Stanford Center for Internet and Society

Author: Matt Kellogg

In the Northern District of California, the District Court granted Google’s motion to dismiss in a suit claiming that Google had been complicit in fraud perpetrated through its AdWords program. Because the plaintiff did not allege that Google had helped to develop the offending content, Google was immune under § 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996, which shields website operators from liability for hosting unlawful content created by third parties.

In July 2008, Stubhub lost a motion to dismiss a North Carolina anti-scalping complaint regarding tickets for a Hannah Montana concert purchased at grossly inflated prices via stubhub.com. The court denied Stubhub’s motion to dismiss on plaintiffs’ claim that Stubhub had violated North Carolina’s anti-ticket scalping law. Two months later, an Oregon court granted a similar motion to dismiss brought by joint defendants Stubhub and eBay in a case concerning a Bruce Springsteen concert. In both cases, the issue presented was how far the immunity found in the Communications Decency Act section 230 should extend.

Hill v. Stubhub

Fehrs v. Stubhub