A federal appeals court in Washington ruled this week that
Amazon.com is protected from liability for user comments posted on
its site by the US Communications Decency Act (CDA), according to a
report by Newsbytes. The CDA also protects ISPs from liability for
content produced by third parties.
The decision upholds an earlier ruling which said that
Amazon.com was not liable to author Jerome Schneider for allegedly
defamatory reviews of his books on tax avoidance which had been
submitted to and posted on Amazon.com’s site by its customers.
In his appeal, Mr Schneider argued that Amazon.com had a
decision making authority over the content of its site. He
therefore alleged that by allowing the comments to be posted, the
company had wrongfully interfered with his business expectancy,
made negligent representations, and breached its contract with
him.
The court ruled however that Amazon.com was protected under the
CDA, as the Act states that an “interactive service provider” is
not the “publisher or speaker of any information provided by
another information content provider”.
