LOS ANGELES—In March, when worldwide economic shutdowns and stay-at-home orders went into effect as countries attempted to curb the spread of the coronavirus pandemic, the videoconferencing app Zoom saw a sudden rise in popularity. Offering a safe, convenient — though virtual — way for people under lockdown to meet face-to-face, the app saw its daily user totals skyrocket from 10 million, to 200 million.
Along with this overnight success came a new problem — “Zoombombing.” That is, hackers who gained unauthorized access to user chats, including government meetings, religious services, and children’s online schooling, bombarding those chats with porn, and other unwanted imagery.
Not surprisingly, Zoom now faces a slew of lawsuits from angry users who say that the privacy and safety of their online meetings was compromised by porn, and other forms of Zoombombing — and they want Zoom to pay.
But in a filing to the United States District Court for California’s Northern District last week, the San Jose-based videoconferencing company says that the Zoombomb attacks are not its fault, and that the company is protected from legal liability under Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act, according to a report by the Los Angeles Times.
As AVN has reported, Section 230 — often described as “The First Amendment of the Internet” — protects online platforms from legal liability over content posted by users. But the law has recently faced threats from both sides of the political aisle, with calls for rolling back its safeguards.
“Zoom plays no role whatsoever in developing the offensive conduct, but instead engages in the quintessential type of publisher activity,” the company’s lawyers argued in the court brief, going on to state that because the Zoombombs were not the result of any activity by the company, Section 230’s safeguards must apply.
Zoom also argued that the plaintiffs in the case fail to show how they were actually harmed by the Zoombombing intrusions.
The lawsuits are being overseen by Judge Lucy Koh, a 2010 Barack Obama appointee who has become widely known for tough rulings on issues affecting Silicon Valley giants. Most recently, Koh ruled last year that Google may have violated federal wiretapping laws with its practice of mining data from Gmail user emails, in order to micro-target those users with advertising.
Zoom has said that it has responded actively to user privacy and security complaints. In April, the company’s 50-year-old CEO Eric Yuan admitted that he “really messed up” due to the Zoombombing incidents — as well as a lawsuit alleging that Zoom harvested user data and sold it to Facebook, even for users who did not have Facebook accounts.
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