Plaintiff, a political candidate, brought action against Yahoo! Inc. for refusing to post his emails to their message boards, and IAC/Interactive Corp., the owners of Ask.com, to remove from their directory a website that made it appear in their search results that he was a member of the Communist Party. The court granted summary judgment for both defendants. The court found that Yahoo! was a private entity with no obligation to uphold First Amendment freedom of speech rights. The court found that IAC was protected by the Communications Decency Act of 1996, which immunizes “interactive computer services”, which includes search engines like Ask.com, from liability for information arising from third-party content.
Murawski v. Pataki, 2007 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 72749 (S.D.N.Y. Sept. 26, 2007).
Stanford Center for Internet and Society
In the heart of the Silicon Valley, legal doctrine is emerging that will determine the course of civil rights and technological innovation for decades to come. The Center for Internet and Society (CIS), housed at Stanford Law School and a part of the Law, Science and Technology Program, is at the apex of this evolving area of law.
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Yahoo! has no Obligation to Publish Information; Ask.com not Liable for Indexed Third-Party Content under CDA
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