''Barnes v. Yahoo!, Inc.'', 570 F.3d 1096 (9th Cir. 2009), is a

United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit (in case citations, 9th Cir.) is the U.S. federal court of appeals that has appellate jurisdiction over the U.S. district courts for the following federal judicial districts: * Distric ...

case in which the Ninth Circuit held that Section 230 of the

Communications Decency Act The Communications Decency Act of 1996 (CDA) was the United States Congress's first notable attempt to regulate pornographic material on the Internet. In the 1997 landmark case '' Reno v. ACLU'', the United States Supreme Court unanimously stru ...

(CDA) rules that Yahoo!, Inc., as an

Internet service provider An Internet service provider (ISP) is an organization that provides a myriad of services related to accessing, using, managing, or participating in the Internet. ISPs can be organized in various forms, such as commercial, community-owned, no ...

cannot be held responsible for failure to remove objectionable content posted to their website by a third party. Plaintiff Cecilia Barnes made claims arising out of Defendant Yahoo!, Inc.'s alleged failure to honor promises to remove offensive content about the plaintiff posted by a third party. The content consisted of a personal profile with nude photos of the Plaintiff and her contact information. The United States District Court for the District of Oregon had dismissed Barnes' complaint.

History

In 2004, Cecilia Barnes ended a relationship with her boyfriend. Following the breakup, her now ex-boyfriend tried to harass her by creating multiple unauthorized Yahoo! profiles about her that included solicitation to engage in sexual intercourse.Anderson, Nate
"For a good time, call..." Is Yahoo liable for sex graffiti?
Ars Technica (May 8, 2009). These profiles seemed like they came from Barnes herself and contained nude photographs of her that were taken without her knowledge as well as her real contact information. The ex-boyfriend also pretended to be Barnes in several Yahoo!

chat rooms The term chat room, or chatroom (and sometimes group chat; abbreviated as GC), is primarily used to describe any form of synchronous conferencing, occasionally even asynchronous conferencing. The term can thus mean any technology, ranging from ...

, in which he directed men to the profiles that he created of Barnes. As a result of her ex-boyfriend's actions, Barnes started getting phone calls, emails, and even office visits from various men who expected to have sex with her.
Yahoo!'s Notice of Removal to Federal Court
'', No. 0505-05520 (D. Or. Jun. 23, 2005). Following Yahoo!'s policy, Barnes emailed Yahoo! to have the fake profiles removed. She sent them a copy of her photo ID and a signed statement explaining that she did not create those profiles and requesting their removal. However, she received no response and unknown men still continued to contact her. Barnes then made another request to Yahoo! by mail to take down the profiles. Receiving no response from either of her initial requests she sent two more requests, but still received no response. Eventually, just before a local news program was going to air a report on her story, Yahoo! finally responded. Barnes received a call from the Director of Communications, who instructed her to fax over the same information she had previously sent and told Barnes that she would "personally walk the statements over to the division responsible for stopping unauthorized profiles and they would take care of it." Barnes claims that she trusted the director, so she stopped worrying about the issue. Two months after that, the profiles still remained online and Barnes had not heard anything back from Yahoo! ever since the Director of Communications told her that the issue would be resolved. In response, Barnes decided to file a

lawsuit A lawsuit is a proceeding by one or more parties (the plaintiff or claimant) against one or more parties (the defendant) in a civil court of law. The archaic term "suit in law" is found in only a small number of laws still in effect today ...

against Yahoo! in the district court in

Oregon Oregon ( , ) is a U.S. state, state in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. It is a part of the Western U.S., with the Columbia River delineating much of Oregon's northern boundary with Washington (state), Washington, while t ...

. It was not until she sued Yahoo! that the profiles were removed from the website.

Trial

Yahoo!, Inc. relied exclusively on the first part of Section 230 of the

, which bars courts from treating certain internet service providers as publishers or speakers. Yahoo!, Inc. asserted that it was immune from the suit under Section 230 of the

, which "immunizes interactive service providers such as Yahoo! from liability for harm caused by the

dissemination To disseminate (from Latin, lat. ''disseminare'' "scattering seeds"), in the field of communication, is to broadcast a message to the public without direct feedback from the audience. Meaning Dissemination takes on the theory of the traditional ...

of third-party information." Barnes tried to make a claim that she was not holding Yahoo! liable as a publisher for the third-party content posted by her ex-boyfriend. She argued that her claim did not fall under Section 230, but rather, fell under Section 323 of an Oregon torts claim. Plaintiff alleged that when Yahoo! contacted her, she relied on its affirmative duty to remove the profiles and prohibited them from being posted again like the defendant promised. However, since Yahoo! failed to do this, Barnes alleged that the defendant did not "exercise reasonable care to perform his undertaking" and that she was harmed by the third-party content. She also claimed that Yahoo! violated an Oregon tort law that derives from section 323 of the Restatement of Torts, Second to remove the profiles on their website.

Outcome

Plaintiff's claims fell under Section 230 of the CDA which grants broad immunity from liability to Internet service providers, which Yahoo! is. Barnes alleged that she was harmed by the material posted about her and said that Yahoo! violated an Oregon tort law to take down the profiles upon her request. According to the Court, "Any such claim by plaintiff necessarily treats the service provider as 'publisher' of the content is therefore barred by Sec. 230." The court also stated that Barnes' argument that Yahoo! did not keep its promise of removing the defamatory content online did not dismiss the immunity provided to internet service providers by Section 230 of the CDA. The

upheld the ruling that an Internet service provider is immune from removing

indecent Inappropriateness refers to standards or ethics that are typically viewed as being negative in a society. It differs from things that are illicit in that inappropriate behavior does not necessarily have any accompanying legal ramifications. Co ...

content from their website on the basis of Section 230 of the

. The Ninth Circuit ultimately reversed the decision from the

lower court A lower court or inferior court is a court from which an appeal may be taken, usually referring to courts other than supreme court. In relation to an appeal from one court to another, the lower court is the court whose decision is being revie ...

in Oregon by granting Yahoo! the motion to dismiss.

Similar cases

In 2012, a female model of the Model Mayhem networking website (pseudonymously referred to as Jane Doe) was tricked into a fake audition and raped. She brought a claim against Internet Brands, the owner of the Model Mayhem, for hosting the fake audition's text. Jane Doe alleged that Internet Brands had knowledge of illicit nature of the content it had hosted, neglecting the

duty to warn A duty to warn is a concept that arises in the law of torts in a number of circumstances, indicating that a party will be held liable for injuries caused to another, where the party had the opportunity to warn the other of a hazard and failed to d ...

. In 2014, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals held that Section 230 does not eliminate the duty to warn, dismissing Barnes v. Yahoo!, Inc. as a precedent to the contrary. Jane Doe ultimately failed to prove that Model Mayhem indeed had knowledge, and the case was dismissed without further references to Section 230.

References

External links

* *
Public Citizen et al amicus brief in support of rehearingYahoo's petition for rehearing
* ttp://www.ca9.uscourts.gov/media/view_subpage.php?pk_id=0000002430 Ninth Circuit oral argumentsbr>Yahoo Wins Online Harassment Case Under 47 USC 230Yahoo's brief in support of its motion to dismiss

Yahoo's motion to dismiss

{{DEFAULTSORT:Barnes V. Yahoo!, Inc. United States Internet case law 2009 in United States case law United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit cases Barnes v. Yahoo!, Inc Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act