Ranting to /dev/null

Internet immunity

In what will almost certainly become a landmark case on the issue, Barrett v. Rosenthal, the California Supreme Court ruled yesterday that those "who use the Internet to publish information that originated from another source" are immune from liability related to the content of that information. The relevant appeals court had ruled to allow the liability, and the supreme court reversed. The court relied heavily on the Communications Decency Act of 1996, codified in 47 U.S.C. § 230, particularly § 230(c). It also discussed Zeran v. America Online, Inc., 129 F.3d 327 (4th Cir.1997). Though the court recognized difficulties with the ruling, the holding is that until such time as the US Congress chooses to address the issue, "plaintiffs who contend they were defamed in an Internet posting may only seek recovery from the original source of the statement."

This has the potential to be huge. Amazon, AOL, eBay, Google, etc., your standard short-list of internet heavyweights, all filed amicus briefs for the defendant, as a ruling for such liability would expose all of them to a torrent of lawsuits. The net effect seems to be that if you find something on the internet that you consider to be libelous, you can only sue the person who created the content, not the website that publishes it.