Zeran v. AOL

Zeran v. America Online, Inc., 129 F.3d 327 (4th Cir. 1997),^[1] cert. denied, 524 U.S. 937 (1998), a case in which the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals determined the liability of internet service providers for wrongs committed by their users under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. Section 230(c)(1) of the CDA provides that "No 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."^[2]

Facts

A message was posted on an America Online bulletin board advertising and describing the sale of shirts with "offensive and tasteless slogans"^[3] related to the Oklahoma City bombing. Persons interested in purchasing a T-shirt were instructed to call the plaintiff, Kenneth Zeran, whose home phone number was posted in the message but who had not posted the message nor had anything to do with the content of the ad or its posting. The plaintiff called AOL repeatedly to complain over a four-day period in which he continued to receive abusive phone calls. He eventually sued AOL, alleging it had unreasonably delayed in removing defamatory messages and failed to screen for similar postings thereafter.

Opinion of the court

The Fourth Circuit held that each of plaintiff’s claims was barred by the CDA, holding the Section 230 "creates a federal immunity to any cause of action that would make service providers liable for information originating with a third-party user of the service." In the words of the Zeran court:

[L]awsuits seeking to hold a service liable for its exercise of a publisher’s traditional editorial functions – such as deciding whether to publish, withdraw, postpone or alter content – are barred. The purpose of this statutory immunity is not difficult to discern. Congress recognized the threat that tort-based lawsuits pose to freedom of speech in the new and burgeoning Internet medium. . . . Section 230 was enacted, in part, to maintain the robust nature of Internet communication . . . ."

References

1. ^ http://pacer.ca4.uscourts.gov/opinion.pdf/971523.P.pdf
2. ^ US CODE: Title 47,230. Protection for private blocking and screening of offensive material
3. ^ Zeran v. America Online, slip op. at 3.

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