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There is no "dumb pipe" liability shield. There was no absolving of liability pre-230. And 230 — not some fairly tale alternative statute that mysteriously does
by torstenvl 4y ago
There is no "dumb pipe" liability shield. There was no absolving of liability pre-230. And 230 — not some fairly tale alternative statute that mysteriously doesn't appear anywhere in the U.S. Code — is what provides that liability shield today, for moderated and unmoderated hosts and sites alike.
- nostrademons 4y agoThere sorta was - pre-230, the legal precedent was that "distributors" of content were absolved from any liability for it, while "publishers" of content were not. This was established in Smith vs. California, 1959 [1]. The issue was that in 1996, it was not yet clear whether ISPs, hosting companies, and web services counted as "publishers" or "distributors". Compuserve vs. Cubby Inc found that Compuserve was not liable for users' content because it didn't moderate (i.e. was a distributor), while Stratton Oakmont Inc vs. Prodigy Services found that it was liable because it did (i.e. was a publisher). Legislators felt that this setup a perverse incentive and so enacted 230 to that companies would not be penalized for good-faith attempts at moderation. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230#Background_and_passage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230#Background_and_pas...
- torstenvl 4y ago> Compuserve vs. Cubby Inc found that Compuserve was not liable for users' content because it didn't moderate That is incorrect. It was not liable because it didn't moderate (i.e., was a dumb-pipe distributor) and because it had no reason to know of the defamatory content. That latter piece is fact-intensive and case-specific. Which means expensive litigation in every case. Which is not remotely the same as a liability shield.