Johnson v. Arden, — F.3d —, 2010 WL 3023660 (8th Cir. August 4, 2010) The Johnsons sell exotic cats. They filed a defamation lawsuit after discovering that some other cat-fanciers said mean things about them on Complaintsboard.com. Among the defendants was the company that hosted Complaintsboard.com – InMotion Hosting. The district court dismissed the case [...]
Archive for the ‘Section 230’ Category
Communications Decency Act immunizes hosting provider from defamation liability
August 5th, 2010
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Forwarder of defamatory email protected under Section 230
February 28th, 2010
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Hung Tan Phan v. Lang Van Pham, — Cal.Rptr.3d —, 2010 WL 658244 (Cal.App. 4 Dist. Feb. 25, 2010) Defendant, a veteran of the Vietnamese military, forwarded an email to some other Vietmamese veterans which apparently defamed another veteran. He didn’t just forward the email, though. He added some commentary at the beginning, which said [...]
How Section 230 is like arson laws when it comes to enjoining website operators
January 12th, 2010
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The case of Blockowicz v. Williams, — F.Supp.2d —, 2009 WL 4929111 (N.D. Ill. December 21, 2009), which I posted on last week is worthy of discussion in that it raises the question of whether website operators like Ripoff Report could get off too easily when they knowingly host harmful third party content. Immunity under [...]
Injunction against defamatory content could not reach website owner
January 7th, 2010
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Blockowicz v. Williams, — F.Supp.2d —, 2009 WL 4929111 (N.D. Ill. December 21, 2009) (This is a case from last month that has already gotten some attention in the legal blogosphere, and is worth reporting on here in spite of the already-existing commentary.) Plaintiffs sued two individual defendants for defamation over content those defendants posted [...]
Website drives off with Section 230 win over Chevy dealer
December 31st, 2009
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Nemet Chevrolet sued the website Consumeraffairs.com over some posts on that website which Nemet thought were defamatory and interfered with Nemet’s business expectancy. The website moved to dismiss the lawsuit, claiming that the Communications Decency Act at 47 U.S.C. 230 immunized the website from the lawsuit. The court dismissed the action on Section 230 grounds [...]
Has Section 230 immunity passed its apex?
May 8th, 2009
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Barnes v. Yahoo!, Inc., No. 05-36189, 9th Cir. May 7, 2009 Yesterday’s decision from the Ninth Circuit in Barnes v. Yahoo is kind of a big deal. Jeff Neuberger observes that Section 230 took a hit. Characterizing it differently, Thomas O’Toole called it a nice win for online publishers. I’m thinking that the halcyon days [...]
Made in onto ABC World News Tonight
March 5th, 2009
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The Sheriff of Cook County (that means Chicago) has sued Craigslist claiming that the site is a public nuisance. [Here’s the Complaint. ABC News interviewed me this afternoon to get my comments on the case. I enjoyed talking about it for about 20 minutes on camera. As these things usually go, most of my flashes [...]
No CDA immunity for letting co-defendant use computer to post material
September 9th, 2008
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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 . . . [...]
Google doesn’t have to pay $50 billion to defamation plaintiff
August 20th, 2008
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Steele v. Mengelkoch, 2008 WL 2966529 (Minn.App. August 5, 2008). Pro se plaintiff Steele sued Google in Minnesota state court for $50 billion because Google indexed an article which Steele though defamed him. Google moved to dismiss the complaint for failure to state a claim and the lower court granted the motion. Steele sought review [...]
A look back at Doe v. MySpace
June 10th, 2008
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Court of Appeals upholds Section 230 immunity for MySpace. Social networking provider not subject to suit for negligence for failing to implement technological measures to weed out underage users. Doe v. MySpace, Inc., — F.3d —-, 2008 WL 2068064 (5th Cir. May 16, 2008). I’ve been pretty busy the past few weeks with work and [...]
