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.
Carafano v. Metrosplash.com, Inc., 339 F.3d 1119, is an American legal case dealing with the protection provided an internet service provider under the Communications Decency Act (CDA) United States Code Title 47 section 230(c)(1). It is also known as the Star Trek actress case as the plaintiff, Chase Masterson – whose legal name is Christianne Carafano – is well known for having appeared on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. The case demonstrated that the use of an online form with some multiple choice selections does not override the protections against liability for the actions of users or anonymous members of a Web-based service.
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.
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. The case resolved a claim of libel against CompuServe, an Internet service provider that hosted allegedly defamatory content in one of its forums. The case established a precedent for Internet service provider liability by applying defamation law, originally intended for hard copies of written works, to the Internet medium. The court held that although CompuServe did host defamatory content on its forums, CompuServe was merely a distributor, rather than a publisher, of the content. As a distributor, CompuServe could only be held liable for defamation if it knew, or had reason to know, of the defamatory nature of the content. As CompuServe had made no effort to review the large volume of content on its forums, it could not be held liable for the defamatory content.
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.
Section 230 is a section of Title 47 of the United States Code 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.
Chicago Lawyers' Committee For Civil Rights Under Law v. Craigslist, 519 F.3d 666, is a Seventh Circuit decision affirming a lower court ruling that Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (CDA) provides immunity to Internet service providers that "publish" classified ads that violate the Fair Housing Act (FHA).
Doe v. MySpace, Inc., 528 F.3d 413 (2008), is a 2008 Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that MySpace was immune under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 from liability for a sexual assault of a minor that arose from posts on the MySpace platform.
Perfect 10, Inc. v. CCBill LLC, 488 F.3d 1102, is a U.S. court case between a publisher of an adult entertainment magazine and the webhosting, connectivity, and payment service companies. The plaintiff Perfect 10 asserted that defendants CCBill and CWIE violated copyright, trademark, and state law violation of right of publicity laws, unfair competition, false and misleading advertising by providing services to websites that posted images stolen from Perfect 10's magazine and website. Defendants sought to invoke statutory safe harbor exemptions from copyright infringement liability under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, 17 U.S.C. § 512, and from liability for state law unfair competition, false advertising claims and right of publicity based on Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, 47 U.S.C. § 230(c)(1).
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."
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.
Jones v. Dirty World Entertainment Recordings LLC, 755 F.3d 398, is a case in which the United States Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals adopted the Roommates material development test for limiting immunity under section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (CDA). A libel suit was pursued by Sarah Jones, formerly a high school teacher and Cincinnati Ben–Gals cheerleader, against Dirty World, LLC, operator of the celebrity gossip web site TheDirty.com, concerning two postings on TheDirty.com that Dirty World refused to remove.
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.
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).
Swift v. Zynga is an ongoing class action lawsuit filed in 2009, based on allegedly deceptive ads that ran in Zynga games on Facebook. A motion by Zynga to dismiss the case was denied by the United States District Court for the Northern District of California in November 2010.
Young v. Facebook, Inc., 790 F. Supp. 2d 1110, is a pro se internet law case in which the plaintiff sued the social network Facebook following the termination of her user account. In her original complaint, the plaintiff, Karen Beth Young, alleged violation of her First and Fourteenth Amendment rights, breach of contract, breach of the implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing, negligence, and fraud. In the U.S. District Court of Northern California, Facebook moved to dismiss the claim, and on October 25, 2010, presiding Judge Jeremy Fogel granted the motion to dismiss with leave to amend. Redirecting her complaint, Young alleged violations of the Americans with Disabilities Act and related state laws on disability, as well as breach of contract and negligence. Again, Facebook moved to dismiss, and Judge Fogel dismissed the case without leave to amend.
Jane Doe No. 14 v. Internet Brands, Inc., 767 F.3d 894 (2014), is a 2014 ruling at the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals on the legal liability of an Internet service provider for criminal offenses committed by its users. The ultimate ruling in the case has caused confusion over the amount of liability faced by service providers during such incidents.
O'Kroley v. Fastcase, Inc.,, aff'd, No. 15-6336, is a U.S. court case concerning defamation in online search results. The plaintiff, Colin O'Kroley, alleged that Google's automated snippet algorithm created a defamatory search result by falsely implying that the plaintiff had been accused of indecency with a child. The District Court granted Google's motion to dismiss the case, and found that Google had immunity from the defamation charges under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which protects interactive computer services from being held liable as a speaker or publisher for information provided by a third-party information content provider. On appeal, the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit affirmed the District Court's decision.
Malwarebytes, Inc. v. Enigma Software Group USA, LLC was a 2020 United States federal court case concerning the legal immunity given to internet companies under section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. It was denied certiorari to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, but Justice Clarence Thomas of the Supreme Court of the United States made a statement respecting the denial of certiorari. He opined that section 230 had been interpreted too broadly, and could be narrowed or eliminated in a future case, which he urged his colleagues to hear.
Courts have…departed from the most natural reading of the text by giving Internet companies immunity for their own content ... Section 230(c)(1) protects a company from publisher liability only when content is 'provided by another information content provider.' Nowhere does this provision protect a company that is itself the information content provider.
