Identity and Anonymity
The rights granted by this constitutional amendment, mentioned in Doe v. Cahill, are violated if constituents are not allowed to speak anonymously.
What is The First Amendment?
This online service was treated as a publisher because it actively moderated its bulletin boards and removed messages it considered offensive or in bad taste.
What is Prodigy?
Section 230 precludes courts from entertaining claims that would place a computer service provider in this type of role or its related subsets.
What is publisher? Zeran. The distributor role is considered a subset of the publisher role and is also foreclosed.
This Supreme Court case from 1995 invalidated an Ohio statute prohibiting distribution of anonymous campaign literature for violating the first amendment.
What is McIntyre v. Ohio Elections Comm'n
In Ira S. Bushey & Sons v. United States, the court addressed this traditional basis for holding an employer responsible for an employee’s actions. This concept provides a useful precursor to the question of when an online intermediary should be held liable for defamatory content created by someone else.
What is respondeat superior?
This housing website materially contributed to the discriminatory output of its users.
What is Roommates.com? Fair Housing Council.
As laid out in Doe v. Cahill, This is the judgment standard which a Delaware plaintiff must meet in order to reveal the identity of an anonymous defendant.
What is Summary Judgment?
Under the traditional distributor standard discussed in Cubby, this was the key factor determining whether a distributor could be held liable for defamatory material.
What is knowledge or reason to know of the defamation?
The terms “publisher” and “distributor” derive their legal significance from this kind of law.
What is defamation law? Zeran.
This New Jersey case set out a four part test for discovery of an anonymous defendant. Doe v. Cahill would later drop the second and fourth prongs.
What is Dendrite intl., Inc. v. Doe
In Cubby v. CompuServe, the court analogized CompuServe to this type of traditional distributor, which generally is not liable for defamatory content without knowledge or reason to know of its defamatory nature.
What is a bookstore or newsstand?
This case held that computer service providers subject themselves to liability for offensive material on their services.
What is Stratton Oakmont? Congress enacted § 230 to remove disincentives to self-regulation.