Adult Site Lawsuit Helps Web Hosts

By theWHIR.com , April 02, 2007
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April 2, 2007 -- (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) -- The US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit recently released a report that discusses a number of lower-court findings against adult-oriented Web site Perfect 10 (perfect10.com) that could clarify the regulations stated in the Communications Decency Act and ultimately help Web hosts stand seperate from the actions of their customers regardless of state laws.

Perfect 10 launched a lawsuit in 2002 against Web hosting provider CWIE (cwie.net) and credit card processing firm CCBill (ccbill.com) for providing Web hosting and credit card processing to customers who had taken images from Perfect 10's Web site.

According to reports, the companies believed they could be protected by the safe harbor provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and similar provisions in the Communications Decency Act stating that ISPs and Web hosts were not generally liable for the speech or actions of their customers.

The appeals court ended up granting the DMCA safe harbor to CWIE and CCBill. Perhaps more significant was the fact that the court attempted to clarify confusion surrounding the Communications Decency Act and how it applied to state laws, which stated that ISPs, bloggers and Web publishers were safe from the liability for content that others posted, but an exception stood for intellectual property cases, which were usually determined by the state.

In the end, the Ninth Circuit concluded that section 320 of the CDA could protect Web hosts from liability when they were confronted with allegations that their users violated state laws, such as right of publicity and trademark statutes. However, disputes involving federal copyright and criminal laws would continue to be exempt from such immunity, says the court.