Opinion ID: 2197137
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: The Prodigy Bulletin Board Messages

Text: As distinguished from e-mail communication, there are more complicated legal questions associated with electronic bulletin board messages, owing to the generally greater level of cognizance that their operators can have over them. One commentator defines an electronic bulletin board as storage media, e.g., computer memories or hard disks, connected to telephone lines via devices known as modems and controlled by a computer ( see, Segal, Comment, Dissemination of Digitized Music on the Internet: A Challenge to the Copyright Act, 12 Santa Clara Computer & High Tech L J 97, 103, n 21 [1996]). In some instances, an electronic bulletin board could be made to resemble a newspaper's editorial page; in others it may function more like a chat room. [4] In many respects, an ISP bulletin board may serve much the same purpose as its ancestral version, but uses electronics in place of plywood and thumbtacks. Some electronic bulletin boards post messages instantly and automatically, others briefly delay posting so as not to become chat rooms, while still others significantly delay posting to allow their operators an opportunity to edit the message or refuse posting altogether ( see, Sheridan, Zeran v AOL and the Effect of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act Upon Liability for Defamation on the Internet, 61 Alb L Rev 147, 152-153 [1997]). Lunney argues that because Prodigy, in its membership agreements, reserves for itself broad editorial discretion to screen its bulletin board messages, it should be liable as a publisher of such messages. Prodigy, on the other hand, argues that while it reserves the right to screen its bulletin board messages, it is not required to do so, does not normally do so and therefore cannot be a publisher of electronic bulletin board messages posted on its system by third parties. The Appellate Division aptly concluded that even if Prodigy exercised the power to exclude certain vulgarities from the text of certain [bulletin board] messages, this would not alter its passive character in the millions of other messages in whose transmission it did not participate (250 AD2d, at 237), nor would this, in our opinion, compel it to guarantee the content of those myriad messages. We agree with the Appellate Division in its conclusion that, in this case, Prodigy was not a publisher of the electronic bulletin board messages. We see no occasion to hypothesize whether there may be other instances in which the role of an electronic bulletin board operator would qualify it as a publisher.