Two interest groups have asked California's state Supreme Court to overturn a state appellate ruling that allows libel suits against Internet publishers for what others write on their sites.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation and the American Civil Liberties Union filed a “friend of the court” brief November 30 arguing that Section 230 of the 1996 Telecommunications Act protects Net publishers from what their participants write. The California Court of Appeals held that the statute allows litigation against non-authors, and the state Supreme Court has the case under review.
In the case in question, women's health advocate Illena Rosenthal posted an opinion piece, written by Tim Bolen, on a Usenet news group. In the piece, Bolen criticized Terry Polevoy, who sued Rosenthal in turn.
Polevoy "seeks to reverse this rule and exclude those individual intermediaries who pass on third party information over the Internet," the friend of the court brief argued. "To adopt his argument, however, would be to read the term 'user' out of the statute and thus deprive a significant set of Internet intermediaries of the protection that Congress intended to provide.
The plaintiffs in the case argue that Rosenthal should be held liable because her posting the Bolen commentary equaled her "developing" the information in question, thus making her "the legal equivalent of its creator."
EFF said they fear a ruling in favor of the plaintiffs could mean bloggers held liable for quoting others' writings and Web site owners liable for what's said on their message boards by third parties, meaning many would quit publishing or hosting Web sites.
"Every other jurisdiction addressing Section 230 has given effect to Congress' broad protections and Internet speech has flourished as a result," EFF staff attorney Kurt Opsahl said announcing the friend of the court brief. "The Court of Appeals upset this settled law and we are simply asking the California Supreme Court to set things right."
"Section 230 protects the ordinary people who use the Internet and email to pass on items of interest written by others, free from the fear of potentially ruinous lawsuits filed by those who don't like what was said about them," ACLU staff attorney Ann Brick said in her own statement. "The vitality of the Internet would quickly dissipate if the posting of content written by others created liability. The impulse to self-censor would be unavoidable."
