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Roomates.com denied §230 immunity |
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Roommates.com a roommate-matching website was denied protection and immunity under the Communications Decency Act ("CDA"), 47 USC §230.
Roommates.com is a website that seeks to find compatible matches for shared housing arrangements. Website fill-in forms ask users to complete a prepared questionnaire that includes questions related to gender, sexual preferences, and presence of children. The service compiles the answers into a profile, which it selectively distributes to other site users based on compatibility. Roommates.com also solicits additional information by inviting users to fill in a data field under an "Additional Comments" heading.
The majority reasoned that Roommates.com was a "developer" of the questions, answers, and search mechanism used to pair roommates according to submitted preferences.
The court allowed immunity only with respect to the open-ended "Additional Comments" form, which appeared on the questionnaire as a blank text box. Roommates.com was immune under §230 for information submitted in that space, the court said, finding that Roommates.com had no hand in shaping that information.
The CDA provides that "[n]o provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider," 47 USC §230(c)(1). Due to the site's publishing of the questions and solicity answers rather than allowing it an open-ended response, the site was held not to be immune from the CDA.
Rule of thumb....let the people using your site say and do what they want, but do not help them along.
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