William Murawski describes himself as a 'frequent political
candidate' who wanted to run in the 2006 election to be governor of
New York. He filed a petition but failed to gather the required
15,000 signatures.
He then sued Yahoo!, Ask.com and the operator of a political
website variously for refusing to list him on a site and for a
search engine listing he believed identified him as a
communist.
He sued Yahoo! because he claimed he was not allowed to post
messages to email groups of which he was a member at vital times in
the campaign. He claimed that this was a violation of his right to
free speech as guaranteed by the first amendment of the US
constitution.
The US District Court for the Southern District of New York said
that there had been no explanation of how Yahoo! had supposedly
stopped him from publishing messages.
The Court ruled that because Yahoo! is a private, for profit
company it has no obligation to uphold Murawski's constitutional
rights.
Murawski even claimed that Yahoo! was a 'state actor' and
therefore under a constitutional obligation because it had once
received public funding.
"The Court rejects plaintiff's contention in his opposition that
Yahoo! Inc. is transformed into a state actor because it benefited
from early public funding of the development of the internet," said
US District Judge Richard Holwell.
Murawski also sued Ronald Gunzburger, the operator of politics
website Politics1.com, for failing to list him on the site, again
supposedly in violation of his rights to free speech. When
Gunzburger did list Murawski amongst the other candidates, Murawski
then sued him because he was listed next to a communist.
Murawski said that when search engines found the list the
listing could be read as identifying him as a communist. The list
read: "Maura DeLuca (SWP) – Garment Worker & Communist
Political Organizer & Ben O'Shaughnessy (SWP) – College Student
& Communist Political Organizer Bill Murawski (Write-In) –
Journalist, Public Access TV Show Producer & Frequent Candidate
& Donald Winkfield (Write-In) – Journalist".
Because search engines list terms without paragraph breaks,
Murawski's name appeared next to the description of a Communist.
The Court said that this was no basis for a suit.
"It is thus apparent that Gunzburger did not identify plaintiff
as a communist on his website, and thus there is no basis for
plaintiff’s claim against Gunzburger," he said. "The fact that
various search engines displayed the text from Politics1.com
without line breaks is not attributable to Gunzburger."
The Court also said that the claim on free speech failed
because, like Yahoo!, it is a private company.
Murawski also sued Ask.com because of its reproduction of
Gunzburger's list. The Court said that Murawski could not sue
Ask.com over that reproduction because the company is protected by
section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, a law which says
that interactive computer service providers are protected from
prosecution when they simply publish the content of a third
party.
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