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2008 Stan. Tech. L. Rev. N1 (2008)

handle is hein.journals/stantlr2008 and id is 1 raw text is: Caitlin Hall: A Regulatory Proposal for Digital Defamation: Conditioning 230 Safe Harbor on the Provision of a Site Rating NOTE A Regulatory Proposal for Digital Defamation: Conditioning § 230 Safe Harbor on the Provision of a Site Rating CAITLIN HALL CITE AS: 2008 STAN. TECH. L. REV. NI I. INTRODUCTION Vhatever lip service we may pay to those spaces immemorially . held in trust for the use of the public,' the Internet is operatively the most important public forum ever created.2 Its vast interconnectivity far more nearly approximates the prototypical marketplace of ideas3 than do warring politicos duking it out on the op-ed pages or, for that matter, in opposing briefs. However, the very features that make the internet fertile ground for cultural and political discourse-anonymity and pseudonymity; intellectual symbiosis and parasitism; fractal sprawl, audience dispersal and many- to-many architecture-render it a treacherous landscape for its custodians. In recognition of that fact,4 Congress in 1996 passed the Communications Decency Act, which nearly eliminated the liability that website administrators face for third-party generated content5 0 2008, Caltin Hall, Yale Law School. Hague v. Comm. for Indus. Org., 307 U.S. 496, 515 (1939). 2 See, e.g., Denver Area Educ. Telecomm Consortium, Inc. v. FCC, 518 U.S. 727, 802-3 (1996) (Kennedy, J., dissenting) (Minds are not changed in streets and parks as they once were. To an increasing degree, the more significant interchanges of ideas and shaping of public consciousness occur in mass and electronic media.). 3 See Abrams v. United States, 250 U.S. 616, 630 (1919) (Holmes, J., dissenting). 4 Communications Decency Act, 47 U.S.C. 230(a)(3) (1996). s The law provides in relevant part: (c) Protection for Good Samaritan blocking and screening of offensive material (1) Treatment ofpublsher or speaker No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or seaker of any information proided by another information content pronder. (2) Civil liability No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be held liable on account of- (A) any action voluntarily taken in good faith to restrict access to or availability of material that the provider or user considers to be obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected; or (B) any action taken to enable or make available to information content providers or others the technological means to restrict access to material described in paragraph (1). Copyright C 2008 Stanford Technology Law Review. A/IPR'ghts Reserved.

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