2:18-cv-02573-DCN
Date Filed 02/08/19
Entry Number 17
Page 6 of 11
as the Defendant) shall be held liable on account of “any action voluntarily taken in good faith to
restrict access to or availability of material that the provider . . . considers to be . . . excessively
violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally
protected . . . .”. Moreover, courts have held that interactive computer services (such as the
Defendant here) act in the role of “publishers” when screening or deleting content. Doe v. MySpace,
Inc., 528 F.3d 413, 420 (5th Cir. 2008)[“[D]ecisions relating to the monitoring, screening, and
deletion of content [are] actions quintessentially related to a publisher’s role”] (internal quotation
marks omitted). Where the violation alleged by a Plaintiff derives from the Defendant’s status or
conduct as a publisher, § 230(c)(1) of the CDA prohibits liability.4 Fields, et al. v. Twitter, Inc., 217
F.Supp. 3d 1116, 1121 (N.D.Ca. 2016), citing Barnes v. Yahoo!, Inc., 570 F.3d 1096, 1101-1102 (9th
Cir. 2009); see also Fair Housing Counsel of San Fernando Valley v. RoomMates.com, LLC, 521
F.3d 1157, 1170-1171 (9th Cir. 2008) [Noting that § 230(c)(1) applies to “any activity that can be
boiled down to deciding whether to exclude material that third parties seek to post online,” and that
“determine[ing] whether or not to prevent [the] posting of material by third parties is “precisely the
kind of activity” covered by the statute].
Plaintiff’s contention in his response brief that the CDA does not protect the
Defendant here because the Defendant is neither a publisher nor an editor with respect to the
Plaintiff, but is nothing more than a platform upon which Plaintiff publishes and edits his own
4
Section 230(c)(1) provides:
1) Treatment of publisher or speaker
No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher
or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.
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