The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has just ruled that a website can be held liable for user posts that violate federal law.

Here's the money quote.

While Roommate provides a useful service, its search
mechanism and email notifications mean that it is neither a
passive pass-through of information provided by others nor merely a facilitator of expression by individuals. By categorizing, channeling and limiting the distribution of users’ profiles, Roommate provides an additional layer of information
that it is “responsible” at least “in part” for creating or developing. 47 U.S.C. § 230(c), (f)(3); see also Batzel, 333 F.3d at 1031. Whether these actions ultimately violate the FHA is a question the district court must decide in the first instance.

You can learn more and obtain a free copy of the court's opinion in an Adobe Acrobat PDF file by clicking this link.

Regards,

-Mike

Ouch...this is a much bigger deal than most people probably think.

According to this, Michel's guilty of all kinds of crap. Looks like the moderators have a much bigger job now. For example, there's several times when someone posted lyrics to a song (that's just the first thing that popped into my head). Violation. Any one of those artists or producers could take it to court.

What's particularly troubling is that the 9th Circus (as it is known) has come down with a decision that provides no boundaries as to what is protected speech by constitution or statute. The court says that the plaintiffs might have a claim under the FHA because the website operator is more than a passive conduit of information.

Well, what the heck does that mean? Particularly when the court cites "email notifications" as part of an active role.

What makes it worse is that the court remands it for trial to the federal district court. If this case ends up with a judgment against the website operator, even if the Supreme Court eventually hears an appeal, we're talking years down the road.

In short, the 9th Circus has just increased the calculated risks one takes when doing business on the Internet...a strong case for term-limiting federal judgeships. The technology-impaired wreaking havoc on commerce.

Regards,

-Mike

P.S. As a native Californian, it pains me to say this, but I wouldn't advise anyone to do business in a 9th Circuit state. The state governments trend heavy taxation, anti-enterprise, and the courts come down with 'unique' decisions like this one.

Yeah, it's really disturbing to see this. It's going to get to the point that the only people who can really utilize the online world without worrying are the foreign country operators who resell all the copyrighted and patented material.

By limiting legitimate use of the online world, they're turning it into a marketplace for thieves and thugs.

Wow...ummm...

I guess this ruling is suppose to stop those sites out there that link to illegal or copyrighted content, but don't host it...

Also, it is probably aimed at a lot of forums out there that discuss, IN DETAIL, how to do illegal S*** like steal credit cards (they call themselves carders), ID Theft, pick locks, and pirate things...

But, at the end of the day, sites most affected will be the legal social networking sites. It would take just one post that some official doesn't like, to shutdown a whole site...

Good-bye Digg, Reddit, Stumbleupon, Myspace, Facebook, and Youtube. I hardly new YE...

Hello super moderated, ultra censored, and super lame versions of the above sites...