A man referred to as John Doe because he cannot be
named used SexSearch.com to find sex partners. He met and had sex
with a female who cannot be named but was referred to as Jane Roe
in the case.
Roe had claimed to be 18 years old but it emerged later that she
was 14 and Doe was arrested and charged with felony statutory
rape.
Doe sued SexSearch, claiming it should have checked Roe's age
and said it was liable for her false declaration that she was 18
years old.
SexSearch claimed that it was protected by section 230 of the
Communications Decency Act. This bars lawsuits taken against
interactive computer service providers based on information
provided by a third party.
The US District Court in Ohio found that section 230 did apply,
and that SexSearch was not responsible for Roe's misleading
information.
Doe had argued that because the company reserved the right to
change information, it therefore had control of the information and
could be classed as a content provider, and was therefore liable
for the information published.
US courts have made several conflicting rulings on what
responsibility web publishers have under section 230 in the recent
past. A Texas court ruled that MySpace.com was not responsible for
the sexual assault of a woman who met her attacker through the
site.
A Californian court decided differently earlier this year,
though, when they ruled that Roommates.com was an information
provider even though the raw data was provided by website users.
That case, if followed in other courts, could cause legal problems
for other sites which publish user-generated content or depend on
users submitting information to them.
The Ohio court rejected that interpretation in the SexSearch
case, though, and said that the site should not be liable for Roe's
lie.
"Of the courts that have reviewed section 230 there seems to be
a consensus that its grant of immunity is broad and far reaching,"
wrote Judge Jack Zouhary in his ruling.
Doe attempted in the case to avoid the section 230 exclusion by
claiming that his case was not related to content, but to the fact
that there was an underage girl on the site. "Plaintiff is
asserting the content is not at issue," said Doe's case. "It is the
fact that a minor was on the SexSearch website and not the content
of the minor's profile that is at issue."
Zahoury did not accept that argument. "At the end of the day,
however, Plaintiff is seeking to hold SexSearch liable for its
publication of third party content and harms flowing from the
dissemination of that content," he said.
"Plaintiff thus attempts to hold SexSearch liable for "decisions
relating to the monitoring, screening and deletion of content from
its network – actions quintessentially related to a publisher's
role. Section 230 specifically proscribes liability in such
circumstances," he said.
