News: Web sites cringe over CDA case
A controversial case before a federal appeals court could significantly restrict legal protections that have long absolved Internet companies from responsibility for their customers' actions.

The issue stems from a libel lawsuit filed by actress Christianne Carafano over postings that appeared on the dating site Matchmaker.com. Her suit was filed against the company that operates the site, Metrosplash, which was acquired by Lycos in June 2000 for about $44 million in cash.

Carafano, whose roles under the stage name Chase Masterson include Leeta on the TV show "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine," sued Metrosplash after someone posted a personals ad that mixed accurate information, including her name and address, with alleged falsehoods.

In March 2002, the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California rejected Carafano's libel claim, citing traditional defamation law that makes malice difficult for public figures to prove. In his decision, however, Judge Dickran Tevrizian also said Metrosplash was not shielded by Section 230 of the landmark Communications Decency Act, which has long protected online companies from being held responsible for material that others post on their sites or send through their servers and networks.

"The language of the statute itself requires this court to determine whether Matchmaker, as a provider of an interactive computer service, is an information content provider, i.e., is partly responsible for the creation or development of the information being provided," Tevrizian wrote in the decision. "This court concludes that Matchmaker is such an information content provider. Consequently, the immunity of Section 230 does not extend to it as a matter of law."

The ruling is believed to be the first significant challenge to the core protections of the Communications Decency Act, which were drafted seven years ago at the behest of Internet service providers such as America Online. The statute, which granted broad immunity for ISPs and other companies doing business online, states that "no provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider."

Congress initially created Section 230 as what experts describe as a political quid pro quo with online companies. The CDA criminalized "indecent" material, potentially making ISPs and sites liable for what their users published through them, and Section 230 was intended to create a "safe harbor" for the companies to win their support of the law.
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