Carafano V. Metrosplash.com - History

History

Due to their initial refusal to remove the profile after they had been made aware of its existence, Masterson sued Matchmaker in California state court on the grounds of defamation of character, misappropriation of the right of publicity, invasion of privacy and negligence. The defendants removed the case to federal district court and brought a motion for summary judgment. The district court judge not only rejected the claim for the service provider immunity under the CDA, but Masterson's claims sounding in tort were also thrown out by the court as the service provider had not acted in any willful manner against Masterson and the court found that no duty of care existed between the service provider and Masterson. See Carafano v. Metrosplash.com Inc., 207 F. Supp. 2d 1055 (C.D. Cal. 2002).

Masterson appealed to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. The appellate court rejected the plaintiff's argument and found no liability on the part of Matchmaker. The court found that Matchmaker is not an "information content provider," but rather an "interactive computer service" which allows the public to post information on its Web site. Under the Communications Decency Act, "interactive computer services" do not incur liability because users create the actual content. Thus liability rests with the underlying contributor, not the interactive computer service.

The applicable section of the CDA was originally designed to apply to obvious "interactive computer services" such as America Online. Since its original passage, however, numerous courts have expanded that definition to include sites such as Matchmaker and eBay, regardless of whether or not the service provider has the ability to control or edit content before it appears online.