Plaintiff Shelly Landry-Belle sued defendant Various Inc., the operator of AdultFriendFinder.com and several other websites, after Landry-Belle’s ex-boyfriend purportedly posted false, defamatory, and sexually obscene material about her to several of Various’ websites. The posts suggested that Landry-Belle would “engage in lewd and obscene acts of perversion” including “sexual encounters with men and women.” Landry-Belle sought damages for invasion of privacy, defamation, and intentional infliction of emotional distress, as well as an order directing Various to remove the content in question from their sites. Landry-Belle’s ex-boyfriend could not be located for service.The US District Court for the Western District of Louisiana granted Various’ motion to dismiss, holding that Various qualified as a provider of an “interactive computer service” as defined by the Communications Decency Act (CDA) and therefore was immune under the act from liability for publishing information provided by a third party. Section 230(c) of the CDA provides that “no provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as a publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.” The key to the court’s analysis was determining if Various was “merely publishing information provided by a third-party” or “actually creating or developing any of the information posted.” This distinction came from two prior cases dealing with immunity under the CDA, Carafano v. Metrosplash.com, 339 F.3d 119 (9th Cir. 2003) and Zeran v. America Online, 129 F.3d 327 (4th Cir. 1997). The court rejected Landry-Belle’s arguments that, because Various provided the contents of profiles to search engines, added descriptors and titles to the content, organized the information to make it searchable, and performed other actions on the content, Various should be considered an “information content provider.” The court held that “the underlying misinformation came from a third party, not the operator of the web site” and Various only provided the service used by Landry’s ex-boyfriend to “embarrass, harass, and defame” her.
