A Foolish Consistency

You want timely discussions in class? I’ll give you timely. Yesterday in Internet law we discussed the immunity provisions of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. One student asked how Section 230 related to user posting of copyrighted material on websites, which led to a brief discussion of the notice and take-down provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Another asked about the impact of the 9th Circuit’s decision in Fair Housing Councils v Roommates.com on sites like Facebook. Today I spotted an article published on FindLaw titled Legal Issues for Social Networking Sites and Users which addresses these specific questions. It provides a brief summary of Section 512 of the DMCA, Section 230 of the CDA, the Roommates.com decision as they related to Facebook and similar sites. The article breaks no new ground but is a good overview for those interested in these issues and reinforces our class discussion.