E-Commerce Law

Should Someone Tell Christian Roommates About the Ninth Circuit's Decision in Roommates.com?

While looking for the latest discussion of the recent Roommates.com decision, I came across Christian Roommates, a free website that purports to be "your online tool for finding a Christian Roommate in your area."  Users can use the site to find "Christian" roommates or list housing for rent to other "Christians."  While the site does not require users to state their religion before gaining access to the site, it repeatedly purports to be a place for users to find Christian roommates and tenants.

Given these facts, is Christian Roommates exposed to liability under the Fair Housing Act?  Can it rely on the protection of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act?

Ninth Circuit: Roommates.com Not Entirely Protected by Section 230

The Internet is buzzing with news of yesterday’s decision in Fair Housing Council of San Fernando Valley v. Roommates.com, ___ F.3d ___, 2008 WL 879293 (9th Cir. 2008). A number of commentators have posted summaries and analyses of the decision, so we will not duplicate their efforts here. (This post will presume that the reader has some basic familiarity with Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act and the facts and procedural history of the Roommates.com case.) However, we do feel the need to comment on a few aspects of the opinion.

E-Commerce Law Briefs: Week of March 17, 2008

We thought JuicyCampus might be the next Internet gossip site to suffer from unwanted legal scrutiny and it turns out we were right:  New Jersey law enforcement officials have been investigating JuicyCampus for at least a month and claim that the site violates the state's Consumer Fraud Act.

(Links:  Gossip Gone Wild at ABC News and College gossip site under scrutiny at Yahoo! News)

A Vermont court has applied Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act in dismissing a defamation suit brought against the operators of iBrattleboro.com.

(Link:  Libel Suit Tossed Against Local News Site at Media Law)

E-Commerce Law Briefs is a weekly feature appearing each Friday afternoon on E-Commerce Law. Each week, E-Commerce Law Briefs will provide a brief summary and commentary on recent legal news affecting e-commerce businesses.

Federal Court Rules that Section 230 Immunity Applies to Sex Site’s Publication of Inaccurate User Profile

The United States District Court for the Northern District of Ohio has ruled that Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (CDA) protects SexSearch, an online adult dating website that encourages its users to meet and engage in casual sexual relationships, against liability derived from its publication of a user profile which identified a certain minor female user as an adult.

The Plaintiff in Doe v. SexSearch.com, ____ F.Supp.2d ____, 2007 WL 2388913 (2007), was a "Gold member" of SexSearch who located the user profile of "Jane Roe" in October 2005. Roe’s profile indicated that her birthday was June 15, 1987 and that she was 18 years old. Doe began chatting online with Roe through SexSearch. Eventually, Doe and Roe decided to meet for a sexual encounter.

As it turns out, Roe was not actually 18 years old, but 14. As a result of their encounter, Doe was arrested and charged with three felony counts of engaging in unlawful sexual conduct with a minor. On those charges, Doe faces a prison sentence of 15 years and the requirement that he forever register as a sex offender.

Roe sued SexSearch and its owners, alleging that upon becoming a member of SexSearch he reviewed SexSearch's warranties and agreed to SexSearch's Terms and Conditions and profile guidelines. Roe contended that the Defendants warranted that all users of the site were 18 years of age or older and was contractually bound to review, verify, and approve all user profiles published on the website. Among other claims, Roe alleged causes of action for breach of contract, fraud, negligent infliction of emotional distress, negligent misrepresentation, deceptive trade practices, and failure to warn.

Considering SexSearch’s motion to dismiss, the Court concluded that "in determining whether to apply the CDA, the Court should not ask what particular form the plaintiff's claim takes . . . but whether the claim is directed toward the defendant in its publishing, editorial, and/or screening capacities, and seeking to hold it ‘liable for its publication of third-party content or harms flowing from the dissemination of that content.’" If so, the claim is barred, whether it is based in contract or tort.

Accordingly, the Court dismissed Doe’s claims for breach of SexSearch’s terms of use, fraud, negligent infliction of emotional distress, negligent misrepresentation, deceptive trade practices, and failure to warn. In so ruling, the Court held that

[a]t the end of the day . . . Plaintiff is seeking to hold SexSearch liable for its publication of third-party content and harms flowing from the dissemination of that content. The underlying basis for Plaintiff's claim is that if SexSearch had never published Jane Roe's profile, Plaintiff and Jane Roe never would have met, and the sexual encounter never would have taken place. Plaintiff thus attempts to hold SexSearch liable for "decisions relating to the monitoring, screening, and deletion of content from its network-actions quintessentially related to a publisher's role." . . . Section 230 specifically proscribes liability in such circumstances.

Technorati Tags:  Section 230, CDA, SexSearch

Overview of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act

Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996, 47 U.S.C. § 230, was enacted to ensure that providers and users of "interactive computer services" would not be exposed to liability as "publishers" of any information provided by another "information content provider." H.R. Rep. No. 105-775 § I(E). Essentially, Section 230 protects a website operator from being held liable for third-party content published on his site, even if the website operator edits the content.

Given the the importance of Section 230 to our readers, we thought we should put together an overview of the statute.  To this end, we have published a Squidoo lens, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which we will endeavor to update regularly.

Technorati Tags:  CDA, Communications Decency Act, Section 230

The CDA Has Killed Traditional Concepts of Defamation Law

In The ‘Course Conversation’ of Tucker Max: Are Traditional Concepts of Defamation Law Dead? we discussed a case in which the United District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania held that the Communications that Section 509 of the Communications Decency Act (CDA) bars a defamation claim based upon anonymous postings to a message board not authored by the defendant. Obviously, application of the CDA in that context represents a substantial (and potentially troubling) departure from the common law of defamation.

Eric Goldman’s Technology & Marketing Law Blog points us to an article which demonstrates that the court’s interpretation of the CDA in the Tucker Max case is far from unusual. Of the 55 reported cases in which the CDA was raised in defense of tort claims, the plaintiff prevailed only 7 times. With more and more people communicating over the Internet, traditional concepts of defamation law may indeed be dead.

For more information, see Wikipedia and 230 and a Great 230 Case Law Resource on Eric Goldman’s Technology & Marketing Law Blog.

Update (8/28/2006):  InternetCases.com has an excellent post about a recent CDA case involving the "infamous" owners of Ripoffreport.com.  The reported activities of the owners of Ripoffreport.com may be reason enough to be troubled by the overbreadth of the CDA.

Technorati Tags:  defamation, cda

The 'Coarse Conversation' of Tucker Max: Are Traditional Concepts of Defamation Law Dead?

This week, the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania ruled that Section 509 of the Communications Decency Act (CDA), codified at 47 U.S.C. § 230, bars a defamation claim based upon anonymous postings to a message board not authored by the defendant. The defendant in the case of DiMeo v. Max was Tucker Max, a self-described "aspiring celebrity" and operator of the website (www.tuckermax.com) which hosts the message board at issue in the suit.

After a New Year’s Eve party hosted by plaintiff Anthony DiMeo III’s public relations firm ended prematurely, over-attended and under-supplied, angry partygoers and others took to the Tucker Max message boards to comment upon the party and its host. The message board posts, "many of them [found by the court to be] laden with vulgarity", criticized the event, ridiculed DiMeo, or expressed outright animosity toward him. DiMeo filed suit, alleging that some of the posts constituted defamation. The matter was removed to federal court, where Max filed his motion to dismiss.

In granting Max’s motion, the District Court held that the content of the offending posts constituted "information provided by another information content provider [other than Max]," despite the fact that Max selected and edited posts which appeared on the website. As such, DiMeo’s defamation claim was barred by Section 509 of the CDA. Though the site "could be a poster child for . . . vulgarity," the court found that the freedom to communicate anonymously over the Internet should be protected, even in the case of "the coarse conversation that, it appears, never ends on tuckermax.com."

Traditional concepts of defamation law may, indeed, be dead if this court’s interpretation of the CDA is widely applied. The CDA prevents most victims from seeking redress from the operators of websites containing defamatory statements and it is difficult, if not impossible, to identify an anonymous Internet source of defamatory statements.

Tens of millions of Americans communicate regularly on the Internet. In many instances, they make statements which they would not make absent the anonymity provided by the Internet. Some of those statements are untrue and have the potential to unreasonably and severely harm another person. Fairness and traditional legal principles require that a person harmed by such statements have some way to address that harm.

The American legal system has for decades successfully balanced freedom of speech with the rights of individuals to be free from the harm caused by defamatory statements. Now, our legal system must balance these concerns in the context of the Internet, a global communications mechanism which reaches hundreds of millions of people in a fairly unregulated environment.

The anonymity afforded by the Internet encourages the free exchange of ideas in a way that no other medium can, encouraging discourse that ultimately benefits society on a multitude of levels. However, that same anonymity is subject to abuse and the Internet’s worldwide reach increases the potential audience for, and damage caused by, defamatory statements. Balancing these two interests is imperative.

For more information, see Libel Laws Don't Prevent Blog 'Mockery' on law.com.

Technorati Tags:  defamation, cda, tucker max