Section 230 Doesn’t End Lawsuit Claiming Facebook Facilitated Sex Trafficking–Doe v. Facebook
As you may recall, Facebook embraced SESTA/FOSTA during the legislative proceedings. First, following advice from its political advisor Definers, Facebook decided SESTA was less important than the myriad of other political initiatives targeting it. As a result, Facebook caused the…
HuffPost Gets 512(c) Defense for Contributor-Uploaded Photo–Downs v. Oath
A Huffington Post contributor, Kim, uploaded a post with a photo. The day after Kim posted, HuffPost’s editor, Cohn, reviewed the post for offensive or unlawful content, added content tags, and linked to a related video; but Cohn didn’t modify…
Section 230 Helps Facebook Easily Defeat Claims Over a User’s Post–Richard v. Facebook
A former employee, Malepeai, posted negative remarks on Facebook about his past employer and his family. The past employer sued Facebook for defamation, civil conspiracy, outrage, and intentional infliction of emotional distress. This direct assault on Facebook for third party…
Amazon Isn’t Liable for Defective Marketplace Sale (No Thanks to Section 230)–Erie Insurance v. Amazon
A buyer purchased an LED headlamp in Amazon’s marketplace from a third party merchant (“Dream Light”) and gave it as a gift. The batteries allegedly malfunctioned and caused a fire in the gift-receiver’s house. The home insurer paid $313k+ for…
Section 230 Protects Tor Project from Liability for Tragic Drug Overdose–Seaver v. Estate of Cazes
This case involves the tragic death of a 13 year old boy from ingesting an illegal opioid (U-47700) he bought via the dark web. Allegedly, the boy used a Tor browser to find and purchase the drug. Among other defendants,…
A Recap of My Recent Section 230 Papers
I’ve been actively writing about Section 230 recently, so I thought it might help to round them up into a single post: * An Overview of the United States’ Section 230 Internet Immunity (2019). This is the basic primer you’ve always wanted….
Section 230 Protects Facebook’s Account and Content Restriction Decisions–Ebeid v. Facebook
Courts, at least in the Ninth Circuit, have collapsed the distinction between Sections 230(c)(1) and 230(c)(2). As a result, (c)(1) now routinely protects a service’s content filtering and account restriction decisions, which is nominally the job of (c)(2). This is…
Airbnb Gets Mixed Results in Challenge to Boston’s Anti-Airbnb Law–Airbnb v. Boston
Boston enacted a law against short-term housing rentals that included these provisions: (1) a $300/violation/day fine for booking illegal short-term rentals (the “penalties” provision), (2) a city-wide ban on booking agents that don’t honor notice-and-takedown or verify vendor licenses (the…
Wisconsin Supreme Court Fixes a Bad Section 230 Opinion—Daniel v. Armslist
In 2018, the Wisconsin Court of Appeals issued a bizarre opinion suggesting that plaintiffs could avoid Section 230 by targeting the service’s design and operation. The authoring judge seemed confident that he had spotted a statutory interpretation flaw that hundreds…
New Essay: The Complicated Story of FOSTA and Section 230
I’m pleased to announce my essay, The Complicated Story of FOSTA and Section 230. This essay tries to simplify a very complicated set of topics and summarize it in a fairly short and readable piece. I hope this essay provides one-stop-shopping…