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Web Site Is Held Liable for Some User Postings
« on: 2007-05-16 02:07:54 » |
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The New York Times
May 16, 2007
Web Site Is Held Liable for Some User Postings
By ADAM LIPTAK
A Web site that matches roommates may be liable for what its users say about their preferences, a fractured three-judge panel of the federal appeals court in San Francisco ruled yesterday.
The suit was brought by two California fair housing groups that objected to postings on the matching service, Roommate.com. The groups said the site violated the Fair Housing Act by allowing and encouraging its users to post notices expressing preferences for roommates based on sex, race, religion and sexual orientation.
The ruling knocked down the main defense of the site. In 1996, Congress granted immunity to Internet service providers for transmitting unlawful materials supplied by others. Most courts have interpreted the scope of that immunity broadly.
Though their rationales varied, all three judges in the decision yesterday agreed that the site could be held liable for soliciting information from users through a series of menus about themselves and their preferred roommates and for posting and distributing profiles created from the menus. The choices on the menus included gender, sexual orientation and whether children were involved.
Because Roomate.com created the menus, the court ruled, it cannot claim immunity under the 1996 law, the Communications Decency Act.
But Judges Alex Kozinski and Sandra S. Ikuta ruled that postings from users in a part of their profile designated “additional comments” could not subject the site to liability because it was essentially uninvolved in creating them.
Judge Stephen Reinhardt dissented on that point, citing examples (“must be a black gay male”) and saying the entire site was “an integral part of one package.”
The court, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, sent the case back to a trial judge for a determination of whether the site had violated the Fair Housing Act, which forbids publishing real estate notices indicating preferences based on race, religion, sex or familial status.
The three judges each wrote separately, and piecing together the reasoning for the decision was difficult, said Eric Goldman, a law professor at Santa Clara University.
Still, Professor Goldman said, the decision represented a fundamental shift.
“To date,” he said, “The law has been almost uniform that a Web site isn’t liable for what its users say. The problem here is that the Web site offered up choices for users to structure their remarks. That creates a hole plaintiffs can exploit.”
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
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