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Website is not liable for teen's age lie, says court


A man charged with having sex with a 14 year old girl cannot sue a website for publishing her claim that she was 18, a US court has ruled. It said that a legal protection for publishers of third party information did apply.

Free OUT-LAW Breakfast Seminars, UK-wide. 1:The new regime for prize draws and competitions. 2:How to monitor staff legallyA man referred to as John Doe because he cannot be named used SexSearch.com to find sex partners. He met and had sex with a female who cannot be named but was referred to as Jane Roe in the case.

Roe had claimed to be 18 years old but it emerged later that she was 14 and Doe was arrested and charged with felony statutory rape.

Doe sued SexSearch, claiming it should have checked Roe's age and said it was liable for her false declaration that she was 18 years old.

SexSearch claimed that it was protected by section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. This bars lawsuits taken against interactive computer service providers based on information provided by a third party.

The US District Court in Ohio found that section 230 did apply, and that SexSearch was not responsible for Roe's misleading information.

Doe had argued that because the company reserved the right to change information, it therefore had control of the information and could be classed as a content provider, and was therefore liable for the information published.

US courts have made several conflicting rulings on what responsibility web publishers have under section 230 in the recent past. A Texas court ruled that MySpace.com was not responsible for the sexual assault of a woman who met her attacker through the site.

A Californian court decided differently earlier this year, though, when they ruled that Roommates.com was an information provider even though the raw data was provided by website users. That case, if followed in other courts, could cause legal problems for other sites which publish user-generated content or depend on users submitting information to them.

The Ohio court rejected that interpretation in the SexSearch case, though, and said that the site should not be liable for Roe's lie.

"Of the courts that have reviewed section 230 there seems to be a consensus that its grant of immunity is broad and far reaching," wrote Judge Jack Zouhary in his ruling.

Doe attempted in the case to avoid the section 230 exclusion by claiming that his case was not related to content, but to the fact that there was an underage girl on the site. "Plaintiff is asserting the content is not at issue," said Doe's case. "It is the fact that a minor was on the SexSearch website and not the content of the minor's profile that is at issue."

Zahoury did not accept that argument. "At the end of the day, however, Plaintiff is seeking to hold SexSearch liable for its publication of third party content and harms flowing from the dissemination of that content," he said.

"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," he said.

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