Court Rules Sites Are Not Liable for Users Abusing Each Other
Posted by Michael Klurfeld | Filed under Michael
It escalates from this (courtesy of xkcd.com)
A California appeals court ruled earlier this week that Myspace is not liable in the death of Megan Meier, a girl who committed suicide after being abused by another user of the Myspace site, and for a lot of other minors whose parents sued Myspace for not having account privacy features which could have provided some sort of protection. But this ruling is a very fortunate one, as one to the contrary would have been devastating for any sort of online interaction.
As nasty as people can get to each other online, it would be a pretty massive blow against happenings all over the web if sites had to babysit their users. The obvious problem is that a lot of stuff happens online. Going to one’s own Facebook page often reveals far more person than one user can keep track of, and that’s an infinitesimal amount of what occurs on just Facebook alone in a given day. Now imagine if Facebook was legally required to have a room full of people making sure no one abused anyone. Not only would the internet become non-neutral, but any sites’ trying to police themselves would be in vain.
As we’ve seen time and time again, something always slips through the cracks, whether it’s in something centralized like the App Store or otherwise. It would have been pretty dumb for a court to force websites to do something impossible, and nonsensical at that. As an EFF member aptly put it, “the idea is, you hold the speaker responsible not the soapbox.“
