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A little SF personal injury case threatens 'most important law' on the Internet

latimes.com

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Re: A little SF personal injury case threatens 'most important law' on the Internet

#91

Post by zaroth »

SeanDav wrote: post #83

> "Because of the immunity it grants to publishers who act as intermediaries for this flow of information and commentary, “Section 230 is the backbone of the Internet,” says Thomas Burke" If Yelp was a pure intermediary, perhaps they would have a case, but they are not and neither are any of the other companies mentioned. All these companies decide what they want to keep on their sites and what they want to remove. A…

I'm not quite sure what you mean by "pure intermediary". Section 230 does not say that you have to publish all user-generated content indiscriminately in order for its safe-harbor to apply.

IANAL, but that's not how I understand that Section 230 works. If it did work that way, I think the law would be horribly broken. No site hosting UGC can be completely un-moderated, and therefore by your reasoning, no site with UGC content could benefit from Section 230.

Luckily, sites can exercise some measure of editorial control of their UGC while at the same time still benefiting from Section 230 protections. As the OP states, the law is often regarded as the legal backbone of the internet, and its protections for publishers should not be easily dismissed.

What Yelp is demanding here is to be a named defendant if they are to be bound by the court decision, which is already the standard for newspapers. I think it's fair to expect to have a seat at the table if the courts are going to be ordering you to modify your site. Particularly because in this case there appear to be questions-of-fact regarding which reviews were even written by the defendant.

Re: A little SF personal injury case threatens 'most important law' on the Internet

#92

Post by cmiles74 »

twblalock wrote: post #6
kjksf wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where did you get that from? The article says that Yelp has been ordered by a judge to remove a few posts that have been found libelous. Yelp is refusing. Nowhere does it say that Yelp was "held accountable" for anything. It's also not a case of prior restraint since it happened after a trial and a verdict. The sky is not falling.

I didn't say this was prior restraint. I said it could lead to prior restraint. So does the article, and so does common sense -- if companies can be hauled into court whenever someone posts libel on their sites, they will take steps to prevent such libel from being posted in the first place, e.g. by proactively moderating and filtering negative reviews. The article explicitly addresses this possibility.

Yelp was not hauled into court. The poster was the one hauled into court.

Re: A little SF personal injury case threatens 'most important law' on the Internet

#93

Post by cowsandmilk »

pif wrote: post #89
morgante wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's completely orthogonal. Yelp is not required to run a neutral public forum—they can institute whatever policies they want. The problem is when the government forces censorship, not when private companies have their own policies on what they'll host. Removing content from your own site is not censorship.

> when the government forces censorship Actually, in this case, it's the justice, not the government. At it makes a huge difference!

there are three branches of US government and the judiciary is one of them.

Re: A little SF personal injury case threatens 'most important law' on the Internet

#94

Post by cmiles74 »

cft wrote: post #9
twblalock wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't say this was prior restraint. I said it could lead to prior restraint. So does the article, and so does common sense -- if companies can be hauled into court whenever someone posts libel on their sites, they will take steps to prevent such libel from being posted in the first place, e.g. by proactively moderating and filtering negative reviews. The article explicitly addresses this possibility.

Perhaps you should read the article to the end before commenting: "Glassdoor.com, which posts anonymous employee comments about companies to inform job-seekers about working conditions, says the ruling began to show up in letters demanding the removal of comments and disclosure of users’ identities almost immediately after it was handed down."

I'm pretty confident that Glassdoor received these sorts of letter both before and after this case was publicized. In all cases, they need not take any action unless it happens to be a court order. I don't think being compelled to remove a post that has been judged unlawful in court effects Yelp's "immunity"; no one is holding Yelp accountable for the unlawful posts.

Re: A little SF personal injury case threatens 'most important law' on the Internet

#96

Post by ci5er »

pif wrote: post #69
makomk wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As the law currently stands, no. You can take an active role in curating comments and still be protected. You can even build a business model around charging people to remove defamatory information about them from your site, and Section 230 not only protects you from liability, it protects your business model by preventing the courts from forcing you to remove that content . A number of companies such as RipoffReport…

> it protects your business model by preventing the courts from forcing you to remove that content. Well, than Section 230 is simply wrong. It's important not to hold Yelp responsible for what a user wrote on his forum, but I fail to see how it can be damaging for a site to delete some unlawful-ruled content (which it didn't create), apart from the immoral case you named.

> Well, than Section 230 is simply wrong.

Wrong as drafted, wrong as interpreted or wrong conceptually?

Laws are what they are - there's really no right or wrong about them.

> I fail to see how it can be damaging for a site to delete some unlawful-ruled content

It's not damaging to remove it. It's damaging to be compelled to remove it. Handing the judiciary this tool to make such orders opens the door to all sorts of down-court mischief.

If the goal is simply the effect in this one case, then order the poster to take it down and Section 230 stands unmolested. But that's not the goal, or it would be done that way already. The goal (for some parties) is handing the tool-to-compel to the judiciary.

Re: A little SF personal injury case threatens 'most important law' on the Internet

#97

Post by ci5er »

jasongill wrote: post #79
the_duke wrote: post #78

Please add "US" in the title. The world has more than one legal system.

I'd say it's pretty well established that SF means San Francisco, which is most definitely in the US.

I'm in the US, and I always read it as one of Science Fiction, Sugar Free, Semper Fi, Source Forge or even Stupidity Factor before I have to stop and think about what else it might mean. Not everyone on planet Earth uses California as the zero point in their mental coordinate system.

Re: A little SF personal injury case threatens 'most important law' on the Internet

#98

Post by pif »

cowsandmilk wrote: post #93
pif wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> when the government forces censorship Actually, in this case, it's the justice, not the government. At it makes a huge difference!

there are three branches of US government and the judiciary is one of them.

Sorry, I had read "government" as meaning "executive power". Anyway, I don't see any problem in having justice-sanctioned removal orders for unlawful posts.

Re: A little SF personal injury case threatens 'most important law' on the Internet

#99

Post by pif »

morgante wrote: post #75
pif wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it protects your business model by preventing the courts from forcing you to remove that content. Well, than Section 230 is simply wrong. It's important not to hold Yelp responsible for what a user wrote on his forum, but I fail to see how it can be damaging for a site to delete some unlawful-ruled content (which it didn't create), apart from the immoral case you named.

The problem with that is that's putting Yelp into the position of censoring content. If the court thinks that a review is defamatory, they should just order the reviewer to take it down. No need to involve Yelp at all.

No, it's not Yelp censoring, it's the judge. Yelp has not been asked/permitted to choose for this ore other posts.

Re: A little SF personal injury case threatens 'most important law' on the Internet

#100

Post by pif »

morgante wrote: post #75
pif wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it protects your business model by preventing the courts from forcing you to remove that content. Well, than Section 230 is simply wrong. It's important not to hold Yelp responsible for what a user wrote on his forum, but I fail to see how it can be damaging for a site to delete some unlawful-ruled content (which it didn't create), apart from the immoral case you named.

The problem with that is that's putting Yelp into the position of censoring content. If the court thinks that a review is defamatory, they should just order the reviewer to take it down. No need to involve Yelp at all.

> they should just order the reviewer to take it down

What if the reviewer refuses? No matter the fine, no matter the years in jail they may spend, this will not fulfil the plaintiff's right to have that comment removed.

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