Must-Read Empirical Study of 47 USC 230 Jurisprudence by David Ardia
Sempre su intermediari e responsabilità, a proposito dei "modello americano": http://blog.ericgoldman.org/archives/2010/06/ardias_empirica.htm Technology & Marketing Law Blog « Payment Service Providers May Be Liable for Counterfeit Website Sales--Gucci v. Frontline | Main | Recent Anti-SLAPP Developments » June 30, 2010 Must-Read Empirical Study of 47 USC 230 Jurisprudence by David Ardia By Eric Goldman David S. Ardia, Free Speech Savior or Shield for Scoundrels: An Empirical Study of Intermediary Immunity Under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, 43 Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review 373 (2010) Let me start with the punchline: if you are interested in 47 USC 230 jurisprudence (and let's face it, who isn't???), then you need to read this article. In fact, clear your calendar for this afternoon. Although I am not completely sold on its conclusions, any cogent discussion about 47 USC 230 jurisprudential trendlines must acknowledge this article. David Ardia directs the Citizen Media Law Project, a frequent outlink on this blog. He undertook the heroic (and some might say ill-advised) task of finding and coding 47 USC 230 cases--a total of 184 decisions--and then generating some statistical conclusions from the dataset. This is not a project I would have undertaken because empirical research is such a quagmire, but we as a community of 47 USC 230 scholars and practitioners get the benefit of David's efforts. (I should note that David sent me a draft of this article last Fall, which sat unread in my inbox for 3 months. I then sent David an extremely lengthy and detailed set of comments about a week before his final edits were due to the law review. Some of my critiques are not news to David, but he may not have had a chance to fully address them based on my delayed feedback.) (I further note that I have not doublechecked David’s dataset or coding. For this post, I assume he did it “correctly.”) If you have limited time (the PDF is 134 pages), start on page 41 of the PDF, which is where the empirical discussions heat up. There is a lot to discuss and explore, but I will highlight two significant statistical conclusions. First, the paper calculates that 230 defendants win the defense "only" about 2/3 of the time, leading him to conclude that the statute "has not been the free pass many of its proponents claim and its critics lament." This is an interesting conclusion, but it leaves me wondering how this compares with the hypothetical calculation of cases where the 230 defense should have failed vs. the situations where it should have succeeded. Still, I am one of the people who thinks 230 is a free pass for defendants, so the successful batting average was lower than I expected. Second, the paper makes the following assertion on page 108: "many of the intermediaries that invoked section 230 likely would not have faced eventual liability under the common law because they lacked knowledge of and editorial control over the third-party content at issue in the cases. Given this prediction, one might question whether section 230 is necessary." Whoa! This is an important and implicitly troubling statement. The paper is positing an alternative scenario where 230 doesn't exist and arguing that we might not notice a difference. Of course, we know that other countries are having very different experiences with UGC due to the 230's absence. At the same time, US common law still differs from other countries' laws, so perhaps the US common law's trajectory would have reached a similar place. Having said that, for reasons the paper does explore, we are better off for having the statutory immunity than relying on common law developments. Furthermore, 230’s real brilliance is that it immunizes service providers *because they exercise* editorial control, which leads to better outcomes. I'll briefly mention two other stats that puzzled me. On page 59, the paper says: "in more than half of the section 230 decisions (58.8%), the speech at issue was not published anonymously." Later, on page 115, the paper advances the inverse stat: "41.2% of the decisions studied involved anonymous content." In theory, this means 40% of cases involve primary tortfeasors who can't be found, but I'm skeptical about this because successful online anonymity is really hard. After all, the AutoAdmit authors thought they were anonymous until they were de-anonymized. For more, see Paul Ohm's paper on reidentification. On page 117, the paper says "in more than half of the cases (55%), the content plaintiffs sued over was no longer available as of mid-2009," which suggests plaintiffs can get content takedowns despite 230 because the service provider voluntarily helps or the author takes the content down him/herself (or, in some cases, the court ordered the takedown). This brought to mind the Ripoff Report's refusal to remove content at the author's request, a relatively unique posture for UGC hosts. See Blockowicz v. Williams. The paper gives me another reason to remind you that SCU will be hosting a 47 USC 230 celebration on March 4, 2011, where I hope we will discuss cutting-edge research on 230 like this paper. More details to come, but mark your calendar now. If you are working on 230-related research that you think might be appropriate to present at this conference, please contact me. UPDATE: David's CMLP blog post on his article. ____________ The abstract: In the thirteen years since its enactment, section 230 of the Communications Decency Act has become one of the most important statutes impacting online speech, as well as one of the most intensely criticized. In deceptively simple language, its provisions sweep away the common law’s distinction between publisher and distributor liability, granting operators of Web sites and other interactive computer services broad protection from claims based on the speech of third parties. Section 230 is of critical importance because virtually all speech that occurs on the Internet is facilitated by private intermediaries that have a fragile commitment to the speech they facilitate. This Article presents the first empirical study of the section 230 case law. It begins by providing a doctrinal overview of common law liability for intermediaries, both online and offline, and describes how section 230 modifies these doctrinal approaches. It then systematically analyzes the 184 decisions courts have issued since the statute’s enactment. The Article also examines how courts have applied section 230, finding that judges have been haphazard in their approach to its application. The Article closes by discussing the study’s findings and by offering some insights into how plaintiffs and defendants have fared under section 230. While section 230 has largely protected intermediaries from liability for third-party speech, it has not been the free pass many of its proponents claim and its critics lament. More than a third of the claims at issue in the cases survived a section 230 defense. Even in cases where the court dismissed the claims, intermediaries bore liability in the form of litigation costs, and it took courts, on average, nearly a year to issue decisions addressing an intermediary’s defense under section 230. Posted by Eric at June 30, 2010 08:38 AM | Derivative Liability
Caro Andrea, grazie (come sempre) per la segnalazione dello studio: al di là delle sue statistiche (il diavolo è nei dettagli), mi sembra sin d'ora confermata l'analisi fatta sul 230 DMCA. Questo mi consente di riprendere i (tre, in sostanza) punti da te avanzati nell'email di ieri. Sul primo ha risposto a sua volta Alessandro Mantelero, distinguendo tra "trattamento dei dati" e "percezione dell'illecito". Non vedo perché, come dici, "appare difficile sostenere che un 'data processor' non abbia una conoscenza attiva dei medesimi [dati]". Tutto sta a intendere cosa vuol dire "attivo" in un mondo in cui, come ricorda la sentenza Google/YouTube v Viacom dalla quale eravamo partiti, vengono caricati su YouTube 24 ore di video al minuto! Larry Lessig ha ricordato tre/quattro mesi fa su La Stampa come, almeno allo stato, non abbiamo certo la tecnologia per prevenire, diciamo, un reato di diffamazione... (da dove era viceversa partito il caso Google/Vividown). Secondo punto: affermi che il "data processor ha comunque certe responsabilità". E ci mancherebbe! Solo che NON sono quelle del dato controller! Per dirne una, non si tratta mai di sanzioni penali (come nel caso Google Vividown). Gira e rigira, il punto è sempre questo: ai fini della normativa sulla privacy (data protection), l'ISP 'processors' (nell'italiano della legge, sic!, risponde dei) dati immessi autonomamente dall'utente (e.g., user generated content), il quale ultimo dunque ne è l'unico titolare del trattamento, ovvero, come data controller. Ai fini della normativa sull'e-commerce, l'ISP non ha nessun obbligo di vigilanza. Ergo, quello che propongo è de iure condito, non condendo. L'ISP è 'data controller' (titolare del trattamento) con annesse responsabilità (anche penali): a) Nei rapporti contrattuali con i propri utenti; b) Quando viene attivato dall'autorità competente o ai sensi di legge; c) Quando tratta a fini propri e ulteriori le informazioni immesse dagli utenti, anche riguardo terzi. Infine, sul concetto di "informational self-determination" se ne è occupata, sempre lei!, di recente: Corte costituzionale tedesca, sentenza del 2 marzo 2010, 1 BvR 256/08. Siccome, come spesso capita col BVG, è una sentenza molto corposa, ne parliamo, se mai, con altra posta. Ciao a tutti, Ugo
------------------ Messaggio originale ------------------- Oggetto: [nexa] Must-Read Empirical Study of 47 USC 230 Jurisprudence byDavid Ardia Da: "Andrea Glorioso" <andrea@digitalpolicy.it> Data: Lun, 12 Luglio 2010, 10:13 am A: nexa@server-nexa.polito.it ----------------------------------------------------------
Sempre su intermediari e responsabilità, a proposito dei "modello americano":
http://blog.ericgoldman.org/archives/2010/06/ardias_empirica.htm
Technology & Marketing Law Blog
« Payment Service Providers May Be Liable for Counterfeit Website Sales--Gucci v. Frontline | Main | Recent Anti-SLAPP Developments » June 30, 2010 Must-Read Empirical Study of 47 USC 230 Jurisprudence by David Ardia
By Eric Goldman
David S. Ardia, Free Speech Savior or Shield for Scoundrels: An Empirical Study of Intermediary Immunity Under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, 43 Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review 373 (2010)
Let me start with the punchline: if you are interested in 47 USC 230 jurisprudence (and let's face it, who isn't???), then you need to read this article. In fact, clear your calendar for this afternoon. Although I am not completely sold on its conclusions, any cogent discussion about 47 USC 230 jurisprudential trendlines must acknowledge this article.
David Ardia directs the Citizen Media Law Project, a frequent outlink on this blog. He undertook the heroic (and some might say ill-advised) task of finding and coding 47 USC 230 cases--a total of 184 decisions--and then generating some statistical conclusions from the dataset. This is not a project I would have undertaken because empirical research is such a quagmire, but we as a community of 47 USC 230 scholars and practitioners get the benefit of David's efforts.
(I should note that David sent me a draft of this article last Fall, which sat unread in my inbox for 3 months. I then sent David an extremely lengthy and detailed set of comments about a week before his final edits were due to the law review. Some of my critiques are not news to David, but he may not have had a chance to fully address them based on my delayed feedback.)
(I further note that I have not doublechecked Davids dataset or coding. For this post, I assume he did it correctly.)
If you have limited time (the PDF is 134 pages), start on page 41 of the PDF, which is where the empirical discussions heat up. There is a lot to discuss and explore, but I will highlight two significant statistical conclusions.
First, the paper calculates that 230 defendants win the defense "only" about 2/3 of the time, leading him to conclude that the statute "has not been the free pass many of its proponents claim and its critics lament." This is an interesting conclusion, but it leaves me wondering how this compares with the hypothetical calculation of cases where the 230 defense should have failed vs. the situations where it should have succeeded. Still, I am one of the people who thinks 230 is a free pass for defendants, so the successful batting average was lower than I expected.
Second, the paper makes the following assertion on page 108:
"many of the intermediaries that invoked section 230 likely would not have faced eventual liability under the common law because they lacked knowledge of and editorial control over the third-party content at issue in the cases. Given this prediction, one might question whether section 230 is necessary."
Whoa! This is an important and implicitly troubling statement. The paper is positing an alternative scenario where 230 doesn't exist and arguing that we might not notice a difference. Of course, we know that other countries are having very different experiences with UGC due to the 230's absence. At the same time, US common law still differs from other countries' laws, so perhaps the US common law's trajectory would have reached a similar place. Having said that, for reasons the paper does explore, we are better off for having the statutory immunity than relying on common law developments. Furthermore, 230s real brilliance is that it immunizes service providers *because they exercise* editorial control, which leads to better outcomes.
I'll briefly mention two other stats that puzzled me.
On page 59, the paper says: "in more than half of the section 230 decisions (58.8%), the speech at issue was not published anonymously." Later, on page 115, the paper advances the inverse stat: "41.2% of the decisions studied involved anonymous content." In theory, this means 40% of cases involve primary tortfeasors who can't be found, but I'm skeptical about this because successful online anonymity is really hard. After all, the AutoAdmit authors thought they were anonymous until they were de-anonymized. For more, see Paul Ohm's paper on reidentification.
On page 117, the paper says "in more than half of the cases (55%), the content plaintiffs sued over was no longer available as of mid-2009," which suggests plaintiffs can get content takedowns despite 230 because the service provider voluntarily helps or the author takes the content down him/herself (or, in some cases, the court ordered the takedown). This brought to mind the Ripoff Report's refusal to remove content at the author's request, a relatively unique posture for UGC hosts. See Blockowicz v. Williams.
The paper gives me another reason to remind you that SCU will be hosting a 47 USC 230 celebration on March 4, 2011, where I hope we will discuss cutting-edge research on 230 like this paper. More details to come, but mark your calendar now. If you are working on 230-related research that you think might be appropriate to present at this conference, please contact me.
UPDATE: David's CMLP blog post on his article. ____________
The abstract:
In the thirteen years since its enactment, section 230 of the Communications Decency Act has become one of the most important statutes impacting online speech, as well as one of the most intensely criticized. In deceptively simple language, its provisions sweep away the common laws distinction between publisher and distributor liability, granting operators of Web sites and other interactive computer services broad protection from claims based on the speech of third parties. Section 230 is of critical importance because virtually all speech that occurs on the Internet is facilitated by private intermediaries that have a fragile commitment to the speech they facilitate.
This Article presents the first empirical study of the section 230 case law. It begins by providing a doctrinal overview of common law liability for intermediaries, both online and offline, and describes how section 230 modifies these doctrinal approaches. It then systematically analyzes the 184 decisions courts have issued since the statutes enactment. The Article also examines how courts have applied section 230, finding that judges have been haphazard in their approach to its application.
The Article closes by discussing the studys findings and by offering some insights into how plaintiffs and defendants have fared under section 230. While section 230 has largely protected intermediaries from liability for third-party speech, it has not been the free pass many of its proponents claim and its critics lament. More than a third of the claims at issue in the cases survived a section 230 defense. Even in cases where the court dismissed the claims, intermediaries bore liability in the form of litigation costs, and it took courts, on average, nearly a year to issue decisions addressing an intermediarys defense under section 230.
Posted by Eric at June 30, 2010 08:38 AM | Derivative Liability
_______________________________________________ nexa mailing list nexa@server-nexa.polito.it https://server-nexa.polito.it/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/nexa
Caro Ugo, premetto che non ho avuto occasione di leggere lo studio di cui ho mandato il riferimento qui in lista. E' una pratica che adotto molto spesso (e non credo di essere il solo) quello di disseminare puntatori a documenti sperando che altri li leggano e li sintetizzino. :) Nel merito, non per avere l'ultima parola, ma solo per cercare di chiarire (anche a me stesso) il mio pensiero, riprendo il più brevemente possibili i tre punti che sintetizzi. Premetto che vorrei evitare, per quanto possibile, di concentrarmi sullo specifico caso Google/Vividown: sia perché, a titolo personale, trovo la sentenza di primo grado mal ragionata, senza per questo trarre conclusioni a priori circa le eventuali responsabilità dell'intermediario in questione; sia perché credo che il problema della relazione tra diritto alla privacy/protezione dei dati personali e il ruolo degli intermediari su Internet sia di portata ben più ampia, come del resto mi pare abbia sostenuto tu stesso qualche email addietro. La differenza tra "conoscenza dei dati" e "conoscenza dell'illecito" è senz'altro un punto su cui riflettere. Però noto che diversi intermediari - tra cui lo stesso Google, ahimé tocca sempre citarlo - non si pongono lo stesso problema quando si tratta di copyright: vedi l'uso di sistemi di fingerprinting e riconoscimento automatico delle tracce audio che portano ad una sospensione *automatica* di un video caricato su YouTube, elidendo di fatto la differenza tra "conoscenza del dato" (in questo caso non personale, direi) e "conoscenza dell'illecito" (che in molti casi non sussiste). Come dire che a seconda delle pressioni che vengono applicate, gli intermediari si muovono più o meno rapidamente (e in direzioni più o meno rispettose dei diritti di tutte le parti). Circa le responsabilità del "data processor" v quelle del "data controller", siamo ovviamente d'accordo. Per questo ho detto che il punto centrale, nel caso da cui siamo partiti ma anche in molti altri, è proprio quello di una corretta comprensione della fattispecie a cui ricondurre il ruolo dell'intermediario. Tuttavia, dato il business model di molti degli attuali intermediari, nutro qualche dubbio che chi si professa semplice "processor" non sia in realtà anche un "controller". Punto su cui la sentenza Google/Vividown certo non fa la chiarezza che invece sarebbe necessaria. Grazie infine per il riferimento alla sentenza della Corte Costituzionale tedesca sulla trasposizione nazionale della Data Retention Directive, di cui ho letto la sintesi, non essendo - che io sappia - disponibile una traduzione inglese (a differenza della sentenza della Corte Costituzionale rumena sul medesimo argomento). Questi ed altri sviluppi legali e politici rafforzano il mio convincimento che la riflessione sul "nuovo" diritto all'autodeterminazione informazionle è urgente e necessaria. Grazie per la (come sempre) stimolante discussione, Andrea On 7/12/2010 3:09 PM, ugo.pagallo@unito.it wrote:
Caro Andrea,
grazie (come sempre) per la segnalazione dello studio: al di là delle sue statistiche (il diavolo è nei dettagli), mi sembra sin d'ora confermata l'analisi fatta sul 230 DMCA. Questo mi consente di riprendere i (tre, in sostanza) punti da te avanzati nell'email di ieri. Sul primo ha risposto a sua volta Alessandro Mantelero, distinguendo tra "trattamento dei dati" e "percezione dell'illecito". Non vedo perché, come dici, "appare difficile sostenere che un 'data processor' non abbia una conoscenza attiva dei medesimi [dati]". Tutto sta a intendere cosa vuol dire "attivo" in un mondo in cui, come ricorda la sentenza Google/YouTube v Viacom dalla quale eravamo partiti, vengono caricati su YouTube 24 ore di video al minuto! Larry Lessig ha ricordato tre/quattro mesi fa su La Stampa come, almeno allo stato, non abbiamo certo la tecnologia per prevenire, diciamo, un reato di diffamazione... (da dove era viceversa partito il caso Google/Vividown). Secondo punto: affermi che il "data processor ha comunque certe responsabilità". E ci mancherebbe! Solo che NON sono quelle del dato controller! Per dirne una, non si tratta mai di sanzioni penali (come nel caso Google Vividown). Gira e rigira, il punto è sempre questo: ai fini della normativa sulla privacy (data protection), l'ISP 'processors' (nell'italiano della legge, sic!, risponde dei) dati immessi autonomamente dall'utente (e.g., user generated content), il quale ultimo dunque ne è l'unico titolare del trattamento, ovvero, come data controller. Ai fini della normativa sull'e-commerce, l'ISP non ha nessun obbligo di vigilanza. Ergo, quello che propongo è de iure condito, non condendo. L'ISP è 'data controller' (titolare del trattamento) con annesse responsabilità (anche penali): a) Nei rapporti contrattuali con i propri utenti; b) Quando viene attivato dall'autorità competente o ai sensi di legge; c) Quando tratta a fini propri e ulteriori le informazioni immesse dagli utenti, anche riguardo terzi. Infine, sul concetto di "informational self-determination" se ne è occupata, sempre lei!, di recente: Corte costituzionale tedesca, sentenza del 2 marzo 2010, 1 BvR 256/08. Siccome, come spesso capita col BVG, è una sentenza molto corposa, ne parliamo, se mai, con altra posta. Ciao a tutti, Ugo
------------------ Messaggio originale ------------------- Oggetto: [nexa] Must-Read Empirical Study of 47 USC 230 Jurisprudence byDavid Ardia Da: "Andrea Glorioso" <andrea@digitalpolicy.it> Data: Lun, 12 Luglio 2010, 10:13 am A: nexa@server-nexa.polito.it ----------------------------------------------------------
Sempre su intermediari e responsabilità, a proposito dei "modello americano":
http://blog.ericgoldman.org/archives/2010/06/ardias_empirica.htm
Technology & Marketing Law Blog
« Payment Service Providers May Be Liable for Counterfeit Website Sales--Gucci v. Frontline | Main | Recent Anti-SLAPP Developments » June 30, 2010 Must-Read Empirical Study of 47 USC 230 Jurisprudence by David Ardia
By Eric Goldman
David S. Ardia, Free Speech Savior or Shield for Scoundrels: An Empirical Study of Intermediary Immunity Under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, 43 Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review 373 (2010)
Let me start with the punchline: if you are interested in 47 USC 230 jurisprudence (and let's face it, who isn't???), then you need to read this article. In fact, clear your calendar for this afternoon. Although I am not completely sold on its conclusions, any cogent discussion about 47 USC 230 jurisprudential trendlines must acknowledge this article.
David Ardia directs the Citizen Media Law Project, a frequent outlink on this blog. He undertook the heroic (and some might say ill-advised) task of finding and coding 47 USC 230 cases--a total of 184 decisions--and then generating some statistical conclusions from the dataset. This is not a project I would have undertaken because empirical research is such a quagmire, but we as a community of 47 USC 230 scholars and practitioners get the benefit of David's efforts.
(I should note that David sent me a draft of this article last Fall, which sat unread in my inbox for 3 months. I then sent David an extremely lengthy and detailed set of comments about a week before his final edits were due to the law review. Some of my critiques are not news to David, but he may not have had a chance to fully address them based on my delayed feedback.)
(I further note that I have not doublechecked David’s dataset or coding. For this post, I assume he did it “correctly.”)
If you have limited time (the PDF is 134 pages), start on page 41 of the PDF, which is where the empirical discussions heat up. There is a lot to discuss and explore, but I will highlight two significant statistical conclusions.
First, the paper calculates that 230 defendants win the defense "only" about 2/3 of the time, leading him to conclude that the statute "has not been the free pass many of its proponents claim and its critics lament." This is an interesting conclusion, but it leaves me wondering how this compares with the hypothetical calculation of cases where the 230 defense should have failed vs. the situations where it should have succeeded. Still, I am one of the people who thinks 230 is a free pass for defendants, so the successful batting average was lower than I expected.
Second, the paper makes the following assertion on page 108:
"many of the intermediaries that invoked section 230 likely would not have faced eventual liability under the common law because they lacked knowledge of and editorial control over the third-party content at issue in the cases. Given this prediction, one might question whether section 230 is necessary."
Whoa! This is an important and implicitly troubling statement. The paper is positing an alternative scenario where 230 doesn't exist and arguing that we might not notice a difference. Of course, we know that other countries are having very different experiences with UGC due to the 230's absence. At the same time, US common law still differs from other countries' laws, so perhaps the US common law's trajectory would have reached a similar place. Having said that, for reasons the paper does explore, we are better off for having the statutory immunity than relying on common law developments. Furthermore, 230’s real brilliance is that it immunizes service providers *because they exercise* editorial control, which leads to better outcomes.
I'll briefly mention two other stats that puzzled me.
On page 59, the paper says: "in more than half of the section 230 decisions (58.8%), the speech at issue was not published anonymously." Later, on page 115, the paper advances the inverse stat: "41.2% of the decisions studied involved anonymous content." In theory, this means 40% of cases involve primary tortfeasors who can't be found, but I'm skeptical about this because successful online anonymity is really hard. After all, the AutoAdmit authors thought they were anonymous until they were de-anonymized. For more, see Paul Ohm's paper on reidentification.
On page 117, the paper says "in more than half of the cases (55%), the content plaintiffs sued over was no longer available as of mid-2009," which suggests plaintiffs can get content takedowns despite 230 because the service provider voluntarily helps or the author takes the content down him/herself (or, in some cases, the court ordered the takedown). This brought to mind the Ripoff Report's refusal to remove content at the author's request, a relatively unique posture for UGC hosts. See Blockowicz v. Williams.
The paper gives me another reason to remind you that SCU will be hosting a 47 USC 230 celebration on March 4, 2011, where I hope we will discuss cutting-edge research on 230 like this paper. More details to come, but mark your calendar now. If you are working on 230-related research that you think might be appropriate to present at this conference, please contact me.
UPDATE: David's CMLP blog post on his article. ____________
The abstract:
In the thirteen years since its enactment, section 230 of the Communications Decency Act has become one of the most important statutes impacting online speech, as well as one of the most intensely criticized. In deceptively simple language, its provisions sweep away the common law’s distinction between publisher and distributor liability, granting operators of Web sites and other interactive computer services broad protection from claims based on the speech of third parties. Section 230 is of critical importance because virtually all speech that occurs on the Internet is facilitated by private intermediaries that have a fragile commitment to the speech they facilitate.
This Article presents the first empirical study of the section 230 case law. It begins by providing a doctrinal overview of common law liability for intermediaries, both online and offline, and describes how section 230 modifies these doctrinal approaches. It then systematically analyzes the 184 decisions courts have issued since the statute’s enactment. The Article also examines how courts have applied section 230, finding that judges have been haphazard in their approach to its application.
The Article closes by discussing the study’s findings and by offering some insights into how plaintiffs and defendants have fared under section 230. While section 230 has largely protected intermediaries from liability for third-party speech, it has not been the free pass many of its proponents claim and its critics lament. More than a third of the claims at issue in the cases survived a section 230 defense. Even in cases where the court dismissed the claims, intermediaries bore liability in the form of litigation costs, and it took courts, on average, nearly a year to issue decisions addressing an intermediary’s defense under section 230.
Posted by Eric at June 30, 2010 08:38 AM | Derivative Liability
_______________________________________________ nexa mailing list nexa@server-nexa.polito.it https://server-nexa.polito.it/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/nexa
A proposito della sentenza della Corte costituzionale tedesca, qualcuno ha il testo tradotto (non dico in italiano, ma almeno in inglese)? Grazie. Monica -----Messaggio originale----- Da: nexa-bounces@server-nexa.polito.it [mailto:nexa-bounces@server-nexa.polito.it] Per conto di ugo.pagallo@unito.it Inviato: lunedì 12 luglio 2010 15.10 A: andrea@digitalpolicy.it Cc: nexa@server-nexa.polito.it Oggetto: Re: [nexa] Must-Read Empirical Study of 47 USC 230 Jurisprudence byDavid Ardia Caro Andrea, grazie (come sempre) per la segnalazione dello studio: al di là delle sue statistiche (il diavolo è nei dettagli), mi sembra sin d'ora confermata l'analisi fatta sul 230 DMCA. Questo mi consente di riprendere i (tre, in sostanza) punti da te avanzati nell'email di ieri. Sul primo ha risposto a sua volta Alessandro Mantelero, distinguendo tra "trattamento dei dati" e "percezione dell'illecito". Non vedo perché, come dici, "appare difficile sostenere che un 'data processor' non abbia una conoscenza attiva dei medesimi [dati]". Tutto sta a intendere cosa vuol dire "attivo" in un mondo in cui, come ricorda la sentenza Google/YouTube v Viacom dalla quale eravamo partiti, vengono caricati su YouTube 24 ore di video al minuto! Larry Lessig ha ricordato tre/quattro mesi fa su La Stampa come, almeno allo stato, non abbiamo certo la tecnologia per prevenire, diciamo, un reato di diffamazione... (da dove era viceversa partito il caso Google/Vividown). Secondo punto: affermi che il "data processor ha comunque certe responsabilità". E ci mancherebbe! Solo che NON sono quelle del dato controller! Per dirne una, non si tratta mai di sanzioni penali (come nel caso Google Vividown). Gira e rigira, il punto è sempre questo: ai fini della normativa sulla privacy (data protection), l'ISP 'processors' (nell'italiano della legge, sic!, risponde dei) dati immessi autonomamente dall'utente (e.g., user generated content), il quale ultimo dunque ne è l'unico titolare del trattamento, ovvero, come data controller. Ai fini della normativa sull'e-commerce, l'ISP non ha nessun obbligo di vigilanza. Ergo, quello che propongo è de iure condito, non condendo. L'ISP è 'data controller' (titolare del trattamento) con annesse responsabilità (anche penali): a) Nei rapporti contrattuali con i propri utenti; b) Quando viene attivato dall'autorità competente o ai sensi di legge; c) Quando tratta a fini propri e ulteriori le informazioni immesse dagli utenti, anche riguardo terzi. Infine, sul concetto di "informational self-determination" se ne è occupata, sempre lei!, di recente: Corte costituzionale tedesca, sentenza del 2 marzo 2010, 1 BvR 256/08. Siccome, come spesso capita col BVG, è una sentenza molto corposa, ne parliamo, se mai, con altra posta. Ciao a tutti, Ugo
------------------ Messaggio originale ------------------- Oggetto: [nexa] Must-Read Empirical Study of 47 USC 230 Jurisprudence byDavid Ardia Da: "Andrea Glorioso" <andrea@digitalpolicy.it> Data: Lun, 12 Luglio 2010, 10:13 am A: nexa@server-nexa.polito.it ----------------------------------------------------------
Sempre su intermediari e responsabilità, a proposito dei "modello americano":
http://blog.ericgoldman.org/archives/2010/06/ardias_empirica.htm
Technology & Marketing Law Blog
« Payment Service Providers May Be Liable for Counterfeit Website Sales--Gucci v. Frontline | Main | Recent Anti-SLAPP Developments » June 30, 2010 Must-Read Empirical Study of 47 USC 230 Jurisprudence by David Ardia
By Eric Goldman
David S. Ardia, Free Speech Savior or Shield for Scoundrels: An Empirical Study of Intermediary Immunity Under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, 43 Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review 373 (2010)
Let me start with the punchline: if you are interested in 47 USC 230 jurisprudence (and let's face it, who isn't???), then you need to read this article. In fact, clear your calendar for this afternoon. Although I am not completely sold on its conclusions, any cogent discussion about 47 USC 230 jurisprudential trendlines must acknowledge this article.
David Ardia directs the Citizen Media Law Project, a frequent outlink on this blog. He undertook the heroic (and some might say ill-advised) task of finding and coding 47 USC 230 cases--a total of 184 decisions--and then generating some statistical conclusions from the dataset. This is not a project I would have undertaken because empirical research is such a quagmire, but we as a community of 47 USC 230 scholars and practitioners get the benefit of David's efforts.
(I should note that David sent me a draft of this article last Fall, which sat unread in my inbox for 3 months. I then sent David an extremely lengthy and detailed set of comments about a week before his final edits were due to the law review. Some of my critiques are not news to David, but he may not have had a chance to fully address them based on my delayed feedback.)
(I further note that I have not doublechecked Davids dataset or coding. For this post, I assume he did it correctly.)
If you have limited time (the PDF is 134 pages), start on page 41 of the PDF, which is where the empirical discussions heat up. There is a lot to discuss and explore, but I will highlight two significant statistical conclusions.
First, the paper calculates that 230 defendants win the defense "only" about 2/3 of the time, leading him to conclude that the statute "has not been the free pass many of its proponents claim and its critics lament." This is an interesting conclusion, but it leaves me wondering how this compares with the hypothetical calculation of cases where the 230 defense should have failed vs. the situations where it should have succeeded. Still, I am one of the people who thinks 230 is a free pass for defendants, so the successful batting average was lower than I expected.
Second, the paper makes the following assertion on page 108:
"many of the intermediaries that invoked section 230 likely would not have faced eventual liability under the common law because they lacked knowledge of and editorial control over the third-party content at issue in the cases. Given this prediction, one might question whether section 230 is necessary."
Whoa! This is an important and implicitly troubling statement. The paper is positing an alternative scenario where 230 doesn't exist and arguing that we might not notice a difference. Of course, we know that other countries are having very different experiences with UGC due to the 230's absence. At the same time, US common law still differs from other countries' laws, so perhaps the US common law's trajectory would have reached a similar place. Having said that, for reasons the paper does explore, we are better off for having the statutory immunity than relying on common law developments. Furthermore, 230s real brilliance is that it immunizes service providers *because they exercise* editorial control, which leads to better outcomes.
I'll briefly mention two other stats that puzzled me.
On page 59, the paper says: "in more than half of the section 230 decisions (58.8%), the speech at issue was not published anonymously." Later, on page 115, the paper advances the inverse stat: "41.2% of the decisions studied involved anonymous content." In theory, this means 40% of cases involve primary tortfeasors who can't be found, but I'm skeptical about this because successful online anonymity is really hard. After all, the AutoAdmit authors thought they were anonymous until they were de-anonymized. For more, see Paul Ohm's paper on reidentification.
On page 117, the paper says "in more than half of the cases (55%), the content plaintiffs sued over was no longer available as of mid-2009," which suggests plaintiffs can get content takedowns despite 230 because the service provider voluntarily helps or the author takes the content down him/herself (or, in some cases, the court ordered the takedown). This brought to mind the Ripoff Report's refusal to remove content at the author's request, a relatively unique posture for UGC hosts. See Blockowicz v. Williams.
The paper gives me another reason to remind you that SCU will be hosting a 47 USC 230 celebration on March 4, 2011, where I hope we will discuss cutting-edge research on 230 like this paper. More details to come, but mark your calendar now. If you are working on 230-related research that you think might be appropriate to present at this conference, please contact me.
UPDATE: David's CMLP blog post on his article. ____________
The abstract:
In the thirteen years since its enactment, section 230 of the Communications Decency Act has become one of the most important statutes impacting online speech, as well as one of the most intensely criticized. In deceptively simple language, its provisions sweep away the common laws distinction between publisher and distributor liability, granting operators of Web sites and other interactive computer services broad protection from claims based on the speech of third parties. Section 230 is of critical importance because virtually all speech that occurs on the Internet is facilitated by private intermediaries that have a fragile commitment to the speech they facilitate.
This Article presents the first empirical study of the section 230 case law. It begins by providing a doctrinal overview of common law liability for intermediaries, both online and offline, and describes how section 230 modifies these doctrinal approaches. It then systematically analyzes the 184 decisions courts have issued since the statutes enactment. The Article also examines how courts have applied section 230, finding that judges have been haphazard in their approach to its application.
The Article closes by discussing the studys findings and by offering some insights into how plaintiffs and defendants have fared under section 230. While section 230 has largely protected intermediaries from liability for third-party speech, it has not been the free pass many of its proponents claim and its critics lament. More than a third of the claims at issue in the cases survived a section 230 defense. Even in cases where the court dismissed the claims, intermediaries bore liability in the form of litigation costs, and it took courts, on average, nearly a year to issue decisions addressing an intermediarys defense under section 230.
Posted by Eric at June 30, 2010 08:38 AM | Derivative Liability
_______________________________________________ nexa mailing list nexa@server-nexa.polito.it https://server-nexa.polito.it/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/nexa
_______________________________________________ nexa mailing list nexa@server-nexa.polito.it https://server-nexa.polito.it/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/nexa
Cara Monica, puoi trovare una sintesi in inglese qui: http://www.bverfg.de/pressemitteilungen/bvg10-011en.html e un commento (tra i moltissimi, ma Rocco Bellanova è un amico, dunque in stile tipicamente italiano gli faccio pubblicità :) qui: http://vortex.uvt.nl/TILTblog/?p=118 Puoi anche leggere la traduzione non ufficiale in inglese della sentenza della Corte Costituzionale rumena qui: http://www.legi-internet.ro/english/jurisprudenta-it-romania/decizii-it/roma... Ciao, Andrea On 7/12/2010 3:52 PM, avv. Monica Alessia Senor wrote:
A proposito della sentenza della Corte costituzionale tedesca, qualcuno ha il testo tradotto (non dico in italiano, ma almeno in inglese)? Grazie. Monica
-----Messaggio originale----- Da: nexa-bounces@server-nexa.polito.it [mailto:nexa-bounces@server-nexa.polito.it] Per conto di ugo.pagallo@unito.it Inviato: lunedì 12 luglio 2010 15.10 A: andrea@digitalpolicy.it Cc: nexa@server-nexa.polito.it Oggetto: Re: [nexa] Must-Read Empirical Study of 47 USC 230 Jurisprudence byDavid Ardia
Caro Andrea,
grazie (come sempre) per la segnalazione dello studio: al di là delle sue statistiche (il diavolo è nei dettagli), mi sembra sin d'ora confermata l'analisi fatta sul 230 DMCA. Questo mi consente di riprendere i (tre, in sostanza) punti da te avanzati nell'email di ieri. Sul primo ha risposto a sua volta Alessandro Mantelero, distinguendo tra "trattamento dei dati" e "percezione dell'illecito". Non vedo perché, come dici, "appare difficile sostenere che un 'data processor' non abbia una conoscenza attiva dei medesimi [dati]". Tutto sta a intendere cosa vuol dire "attivo" in un mondo in cui, come ricorda la sentenza Google/YouTube v Viacom dalla quale eravamo partiti, vengono caricati su YouTube 24 ore di video al minuto! Larry Lessig ha ricordato tre/quattro mesi fa su La Stampa come, almeno allo stato, non abbiamo certo la tecnologia per prevenire, diciamo, un reato di diffamazione... (da dove era viceversa partito il caso Google/Vividown). Secondo punto: affermi che il "data processor ha comunque certe responsabilità". E ci mancherebbe! Solo che NON sono quelle del dato controller! Per dirne una, non si tratta mai di sanzioni penali (come nel caso Google Vividown). Gira e rigira, il punto è sempre questo: ai fini della normativa sulla privacy (data protection), l'ISP 'processors' (nell'italiano della legge, sic!, risponde dei) dati immessi autonomamente dall'utente (e.g., user generated content), il quale ultimo dunque ne è l'unico titolare del trattamento, ovvero, come data controller. Ai fini della normativa sull'e-commerce, l'ISP non ha nessun obbligo di vigilanza. Ergo, quello che propongo è de iure condito, non condendo. L'ISP è 'data controller' (titolare del trattamento) con annesse responsabilità (anche penali): a) Nei rapporti contrattuali con i propri utenti; b) Quando viene attivato dall'autorità competente o ai sensi di legge; c) Quando tratta a fini propri e ulteriori le informazioni immesse dagli utenti, anche riguardo terzi. Infine, sul concetto di "informational self-determination" se ne è occupata, sempre lei!, di recente: Corte costituzionale tedesca, sentenza del 2 marzo 2010, 1 BvR 256/08. Siccome, come spesso capita col BVG, è una sentenza molto corposa, ne parliamo, se mai, con altra posta. Ciao a tutti, Ugo
------------------ Messaggio originale ------------------- Oggetto: [nexa] Must-Read Empirical Study of 47 USC 230 Jurisprudence byDavid Ardia Da: "Andrea Glorioso" <andrea@digitalpolicy.it> Data: Lun, 12 Luglio 2010, 10:13 am A: nexa@server-nexa.polito.it ----------------------------------------------------------
Sempre su intermediari e responsabilità, a proposito dei "modello americano":
http://blog.ericgoldman.org/archives/2010/06/ardias_empirica.htm
Technology & Marketing Law Blog
« Payment Service Providers May Be Liable for Counterfeit Website Sales--Gucci v. Frontline | Main | Recent Anti-SLAPP Developments » June 30, 2010 Must-Read Empirical Study of 47 USC 230 Jurisprudence by David Ardia
By Eric Goldman
David S. Ardia, Free Speech Savior or Shield for Scoundrels: An Empirical Study of Intermediary Immunity Under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, 43 Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review 373 (2010)
Let me start with the punchline: if you are interested in 47 USC 230 jurisprudence (and let's face it, who isn't???), then you need to read this article. In fact, clear your calendar for this afternoon. Although I am not completely sold on its conclusions, any cogent discussion about 47 USC 230 jurisprudential trendlines must acknowledge this article.
David Ardia directs the Citizen Media Law Project, a frequent outlink on this blog. He undertook the heroic (and some might say ill-advised) task of finding and coding 47 USC 230 cases--a total of 184 decisions--and then generating some statistical conclusions from the dataset. This is not a project I would have undertaken because empirical research is such a quagmire, but we as a community of 47 USC 230 scholars and practitioners get the benefit of David's efforts.
(I should note that David sent me a draft of this article last Fall, which sat unread in my inbox for 3 months. I then sent David an extremely lengthy and detailed set of comments about a week before his final edits were due to the law review. Some of my critiques are not news to David, but he may not have had a chance to fully address them based on my delayed feedback.)
(I further note that I have not doublechecked David’s dataset or coding. For this post, I assume he did it “correctly.”)
If you have limited time (the PDF is 134 pages), start on page 41 of the PDF, which is where the empirical discussions heat up. There is a lot to discuss and explore, but I will highlight two significant statistical conclusions.
First, the paper calculates that 230 defendants win the defense "only" about 2/3 of the time, leading him to conclude that the statute "has not been the free pass many of its proponents claim and its critics lament." This is an interesting conclusion, but it leaves me wondering how this compares with the hypothetical calculation of cases where the 230 defense should have failed vs. the situations where it should have succeeded. Still, I am one of the people who thinks 230 is a free pass for defendants, so the successful batting average was lower than I expected.
Second, the paper makes the following assertion on page 108:
"many of the intermediaries that invoked section 230 likely would not have faced eventual liability under the common law because they lacked knowledge of and editorial control over the third-party content at issue in the cases. Given this prediction, one might question whether section 230 is necessary."
Whoa! This is an important and implicitly troubling statement. The paper is positing an alternative scenario where 230 doesn't exist and arguing that we might not notice a difference. Of course, we know that other countries are having very different experiences with UGC due to the 230's absence. At the same time, US common law still differs from other countries' laws, so perhaps the US common law's trajectory would have reached a similar place. Having said that, for reasons the paper does explore, we are better off for having the statutory immunity than relying on common law developments. Furthermore, 230’s real brilliance is that it immunizes service providers *because they exercise* editorial control, which leads to better outcomes.
I'll briefly mention two other stats that puzzled me.
On page 59, the paper says: "in more than half of the section 230 decisions (58.8%), the speech at issue was not published anonymously." Later, on page 115, the paper advances the inverse stat: "41.2% of the decisions studied involved anonymous content." In theory, this means 40% of cases involve primary tortfeasors who can't be found, but I'm skeptical about this because successful online anonymity is really hard. After all, the AutoAdmit authors thought they were anonymous until they were de-anonymized. For more, see Paul Ohm's paper on reidentification.
On page 117, the paper says "in more than half of the cases (55%), the content plaintiffs sued over was no longer available as of mid-2009," which suggests plaintiffs can get content takedowns despite 230 because the service provider voluntarily helps or the author takes the content down him/herself (or, in some cases, the court ordered the takedown). This brought to mind the Ripoff Report's refusal to remove content at the author's request, a relatively unique posture for UGC hosts. See Blockowicz v. Williams.
The paper gives me another reason to remind you that SCU will be hosting a 47 USC 230 celebration on March 4, 2011, where I hope we will discuss cutting-edge research on 230 like this paper. More details to come, but mark your calendar now. If you are working on 230-related research that you think might be appropriate to present at this conference, please contact me.
UPDATE: David's CMLP blog post on his article. ____________
The abstract:
In the thirteen years since its enactment, section 230 of the Communications Decency Act has become one of the most important statutes impacting online speech, as well as one of the most intensely criticized. In deceptively simple language, its provisions sweep away the common law’s distinction between publisher and distributor liability, granting operators of Web sites and other interactive computer services broad protection from claims based on the speech of third parties. Section 230 is of critical importance because virtually all speech that occurs on the Internet is facilitated by private intermediaries that have a fragile commitment to the speech they facilitate.
This Article presents the first empirical study of the section 230 case law. It begins by providing a doctrinal overview of common law liability for intermediaries, both online and offline, and describes how section 230 modifies these doctrinal approaches. It then systematically analyzes the 184 decisions courts have issued since the statute’s enactment. The Article also examines how courts have applied section 230, finding that judges have been haphazard in their approach to its application.
The Article closes by discussing the study’s findings and by offering some insights into how plaintiffs and defendants have fared under section 230. While section 230 has largely protected intermediaries from liability for third-party speech, it has not been the free pass many of its proponents claim and its critics lament. More than a third of the claims at issue in the cases survived a section 230 defense. Even in cases where the court dismissed the claims, intermediaries bore liability in the form of litigation costs, and it took courts, on average, nearly a year to issue decisions addressing an intermediary’s defense under section 230.
Posted by Eric at June 30, 2010 08:38 AM | Derivative Liability
_______________________________________________ nexa mailing list nexa@server-nexa.polito.it https://server-nexa.polito.it/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/nexa
_______________________________________________ nexa mailing list nexa@server-nexa.polito.it https://server-nexa.polito.it/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/nexa
Cara Monica, mi risulta che Rocco (con Katja de Vries) abbia anche pubblicato sul CEPS un lungo articolo (16 pp.) su entrambe le sentenze: eccolo http://www.ceps.eu/book/proportionality-overrides-unlimited-surveillance Quanto ad Andrea, come sempre puntuale: sono del tutto d'accordo con te che le tecnologie riconfigurino continuamente la nozione di 'processor'. Ti allego un'interessante intervista a due 'pratici' su privacy e cloud computing: The Future is Here... Infine, direi che lasciamo al simpatico Paul the Octopus (pare nato a Ischia), chi dei due abbia ragione! Un 'succulento' (è il caso di dire) quadro dei nuovi media e il business tradizionale in: http://edition.cnn.com/2010/BUSINESS/07/12/paul.octopus.offers/index.html?hp... Ciao, u.
------------------ Messaggio originale ------------------- Oggetto: Decisioni delle Corti Costituzionali tedesca e rumena sulla trasposizionedella Direttiva "Data Retention" (Was: Re: R: [nexa] Must-Read EmpiricalStudy of 47 USC 230 Jurisprudence byDavid Ardia) Da: "Andrea Glorioso" <andrea@digitalpolicy.it> Data: Lun, 12 Luglio 2010, 4:06 pm A: "avv. Monica Alessia Senor" <senor@penalistiassociati.it> Cc: ugo.pagallo@unito.it nexa@server-nexa.polito.it ----------------------------------------------------------
Cara Monica,
puoi trovare una sintesi in inglese qui:
http://www.bverfg.de/pressemitteilungen/bvg10-011en.html
e un commento (tra i moltissimi, ma Rocco Bellanova è un amico, dunque in stile tipicamente italiano gli faccio pubblicità :) qui:
http://vortex.uvt.nl/TILTblog/?p=118
Puoi anche leggere la traduzione non ufficiale in inglese della sentenza della Corte Costituzionale rumena qui:
http://www.legi-internet.ro/english/jurisprudenta-it-romania/decizii-it/roma...
Ciao,
Andrea
On 7/12/2010 3:52 PM, avv. Monica Alessia Senor wrote:
A proposito della sentenza della Corte costituzionale tedesca, qualcuno ha il testo tradotto (non dico in italiano, ma almeno in inglese)? Grazie. Monica
-----Messaggio originale----- Da: nexa-bounces@server-nexa.polito.it [mailto:nexa-bounces@server-nexa.polito.it] Per conto di ugo.pagallo@unito.it Inviato: lunedì 12 luglio 2010 15.10 A: andrea@digitalpolicy.it Cc: nexa@server-nexa.polito.it Oggetto: Re: [nexa] Must-Read Empirical Study of 47 USC 230 Jurisprudence byDavid Ardia
Caro Andrea,
grazie (come sempre) per la segnalazione dello studio: al di là delle sue statistiche (il diavolo è nei dettagli), mi sembra sin d'ora confermata l'analisi fatta sul 230 DMCA. Questo mi consente di riprendere i (tre, in sostanza) punti da te avanzati nell'email di ieri. Sul primo ha risposto a sua volta Alessandro Mantelero, distinguendo tra "trattamento dei dati" e "percezione dell'illecito". Non vedo perché, come dici, "appare difficile sostenere che un 'data processor' non abbia una conoscenza attiva dei medesimi [dati]". Tutto sta a intendere cosa vuol dire "attivo" in un mondo in cui, come ricorda la sentenza Google/YouTube v Viacom dalla quale eravamo partiti, vengono caricati su YouTube 24 ore di video al minuto! Larry Lessig ha ricordato tre/quattro mesi fa su La Stampa come, almeno allo stato, non abbiamo certo la tecnologia per prevenire, diciamo, un reato di diffamazione... (da dove era viceversa partito il caso Google/Vividown). Secondo punto: affermi che il "data processor ha comunque certe responsabilità". E ci mancherebbe! Solo che NON sono quelle del dato controller! Per dirne una, non si tratta mai di sanzioni penali (come nel caso Google Vividown). Gira e rigira, il punto è sempre questo: ai fini della normativa sulla privacy (data protection), l'ISP 'processors' (nell'italiano della legge, sic!, risponde dei) dati immessi autonomamente dall'utente (e.g., user generated content), il quale ultimo dunque ne è l'unico titolare del trattamento, ovvero, come data controller. Ai fini della normativa sull'e-commerce, l'ISP non ha nessun obbligo di vigilanza. Ergo, quello che propongo è de iure condito, non condendo. L'ISP è 'data controller' (titolare del trattamento) con annesse responsabilità (anche penali): a) Nei rapporti contrattuali con i propri utenti; b) Quando viene attivato dall'autorità competente o ai sensi di legge; c) Quando tratta a fini propri e ulteriori le informazioni immesse dagli utenti, anche riguardo terzi. Infine, sul concetto di "informational self-determination" se ne è occupata, sempre lei!, di recente: Corte costituzionale tedesca, sentenza del 2 marzo 2010, 1 BvR 256/08. Siccome, come spesso capita col BVG, è una sentenza molto corposa, ne parliamo, se mai, con altra posta. Ciao a tutti, Ugo
------------------ Messaggio originale ------------------- Oggetto: [nexa] Must-Read Empirical Study of 47 USC 230 Jurisprudence byDavid Ardia Da: "Andrea Glorioso" <andrea@digitalpolicy.it> Data: Lun, 12 Luglio 2010, 10:13 am A: nexa@server-nexa.polito.it ----------------------------------------------------------
Sempre su intermediari e responsabilità, a proposito dei "modello americano":
http://blog.ericgoldman.org/archives/2010/06/ardias_empirica.htm
Technology & Marketing Law Blog
« Payment Service Providers May Be Liable for Counterfeit Website Sales--Gucci v. Frontline | Main | Recent Anti-SLAPP Developments » June 30, 2010 Must-Read Empirical Study of 47 USC 230 Jurisprudence by David Ardia
By Eric Goldman
David S. Ardia, Free Speech Savior or Shield for Scoundrels: An Empirical Study of Intermediary Immunity Under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, 43 Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review 373 (2010)
Let me start with the punchline: if you are interested in 47 USC 230 jurisprudence (and let's face it, who isn't???), then you need to read this article. In fact, clear your calendar for this afternoon. Although I am not completely sold on its conclusions, any cogent discussion about 47 USC 230 jurisprudential trendlines must acknowledge this article.
David Ardia directs the Citizen Media Law Project, a frequent outlink on this blog. He undertook the heroic (and some might say ill-advised) task of finding and coding 47 USC 230 cases--a total of 184 decisions--and then generating some statistical conclusions from the dataset. This is not a project I would have undertaken because empirical research is such a quagmire, but we as a community of 47 USC 230 scholars and practitioners get the benefit of David's efforts.
(I should note that David sent me a draft of this article last Fall, which sat unread in my inbox for 3 months. I then sent David an extremely lengthy and detailed set of comments about a week before his final edits were due to the law review. Some of my critiques are not news to David, but he may not have had a chance to fully address them based on my delayed feedback.)
(I further note that I have not doublechecked Davids dataset or coding. For this post, I assume he did it correctly.)
If you have limited time (the PDF is 134 pages), start on page 41 of the PDF, which is where the empirical discussions heat up. There is a lot to discuss and explore, but I will highlight two significant statistical conclusions.
First, the paper calculates that 230 defendants win the defense "only" about 2/3 of the time, leading him to conclude that the statute "has not been the free pass many of its proponents claim and its critics lament." This is an interesting conclusion, but it leaves me wondering how this compares with the hypothetical calculation of cases where the 230 defense should have failed vs. the situations where it should have succeeded. Still, I am one of the people who thinks 230 is a free pass for defendants, so the successful batting average was lower than I expected.
Second, the paper makes the following assertion on page 108:
"many of the intermediaries that invoked section 230 likely would not have faced eventual liability under the common law because they lacked knowledge of and editorial control over the third-party content at issue in the cases. Given this prediction, one might question whether section 230 is necessary."
Whoa! This is an important and implicitly troubling statement. The paper is positing an alternative scenario where 230 doesn't exist and arguing that we might not notice a difference. Of course, we know that other countries are having very different experiences with UGC due to the 230's absence. At the same time, US common law still differs from other countries' laws, so perhaps the US common law's trajectory would have reached a similar place. Having said that, for reasons the paper does explore, we are better off for having the statutory immunity than relying on common law developments. Furthermore, 230s real brilliance is that it immunizes service providers *because they exercise* editorial control, which leads to better outcomes.
I'll briefly mention two other stats that puzzled me.
On page 59, the paper says: "in more than half of the section 230 decisions (58.8%), the speech at issue was not published anonymously." Later, on page 115, the paper advances the inverse stat: "41.2% of the decisions studied involved anonymous content." In theory, this means 40% of cases involve primary tortfeasors who can't be found, but I'm skeptical about this because successful online anonymity is really hard. After all, the AutoAdmit authors thought they were anonymous until they were de-anonymized. For more, see Paul Ohm's paper on reidentification.
On page 117, the paper says "in more than half of the cases (55%), the content plaintiffs sued over was no longer available as of mid-2009," which suggests plaintiffs can get content takedowns despite 230 because the service provider voluntarily helps or the author takes the content down him/herself (or, in some cases, the court ordered the takedown). This brought to mind the Ripoff Report's refusal to remove content at the author's request, a relatively unique posture for UGC hosts. See Blockowicz v. Williams.
The paper gives me another reason to remind you that SCU will be hosting a 47 USC 230 celebration on March 4, 2011, where I hope we will discuss cutting-edge research on 230 like this paper. More details to come, but mark your calendar now. If you are working on 230-related research that you think might be appropriate to present at this conference, please contact me.
UPDATE: David's CMLP blog post on his article. ____________
The abstract:
In the thirteen years since its enactment, section 230 of the Communications Decency Act has become one of the most important statutes impacting online speech, as well as one of the most intensely criticized. In deceptively simple language, its provisions sweep away the common laws distinction between publisher and distributor liability, granting operators of Web sites and other interactive computer services broad protection from claims based on the speech of third parties. Section 230 is of critical importance because virtually all speech that occurs on the Internet is facilitated by private intermediaries that have a fragile commitment to the speech they facilitate.
This Article presents the first empirical study of the section 230 case law. It begins by providing a doctrinal overview of common law liability for intermediaries, both online and offline, and describes how section 230 modifies these doctrinal approaches. It then systematically analyzes the 184 decisions courts have issued since the statutes enactment. The Article also examines how courts have applied section 230, finding that judges have been haphazard in their approach to its application.
The Article closes by discussing the studys findings and by offering some insights into how plaintiffs and defendants have fared under section 230. While section 230 has largely protected intermediaries from liability for third-party speech, it has not been the free pass many of its proponents claim and its critics lament. More than a third of the claims at issue in the cases survived a section 230 defense. Even in cases where the court dismissed the claims, intermediaries bore liability in the form of litigation costs, and it took courts, on average, nearly a year to issue decisions addressing an intermediarys defense under section 230.
Posted by Eric at June 30, 2010 08:38 AM | Derivative Liability
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Grazie Ugo, invero l'articolo me lo avevi già da tempo segnalato e l'ho letto. Mi interesserebbe proprio il testo della sentenza. Un caro saluto. Monica -----Messaggio originale----- Da: ugo.pagallo@unito.it [mailto:ugo.pagallo@unito.it] Inviato: lunedì 12 luglio 2010 18.06 A: andrea@digitalpolicy.it Cc: senor@penalistiassociati.it; nexa@server-nexa.polito.it Oggetto: Re: Decisioni delle Corti Costituzionali tedesca e rumena sulla trasposizionedella Direttiva Cara Monica, mi risulta che Rocco (con Katja de Vries) abbia anche pubblicato sul CEPS un lungo articolo (16 pp.) su entrambe le sentenze: eccolo http://www.ceps.eu/book/proportionality-overrides-unlimited-surveillance Quanto ad Andrea, come sempre puntuale: sono del tutto d'accordo con te che le tecnologie riconfigurino continuamente la nozione di 'processor'. Ti allego un'interessante intervista a due 'pratici' su privacy e cloud computing: The Future is Here... Infine, direi che lasciamo al simpatico Paul the Octopus (pare nato a Ischia), chi dei due abbia ragione! Un 'succulento' (è il caso di dire) quadro dei nuovi media e il business tradizionale in: http://edition.cnn.com/2010/BUSINESS/07/12/paul.octopus.offers/index.html?hp t=C2&fbid=TK06tB_j9as Ciao, u.
------------------ Messaggio originale ------------------- Oggetto: Decisioni delle Corti Costituzionali tedesca e rumena sulla trasposizionedella Direttiva "Data Retention" (Was: Re: R: [nexa] Must-Read EmpiricalStudy of 47 USC 230 Jurisprudence byDavid Ardia) Da: "Andrea Glorioso" <andrea@digitalpolicy.it> Data: Lun, 12 Luglio 2010, 4:06 pm A: "avv. Monica Alessia Senor" <senor@penalistiassociati.it> Cc: ugo.pagallo@unito.it nexa@server-nexa.polito.it ----------------------------------------------------------
Cara Monica,
puoi trovare una sintesi in inglese qui:
http://www.bverfg.de/pressemitteilungen/bvg10-011en.html
e un commento (tra i moltissimi, ma Rocco Bellanova è un amico, dunque in stile tipicamente italiano gli faccio pubblicità :) qui:
http://vortex.uvt.nl/TILTblog/?p=118
Puoi anche leggere la traduzione non ufficiale in inglese della sentenza della Corte Costituzionale rumena qui:
http://www.legi-internet.ro/english/jurisprudenta-it-romania/decizii-it/roma nian-constitutional-court-decision-regarding-data-retention.html
Ciao,
Andrea
On 7/12/2010 3:52 PM, avv. Monica Alessia Senor wrote:
A proposito della sentenza della Corte costituzionale tedesca, qualcuno ha il testo tradotto (non dico in italiano, ma almeno in inglese)? Grazie. Monica
-----Messaggio originale----- Da: nexa-bounces@server-nexa.polito.it [mailto:nexa-bounces@server-nexa.polito.it] Per conto di ugo.pagallo@unito.it Inviato: lunedì 12 luglio 2010 15.10 A: andrea@digitalpolicy.it Cc: nexa@server-nexa.polito.it Oggetto: Re: [nexa] Must-Read Empirical Study of 47 USC 230 Jurisprudence byDavid Ardia
Caro Andrea,
grazie (come sempre) per la segnalazione dello studio: al di là delle sue statistiche (il diavolo è nei dettagli), mi sembra sin d'ora confermata l'analisi fatta sul 230 DMCA. Questo mi consente di riprendere i (tre, in sostanza) punti da te avanzati nell'email di ieri. Sul primo ha risposto a sua volta Alessandro Mantelero, distinguendo tra "trattamento dei dati" e "percezione dell'illecito". Non vedo perché, come dici, "appare difficile sostenere che un 'data processor' non abbia una conoscenza attiva dei medesimi [dati]". Tutto sta a intendere cosa vuol dire "attivo" in un mondo in cui, come ricorda la sentenza Google/YouTube v Viacom dalla quale eravamo partiti, vengono caricati su YouTube 24 ore di video al minuto! Larry Lessig ha ricordato tre/quattro mesi fa su La Stampa come, almeno allo stato, non abbiamo certo la tecnologia per prevenire, diciamo, un reato di diffamazione... (da dove era viceversa partito il caso Google/Vividown). Secondo punto: affermi che il "data processor ha comunque certe responsabilità". E ci mancherebbe! Solo che NON sono quelle del dato controller! Per dirne una, non si tratta mai di sanzioni penali (come nel caso Google Vividown). Gira e rigira, il punto è sempre questo: ai fini della normativa sulla privacy (data protection), l'ISP 'processors' (nell'italiano della legge, sic!, risponde dei) dati immessi autonomamente dall'utente (e.g., user generated content), il quale ultimo dunque ne è l'unico titolare del trattamento, ovvero, come data controller. Ai fini della normativa sull'e-commerce, l'ISP non ha nessun obbligo di vigilanza. Ergo, quello che propongo è de iure condito, non condendo. L'ISP è 'data controller' (titolare del trattamento) con annesse responsabilità (anche penali): a) Nei rapporti contrattuali con i propri utenti; b) Quando viene attivato dall'autorità competente o ai sensi di legge; c) Quando tratta a fini propri e ulteriori le informazioni immesse dagli utenti, anche riguardo terzi. Infine, sul concetto di "informational self-determination" se ne è occupata, sempre lei!, di recente: Corte costituzionale tedesca, sentenza del 2 marzo 2010, 1 BvR 256/08. Siccome, come spesso capita col BVG, è una sentenza molto corposa, ne parliamo, se mai, con altra posta. Ciao a tutti, Ugo
------------------ Messaggio originale ------------------- Oggetto: [nexa] Must-Read Empirical Study of 47 USC 230 Jurisprudence byDavid Ardia Da: "Andrea Glorioso" <andrea@digitalpolicy.it> Data: Lun, 12 Luglio 2010, 10:13 am A: nexa@server-nexa.polito.it ----------------------------------------------------------
Sempre su intermediari e responsabilità, a proposito dei "modello americano":
http://blog.ericgoldman.org/archives/2010/06/ardias_empirica.htm
Technology & Marketing Law Blog
« Payment Service Providers May Be Liable for Counterfeit Website Sales--Gucci v. Frontline | Main | Recent Anti-SLAPP Developments » June 30, 2010 Must-Read Empirical Study of 47 USC 230 Jurisprudence by David Ardia
By Eric Goldman
David S. Ardia, Free Speech Savior or Shield for Scoundrels: An Empirical Study of Intermediary Immunity Under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, 43 Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review 373 (2010)
Let me start with the punchline: if you are interested in 47 USC 230 jurisprudence (and let's face it, who isn't???), then you need to read this article. In fact, clear your calendar for this afternoon. Although I am not completely sold on its conclusions, any cogent discussion about 47 USC 230 jurisprudential trendlines must acknowledge this article.
David Ardia directs the Citizen Media Law Project, a frequent outlink on this blog. He undertook the heroic (and some might say ill-advised) task of finding and coding 47 USC 230 cases--a total of 184 decisions--and then generating some statistical conclusions from the dataset. This is not a project I would have undertaken because empirical research is such a quagmire, but we as a community of 47 USC 230 scholars and practitioners get the benefit of David's efforts.
(I should note that David sent me a draft of this article last Fall, which sat unread in my inbox for 3 months. I then sent David an extremely lengthy and detailed set of comments about a week before his final edits were due to the law review. Some of my critiques are not news to David, but he may not have had a chance to fully address them based on my delayed feedback.)
(I further note that I have not doublechecked Davids dataset or coding. For this post, I assume he did it correctly.)
If you have limited time (the PDF is 134 pages), start on page 41 of the PDF, which is where the empirical discussions heat up. There is a lot to discuss and explore, but I will highlight two significant statistical conclusions.
First, the paper calculates that 230 defendants win the defense "only" about 2/3 of the time, leading him to conclude that the statute "has not been the free pass many of its proponents claim and its critics lament." This is an interesting conclusion, but it leaves me wondering how this compares with the hypothetical calculation of cases where the 230 defense should have failed vs. the situations where it should have succeeded. Still, I am one of the people who thinks 230 is a free pass for defendants, so the successful batting average was lower than I expected.
Second, the paper makes the following assertion on page 108:
"many of the intermediaries that invoked section 230 likely would not have faced eventual liability under the common law because they lacked knowledge of and editorial control over the third-party content at issue in the cases. Given this prediction, one might question whether section 230 is necessary."
Whoa! This is an important and implicitly troubling statement. The paper is positing an alternative scenario where 230 doesn't exist and arguing that we might not notice a difference. Of course, we know that other countries are having very different experiences with UGC due to the 230's absence. At the same time, US common law still differs from other countries' laws, so perhaps the US common law's trajectory would have reached a similar place. Having said that, for reasons the paper does explore, we are better off for having the statutory immunity than relying on common law developments. Furthermore, 230s real brilliance is that it immunizes service providers *because they exercise* editorial control, which leads to better outcomes.
I'll briefly mention two other stats that puzzled me.
On page 59, the paper says: "in more than half of the section 230 decisions (58.8%), the speech at issue was not published anonymously." Later, on page 115, the paper advances the inverse stat: "41.2% of the decisions studied involved anonymous content." In theory, this means 40% of cases involve primary tortfeasors who can't be found, but I'm skeptical about this because successful online anonymity is really hard. After all, the AutoAdmit authors thought they were anonymous until they were de-anonymized. For more, see Paul Ohm's paper on reidentification.
On page 117, the paper says "in more than half of the cases (55%), the content plaintiffs sued over was no longer available as of mid-2009," which suggests plaintiffs can get content takedowns despite 230 because the service provider voluntarily helps or the author takes the content down him/herself (or, in some cases, the court ordered the takedown). This brought to mind the Ripoff Report's refusal to remove content at the author's request, a relatively unique posture for UGC hosts. See Blockowicz v. Williams.
The paper gives me another reason to remind you that SCU will be hosting a 47 USC 230 celebration on March 4, 2011, where I hope we will discuss cutting-edge research on 230 like this paper. More details to come, but mark your calendar now. If you are working on 230-related research that you think might be appropriate to present at this conference, please contact me.
UPDATE: David's CMLP blog post on his article. ____________
The abstract:
In the thirteen years since its enactment, section 230 of the Communications Decency Act has become one of the most important statutes impacting online speech, as well as one of the most intensely criticized. In deceptively simple language, its provisions sweep away the common laws distinction between publisher and distributor liability, granting operators of Web sites and other interactive computer services broad protection from claims based on the speech of third parties. Section 230 is of critical importance because virtually all speech that occurs on the Internet is facilitated by private intermediaries that have a fragile commitment to the speech they facilitate.
This Article presents the first empirical study of the section 230 case law. It begins by providing a doctrinal overview of common law liability for intermediaries, both online and offline, and describes how section 230 modifies these doctrinal approaches. It then systematically analyzes the 184 decisions courts have issued since the statutes enactment. The Article also examines how courts have applied section 230, finding that judges have been haphazard in their approach to its application.
The Article closes by discussing the studys findings and by offering some insights into how plaintiffs and defendants have fared under section 230. While section 230 has largely protected intermediaries from liability for third-party speech, it has not been the free pass many of its proponents claim and its critics lament. More than a third of the claims at issue in the cases survived a section 230 defense. Even in cases where the court dismissed the claims, intermediaries bore liability in the form of litigation costs, and it took courts, on average, nearly a year to issue decisions addressing an intermediarys defense under section 230.
Posted by Eric at June 30, 2010 08:38 AM | Derivative Liability
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participants (3)
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Andrea Glorioso -
avv. Monica Alessia Senor -
ugo.pagallo＠unito.it