Cubby, Inc. v. CompuServe Inc.
1991 US District Court decision / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Dear Wikiwand AI, let's keep it short by simply answering these key questions:
Can you list the top facts and stats about Cubby, Inc. v. CompuServe Inc.?
Summarize this article for a 10 year old
Cubby, Inc. v. CompuServe Inc., 776 F. Supp. 135 (S.D.N.Y. 1991),[1] was a 1991 court decision in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York which held that Internet service providers were subject to traditional defamation law for their hosted content.[1]
Cubby, Inc. v. CompuServe Inc. | |
---|---|
Court | United States District Court for the Southern District of New York |
Decided | October 29, 1991 |
Citation(s) | 776 F. Supp. 135 (S.D.N.Y. 1991) |
Holding | |
CompuServe was merely a distributor, rather than a publisher of content on its forums, and hence could only be liable for defamation if it knew, or had reason to know, of the defamatory nature of the content. | |
Court membership | |
Judge(s) sitting | Peter K. Leisure |
Keywords | |
Defamation |
The case resolved a claim of libel against CompuServe, an Internet service provider that hosted allegedly defamatory content in one of its forums. The case established a precedent for Internet service provider liability by applying defamation law, originally intended for hard copies of written works, to the Internet medium. The court held that although CompuServe did host defamatory content on its forums, CompuServe was merely a distributor, rather than a publisher, of the content. As a distributor, CompuServe could only be held liable for defamation if it knew, or had reason to know, of the defamatory nature of the content.[2] As CompuServe had made no effort to review the large volume of content on its forums, it could not be held liable for the defamatory content.
The application of traditional defamation law to the Internet context was soon to create controversy in Stratton Oakmont, Inc. v. Prodigy Services Co., in which a service provider was found liable for defamation on the grounds of good-faith attempts to filter objectionable content.[3] In 1996, service providers were granted immunity as publishers and distributors by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act as an incentive to moderate posted material.