Spreadbury v. Bitterroot Public Library, 2012 WL 734163 (D. Montana, March 6, 2012) Plaintiff was upset at some local government officials, and ended up getting arrested for allegedly trespassing at the public library. Local newspapers covered the story, including on their websites. Some online commenters said mean things about plaintiff, so plaintiff sued a whole [...]
Posts Tagged ‘Section 230’
School district has to stop filtering web content
February 27th, 2012
1 Comment
PFLAG v. Camdenton R–III School Dist., 2012 WL 510877 (W.D.Mo. Feb. 16, 2012) Several website publishers that provide supportive resources directed at lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) youth filed a First Amendment lawsuit against a school district over the district’s use of internet filtering software. Plaintiffs asked the court for an injunction against the [...]
Yahoo not liable for blocking marketing email
March 23rd, 2011
2 Comments
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 [...]
Section 230 shields Google from liability for anonymous defamation
October 2nd, 2010
3 Comments
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 [...]
Communications Decency Act immunizes hosting provider from defamation liability
August 5th, 2010
1 Comment
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 [...]
How Section 230 is like arson laws when it comes to enjoining website operators
January 12th, 2010
9 Comments
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
1 Comment
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
1 Comment
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 [...]
