Californian court ruled earlier this year that
flat-share matching service Roommate.com could not claim immunity
from liability for comments made by its users. The internet giants
and some lobby groups are attempting to help overturn that
judgment.
Section 230 of the US Communications and Decency Act (CDA)
grants immunity to information service providers in relation to
material published by its users. The court, though, ruled that
Roommate.com was too involved in the actual production of material
to qualify for the exemption.
Roommate.com was sued by the Fair Housing Councils of San
Fernando Valley and San Diego, which said that questionnaires to be
filled out indicated an intention to make a selection based on
discrimination, and allows others to make a selection based on
discrimination.
Those questionnaires asked people to indicate if they are
willing to share with men, women, gay people or children, amongst
other things. It also contained a comments box in which some people
expressed preferences which could breach fair housing laws.
"Some state that they 'Pref[er] white Male roommates,' while
others declare that they are 'NOT looking for black Muslims,'" said
court documents.
The Fair Housing Councils argued that Roommate.com bore some
responsibility for the material because it had formulated the
questionnaires and it published the results online and in email
newsletters,
The court had to decide whether this activity meant that
Roommate.com was partly or wholly responsible for the content
created through its questionnaires. If it was, it would lose
immunity under the CDA.
The court first ruled that it was not, and that the site had
immunity. A three-judge panel of the US Court of Appeals for the
Ninth Circuit overturned that decision. A full hearing of the whole
Appeals Court, called an en banc hearing, has been granted in the
controversial case.
The technology leaders have submitted a brief to the court in
support of Roommate.com for the full en banc hearing of the Court
of Appeals.
The companies argue that the existing decision undermines the
broad protections offered by the CDA and upheld in other cases.
"[The decision] would turn Section 230(c)(1) on its head,
relegating it to protect only relatively simple, rudimentary types
of online services while exposing to potentially crushing liability
the sorts of robust, innovative services that Congress wanted to
encourage," said the brief.
It was prepared by the companies and digital rights lobby group
the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT).
The brief argues that the protections at issue are vital to the
development of crucial online services. "[We] cannot emphasize
enough the degree to which the protection afforded by Section
230(c)(1), as consistently interpreted by courts across the country
over the past decade, has played a critical role in enabling the
development of interactive services that both empower users and
encourage innovation and self-regulation," it said.
