". However, in Godfrey, it was held that the ISP could be held liable at common law if it had been notified of a defamatory posting, and was so rendered responsible for publication from that moment onwards.

The later case of Bunt v. Tilley & Ors [2006] EWHC 407 (QB), concerned a claim for alleged defamation against the ISPs who hosted websites containing defamatory material. The court found that the ISPs were merely passive facilitators rather than actively procuring the commission of the tort like a publisher. No defamation was ever proven.

As of 1 January 2014, changes to UK defamation laws will come into force, [1] with the Defamation Act 2013 and accompanying Defamation (Operators of Websites) Regulations 2013 . [2] in which operators of web sites are not liable for defamation claims against them for user generated content (e.g. comments on a forum posted by users) provided they take certain actions within reasonable timeframes when notified of the offending content. Where the author cannot be contacted, (e.g. if the posting is anonymous or the user has supplied obviously bogus contact details), the website operator must take the content down or they can be liable.

Section 5 of the Defamation Act 2013 (c.26) provides a defence for the operator of a website where a defamation action is brought in respect of a statement posted on that website if it was not the operator who posted the statement. The defence can be defeated if the claimant can show that it was not possible for them to identify the person posting the statement, the claimant gave the operator a notice of complaint in relation to that statement and the operator did not respond to the notice of complaint in accordance with these regulations.

According to section 1 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, a work is eligible for copyright protection if it is:

"1 Copyright and copyright works

(1) Copyright is a property right which subsists in accordance with this Part in the following descriptions of work?
(a) original literary, dramatic, musical or artistic works,
(b) sound recordings, films or broadcasts, and
(c) the typographical arrangement of published editions.
(2) In this Part "copyright work" means a work of any of those descriptions in which copyright subsists.
(3) Copyright does not subsist in a work unless the requirements of this Part with respect to qualification for copyright protection are met (see section 153 and the provisions referred to there)."

According to the UK Patent Office website, the definition of 'original' is the following:

"A work can only be original if it is the result of independent creative effort. It will not be original if it has been copied from something that already exists. If it is similar to something that already exists but there has been no copying from the existing work either directly or indirectly, then it may be original.

The term 'original' also involves a test of substantiality - literary, dramatic, musical and artistic works will not be original if there has not been sufficient skill and labour expended in their creation. But, sometimes significant investment of resources without significant intellectual input can still count as sufficient skill and labour.

Ultimately, only the courts can decide whether something is original, but there is much case law indicating, for example, that names and titles do not have sufficient substantiality to be original and that, where an existing work is widely known, it will be difficult to convince a court that there has been no copying if your work is very similar or identical.

Sound recordings, films and published editions do not have to be original but they will not be new copyright works if they have been copied from existing sound recordings, films and published editions.

Broadcasts do not have to be original, but there will be no copyright, if, or to the extent that, they infringe copyright in another broadcast."

The other relevant portion of the Act in question is section 153:

"153 Qualification for copyright protection
(1) Copyright does not subsist in a work unless the qualification requirements of this Chapter are satisfied as regards?
(a) the author (see section 154), or
(b) the country in which the work was first published (see section 155), or
(c) in the case of a broadcast, the country from which the broadcast was made (see section 156).
(2) Subsection (1) does not apply in relation to Crown copyright or Parliamentary copyright (see sections 163 to 166B) or to copyright subsisting by virtue of section 168 (copyright of certain international organisations).
(3) If the qualification requirements of this Chapter, or section 163, 165 or 168, are once satisfied in respect of a work, copyright does not cease to subsist by reason of any subsequent event."

This section controls the nationality and country of origin requirements for copyright. It is roughly comparable with US law, since both countries are signatories to the Berne Convention.

Photographs created before 1 June 1957 have a 50-year copyright period, as do other works except engravings. Photographs published before August 1989 also have a 50-year copyright period.

Japan

On 27 May 2002, so-called Provider Liability Limitation Law (プロバイダ責任法 or プロバイダ責任制限法) was enacted. It is said that the major purpose of the law is to limit the liability of ISPs, administrators and system operators of bulletin boards, hosting services, and others. The law covers copyright violation, defamation, and obscenity among other things. Regarding those contents that have to be removed, the law holds that the service providers cannot be held liable, unless 1) they have the technological means to remove the content, and either 2-a) they have the knowledge of the illegal content, or 2-b) they could reasonably have gotten to know it. It also specifies circumstances under which service providers may offer personal information of a user to another.

Major cases preceding the law include Niftyserve Case, in which a system operator/ moderator of an online forum was found to be liable for not removing a series of defamatory postings. The system operator was not requested by the defamed participant to remove the content, but had the knowledge of the content. The court found it to be an important ground for the liability.

Canada

In Canada, there is no legislation addressing liability for online service providers; and few cases.

In Carter v. BC Federation of Foster Parents Association, 2004 BCSC 137, a case on a service provider's liability for an anonymous forum posting, the Court cited the US cases of Cubby v. Compuserve and Lunney v. Prodigy Services with approval for its editorial control test.

Where a defamatory statement is found, a service provider may avail themselves to a defence of innocent dissemination - as set out in the English case of Vizetelly v. Mudie’s Select Library Ltd., [1900] 2 Q.B. 17.

Elsewhere

Related Research Articles

The Communications Decency Act of 1996 (CDA) was the United States Congress's first notable attempt to regulate pornographic material on the Internet. In the 1997 landmark case Reno v. ACLU, the United States Supreme Court unanimously struck the act's anti-indecency provisions.

An online service provider (OSP) can, for example, be an Internet service provider, an email provider, a news provider (press), an entertainment provider, a search engine, an e-commerce site, an online banking site, a health site, an official government site, social media, a wiki, or a Usenet newsgroup.

<i>Stratton Oakmont, Inc. v. Prodigy Services Co.</i> 1995 decision of the New York Supreme Court

Stratton Oakmont, Inc. v. Prodigy Services Co., 23 Media L. Rep. 1794, is a 1995 decision of the New York Supreme Court holding that online service providers can be liable for the speech of their users. The ruling caused controversy among early supporters of the Internet, including some lawmakers, leading to the passage of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act in 1996.

<i>Cubby, Inc. v. CompuServe Inc.</i> 1991 US District Court decision

Cubby, Inc. v. CompuServe Inc., 776 F. Supp. 135, was a 1991 court decision in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York which held that Internet service providers were subject to traditional defamation law for their hosted content.

<i>Zeran v. America Online, Inc.</i> 1997 United States court case

Zeran v. America Online, Inc., 129 F.3d 327, cert. denied, 524 U.S. 937 (1998), is a case in which the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit determined the immunity of Internet service providers for wrongs committed by their users under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (CDA). Section 230(c)(1) of the CDA provides that "No 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."

Barrett v. Rosenthal, 40 Cal.4th 33 (2006), was a California Supreme Court case concerning online defamation. The case resolved a defamation claim brought by Stephen Barrett, Terry Polevoy, and attorney Christopher Grell against Ilena Rosenthal and several others. Barrett and others alleged that the defendants had republished libelous information about them on the internet. In a unanimous decision, the court held that Rosenthal was a "user of interactive computer services" and therefore immune from liability under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.

Secondary liability, or indirect infringement, arises when a party materially contributes to, facilitates, induces, or is otherwise responsible for directly infringing acts carried out by another party. The US has statutorily codified secondary liability rules for trademarks and patents, but for matters relating to copyright, this has solely been a product of case law developments. In other words, courts, rather than Congress, have been the primary developers of theories and policies concerning secondary liability.

<i>Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada v. Canadian Assn of Internet Providers</i> Supreme Court of Canada case

Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada v. Canadian Ass'n of Internet Providers 2 S.C.R. 427, 2004 SCC 45 - also known as the Tariff 22 case - is a leading decision by the Supreme Court of Canada on Internet service provider (ISP) liability for copyright infringement. The Court found that there is no liability for information found in web caches. An ISP's liability depends on whether it limits itself to "a conduit" or a content-neutral function and is not dependent on where the ISP is located.

A person who is found to have published a defamatory statement may evoke a defence of innocent dissemination, which absolves them of liability provided that they had no knowledge of the defamatory nature of the statement, and that their failure to detect the defamatory content was not due to negligence. The defence, sometimes also known as "mechanical distributor", is of concern to Internet Service Providers because of their potential liability for defamatory material posted by their subscribers.

The origins of the United States' defamation laws pre-date the American Revolution; one influential case in 1734 involved John Peter Zenger and established precedent that "The Truth" is an absolute defense against charges of libel. Though the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution was designed to protect freedom of the press, for most of the history of the United States, the U.S. Supreme Court failed to use it to rule on libel cases. This left libel laws, based upon the traditional "Common Law" of defamation inherited from the English legal system, mixed across the states. The 1964 case New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, however, radically changed the nature of libel law in the United States by establishing that public officials could win a suit for libel only when they could prove the media outlet in question knew either that the information was wholly and patently false or that it was published "with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not". Later Supreme Court cases barred strict liability for libel and forbade libel claims for statements that are so ridiculous as to be obviously facetious. Recent cases have added precedent on defamation law and the Internet.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Online Copyright Infringement Liability Limitation Act</span> 1998 U.S. federal law

The Online Copyright Infringement Liability Limitation Act (OCILLA) is United States federal law that creates a conditional 'safe harbor' for online service providers (OSP), a group which includes Internet service providers (ISP) and other Internet intermediaries, by shielding them for their own acts of direct copyright infringement as well as shielding them from potential secondary liability for the infringing acts of others. OCILLA was passed as a part of the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) and is sometimes referred to as the "Safe Harbor" provision or as "DMCA 512" because it added Section 512 to Title 17 of the United States Code. By exempting Internet intermediaries from copyright infringement liability provided they follow certain rules, OCILLA attempts to strike a balance between the competing interests of copyright owners and digital users.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Section 230</span> US federal law on website liability

In the United States, Section 230 is a section of the Communications Act of 1934 that was enacted as part of the Communications Decency Act of 1996, which is Title V of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, and generally provides immunity for online computer services with respect to third-party content generated by its users. At its core, Section 230(c)(1) provides immunity from liability for providers and users of an "interactive computer service" who publish information provided by third-party users:

No 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.

Thomas Dart, Sheriff of Cook County v. Craigslist, Inc., 665 F. Supp. 2d 961, is a decision by the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois in which the court held that Craigslist, as an Internet service provider, was immune from wrongs committed by their users under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (CDA). Sheriff Thomas Dart had sought to hold Craigslist responsible for allegedly illegal content posted by users in Craigslist's erotic services section, but Section 230(c)(1) of the CDA provides that "no 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."

<i>Goddard v. Google, Inc.</i>

Goddard v. Google, Inc., 640 F. Supp. 2d 1193, is a case in which Jenna Goddard ("Plaintiff") alleged that she and a class of similarly situated individuals were harmed by Google ("Defendant") as a result of clicking allegedly fraudulent web-based advertisements for mobile subscription services ("MSSPs"). The United States District Court for the Northern District of California held that the action was barred by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act ("CDA") and dismissed the complaint without leave to amend.

In Milgram v. Orbitz Worldwide, LLC, the New Jersey Superior Court held that online ticket resellers qualified for immunity under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (CDA), and that such immunity preempted a state law consumer fraud statute. The opinion clarified the court's test for determining whether a defendant is acting as a publisher, the applicability of the CDA to e-commerce sites, and the extent of control that an online intermediary may exercise over user content without becoming an "information content provider" under the CDA. The opinion was hailed by one observer as a "rare defeat for a consumer protection agency" and the "biggest defense win of the year" in CDA § 230 litigation.

<i>Barnes v. Yahoo!, Inc.</i> Court case involving internet service providers and user content

Barnes v. Yahoo!, Inc., 570 F.3d 1096, is a United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit case in which the Ninth Circuit held that Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (CDA) rules that Yahoo!, Inc., as an Internet service provider cannot be held responsible for failure to remove objectionable content posted to their website by a third party. Plaintiff Cecilia Barnes made claims arising out of Defendant Yahoo!, Inc.'s alleged failure to honor promises to remove offensive content about the plaintiff posted by a third party. The content consisted of a personal profile with nude photos of the Plaintiff and her contact information. The United States District Court for the District of Oregon had dismissed Barnes' complaint.

<i>Fair Housing Council of San Fernando Valley v. Roommates.com, LLC</i>

Fair Housing Council of San Fernando Valley v. Roommates.com, LLC, 521 F.3d 1157, is a case in which the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, sitting en banc, held that immunity under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (CDA) did not apply to an interactive online operator whose questionnaire violated the Fair Housing Act. However, the court found that Roommates.com was immune under Section 230 of the CDA for the “additional comments” portion of the website. This case was the first to place a limit on the broad immunity that Section 230(c) gives to service providers that has been established under Zeran v. AOL (1997).

Hassell v. Bird was a case heard within the California court system related to a court-ordered removal of a defamatory user review of a law firm from the Yelp website. The case, first heard in the California Court of Appeals, First District, Division Four, unanimously ruled in favor of the law firm, ordering Yelp to remove the review in 2016. Yelp refused to remove the review and appealed the decision. In July 2018, the California Supreme Court reversed the order in a closely divided 4-3 decision, stating that Yelp's position fell within Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act as a publisher of user material, and was not required to comply with the trial court's removal order. However, the part of the trial court's decision that ordered the reviewer to remove the defamatory review and pay a monetary judgement were left intact. The Supreme Court of the United States denied to hear the appeal, leaving the California Supreme Court's decision.

Contributory copyright infringement is a way of imposing secondary liability for infringement of a copyright. It is a means by which a person may be held liable for copyright infringement even though he or she did not directly engage in the infringing activity. It is one of the two forms of secondary liability apart from vicarious liability. Contributory infringement is understood to be a form of infringement in which a person is not directly violating a copyright but induces or authorizes another person to directly infringe the copyright.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">EARN IT Act</span> Proposed US legislation

The EARN IT Act is a proposed legislation first introduced in 2020 in the United States Congress. It aims to amend Section 230 of the Communications Act of 1934, which allows operators of websites to remove user-posted content that they deem inappropriate, and provides them with immunity from civil lawsuits related to such posting. Section 230 is the only surviving portion of the Communications Decency Act, passed in 1996.

References

  1. "Daily Hansard, 19 Nov 2013 : Column GC37 - Defamation (Operators of Websites) Regulations 2013" . Retrieved 31 December 2013.
  2. "Defamation (Operators of Websites) Regulations 2013" . Retrieved 31 December 2013.