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 with the Court of Appeals of Minnesota. On appeal, the court affirmed.

The court held that 47 U.S.C. §230, by its plain language, creates a federal immunity to any cause of action that would make Google – as the provider of an interactive computer service – liable for information originating with a third party user of the service.

In the court’s language, §230(c)(1) “precludes courts from entertaining claims that would place a computer service provider in a publisher’s role.” So a lawsuit seeking to place responsibility on Google to exercise traditional roles of the publisher – e.g., deciding to publish, withdraw, postpone or alter content – was not legally sufficient to survive.

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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 speaking engagements, and I also slipped in a little vacation awhile back. So I’m doing some catching up, looking over a number of interesting decisions from the past few weeks. While I was on the beach in Florida with my family, the Fifth Circuit issued this intriguing opinion in a case that has gotten quite a bit of publicity since it was filed back in 2006. Here’s the story.

When Julie Doe was 13, she lied about her age and set up a profile on MySpace. A year later, she met — first online, then offline — a 19 year-old named Solis. That Solis allegedly assaulted Doe.

Julie and her mother filed suit against MySpace alleging, among other things, negligence. The plaintiffs claimed that MySpace should have done more to prevent Doe and Solis from meeting.

The case bounced around Texas and New York state court, then to New York federal court, then back to Texas where it ended up in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas. Last year, the district court dismissed the case, holding that the Communications Decency Act at 47 U.S.C. 230 immunized MySpace from liability.

The Does sought review with the Fifth Circuit. On appeal, the court affirmed.

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 Does had argued that Section 230 should not bar the negligence claim, as the allegations dealt not with MySpace’s publication of information, but with the site’s failure to implement appropriate security.

Agreeing with the lower court, the appellate court rejected what it called disingenuous artful pleading by the plaintiffs. It found that the allegations were “merely another way of claiming that MySpace was liable for publishing the communications and they [spoke] to MySpace’s role as a publisher of online third-party-generated content.”

Doe v. Friendfinder Network, Inc., — F.Supp.2d —-, No. 07-286, 2008 WL 803947 (D.N.H. March 28, 2008)

Plaintiff Doe learned that a nude image and some biographical information about herself had been used to set up a bogus profile on the adult-oriented personal-ad Web site Adult Friend Finder. She sued the operator of the site alleging a number of claims, like defamation and intentional infliction of emotional distress. She also alleged misappropriation of her right of publicity under state law, and false designation of origin and false advertising under the federal Lanham Act.

Adult Friend Finder moved to dismiss the claims, arguing that the Communications Decency Act (”CDA”) at 47 U.S.C. 230 immunized the site from liability for the information provided by someone other than the site operator. The court agreed with Adult Friend Finder as to the majority of the claims, holding that the claims were barred by the CDA where the plaintiff sought to impose liability on the site as the publisher or speaker of the information.

But the court held that the CDA did not immunize Adult Friend Finder from Doe’s state law claims for violation of the right of publicity, or for violation of the federal Lanham Act.

Section 230(e)(2) provides that “[n]othing in this section shall be construed to limit or expand any law pertaining to intellectual property.” You may recall that last year the Ninth Circuit [in Perfect 10, Inc. v. CC Bill, LLC, 488 F.3d 1102 (9th Cir. 2007)] held that 230(e)(2)’s restriction on immunity only applied to federal claims involving intellectual property (leaving state law claims barred).

The court in this case disagreed with the Ninth Circuit on this point, looking at the plain language of the statute and finding no meaningful distinction between state and federal causes of action involving intellectual property, especially given the presence of the word “any” when decribing “law[s] pertaining to intellectual property.”