Slashdot Mirror
Supreme Court Will Not Examine Tech Industry Legal Shield (reuters.com)
An anonymous reader shares a Reuters report: The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday let stand a lower court's decision that an online advertising site accused by three young women of facilitating child sex trafficking was protected by a federal law that has shielded website operators from liability for content posted by others. The refusal by the justices to take up the women's appeal in the case involving the advertising website Backpage.com marked a victory for the tech industry, which could have faced far-reaching consequences had the Supreme Court decided to limit the scope of the Communications Decency Act, passed by Congress in 1996 to protect free speech on the internet.
Of course they are.
The real complaint here is that "tech companies" are getting all the protections of being common carriers without any of the responsibilities of being common carriers. So they're not liable for ads posted for criminal services, but they can cancel ads that conflict with their own political agenda.
SCOTUS made the correct decision in this case. One can only presumed these women sued Backapages because their pimps - who actually forced them into prostitution - didn't have any more.
The in the case question is whether web sites (including Slashdot) are responsible for the content of posts by their users. If so, Slashdot, Backpage, and every other web site where people can talk would need a team of censors.
Child porn is illegal, slander is illegal, threatening people is illegal - if web sites are responsible for the posts, Slashdot would need to make sure no posts might be considered slander, or an unlawful threat. It just doesn't make any sense to say "the web site is liable if a user posts something that a jury considers child porn, but not liable for any other unlawful posts".
The RIAA and MAPP are very strong lobbies. Laws are different depending on the amount of money in the industry backing/opposing them.
ok, got it. thanks military industrial complex. i was wondering which sort of websites you were going to try to shut down, now i know i guess.