Opinion ID: 4036586
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Whether the Claim Treats the Defendant as the

Text: Publisher or Speaker of Content Provided by Another ʺAt its core, § 230 bars ʹlawsuits seeking to hold a service provider liable for its exercise of a publisherʹs traditional editorial functions ‐‐ such as deciding whether to publish, withdraw, postpone or alter content.ʹʺ Dirty World Entmʹt Recordings LLC, 755 F.3d at 407 (quoting Zeran, 129 F.3d at 330). Section 230(c)(1) provides that ʺno provider of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another ‐ 38 ‐ information content providerʺ but it does not define the terms ʺpublisher or speaker.ʺ 47 U.S.C. § 230(c)(1). In Barnes v. Yahoo!, Inc., the Ninth Circuit addressed ʺhow to determine when, for purposes of this statute, a plaintiffʹs theory of liability would treat a defendant as a publisher or speaker of third‐party content.ʺ 570 F.3d 1096, 1101 (9th Cir. 2009), as amended (Sept. 28, 2009). The Ninth Circuit considered traditional dictionary definitions of publisher, including ʺthe reproducer of a work intended for public consumptionʺ and ʺone whose business is publication.ʺ Id. at 1102 (quoting Websterʹs Third New International Dictionary 1837 (Philip Babcock Gove ed., 1986)). In deciding whether the claim at issue sought to hold the defendant liable as a publisher or speaker, the Court noted that ʺwhat matters is whether the cause of action inherently requires the court to treat the defendant as the ʹpublisher or speakerʹ of content provided by another. To put it another way, courts must ask whether the duty that the plaintiff alleges the defendant violated derives from the defendantʹs status or conduct as a ʹpublisher or speaker.ʹʺ Id. at 1102. In Accusearch, Inc., the only other case considering the application of Section 230 immunity to liability arising under Section 5 of the FTC Act, the ‐ 39 ‐ Tenth Circuit concluded that the defendant could not be immune for its payment to researchers to uncover confidential phone records and subsequent publishing of that information because it was an information content provider of the offensive conduct. 570 F.3d at 1197. The majority concluded that the defendant was not immune because liability was based on the defendantʹs own content rather than the content of another, while the concurrence was of the view that the defendant was not immune because liability was premised not on content but on its conduct. Id. at 1197, 1205.