''Cubby, Inc. v. CompuServe Inc.'', 776 F. Supp. 135 (S.D.N.Y. 1991) was a 1991 court decision in the

United States District Court for the Southern District of New York The United States District Court for the Southern District of New York (in case citations, S.D.N.Y.) is a United States district court, federal trial court whose geographic jurisdiction encompasses eight counties of New York (state), New York ...

which held that Internet service providers were subject to traditional defamation law for their hosted content. The case resolved a claim of

libel Defamation is the act of communicating to a third party false statements about a person, place or thing that results in damage to its reputation. It can be spoken (slander) or written (libel). It constitutes a tort or a crime. The legal defini ...

against

CompuServe CompuServe (CompuServe Information Service, also known by its initialism CIS) was an American online service provider, the first major commercial one in the world – described in 1994 as "the oldest of the Big Three information services (the oth ...

, an Internet service provider that hosted allegedly defamatory content in one of its forums. The case established a precedent for Internet service provider liability by applying defamation law, originally intended for hard copies of written works, to the Internet medium. The court held that although CompuServe did host defamatory content on its forums, CompuServe was merely a distributor, rather than a publisher, of the content. As a distributor, CompuServe could only be held liable for defamation if it knew, or had reason to know, of the defamatory nature of the content.

Restatement (Second) of Torts The American ''Restatement of Torts, Second'', is a treatise issued by the American Law Institute. It summarizes the general principles of common law United States tort law. The volumes covering torts are part of the second ''Restatements of the ...

§ 581 As CompuServe had made no effort to review the large volume of content on its forums, it could not be held liable for the defamatory content. The application of traditional defamation law to the Internet context was soon to create controversy in ''

Stratton Oakmont, Inc. v. Prodigy Services Co. ''Stratton Oakmont, Inc. v. Prodigy Services Co.'', 23 Media L. Rep. 1794 (New York Supreme Court, N.Y. Sup. Ct. 1995), is a 1995 U.S. New York Supreme Court decision holding that online service providers could be held liable for the speech of the ...

'', in which a service provider was found liable for defamation on the grounds of good-faith attempts to filter objectionable content. In 1996, service providers were granted immunity as publishers and distributors by

Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act Section 230 is a section of Title 47 of the United States Code that was enacted as part of the United States Communications Decency Act and generally provides immunity for website platforms with respect to third-party content. At its core, Secti ...

as an incentive to moderate posted material.

Facts

Cubby, Inc. and Robert Blanchard brought suit against

Inc. in the United States District Court of the Southern District of New York in 1991 for

, business disparagement, and

unfair competition Unfair may refer to: * Double Taz and Double LeBron James in multiverses ''fair''; unfairness or injustice * ''Unfair'' (drama), Japanese television series * '' Unfair: The Movie'' * Unfair (song), a song by South Korean boy group EXO