Jane Doe v. Internet Brands, Inc

In Jane Doe v. Internet Brands, Inc., 767 F.3d 894 (9th Cir. 2014), Internet Brands, which owned a networking website called Model Mayhem, was sued for negligence by Doe, an aspiring model, who posted her information on Model Mayhem's website. Doe, 767 F.3d at 895. Doe alleged that two rapists used the website to lure her to a fake audition and that Internet Brands knew about the rapists but failed to warn Doe and other users of the website. Id. The trial court dismissed Doe's lawsuit pursuant to section 230. Id. On appeal, the Ninth Circuit found that Doe's lawsuit was not barred by section 230 and explained as follows: The duty to warn allegedly imposed by California law would not require Internet Brands to remove any user content or otherwise affect how it publishes such content. Any obligation to warn could have been satisfied without changes to the content posted by the website's users. Internet Brands would simply have been required to give a warning to Model Mayhem users, perhaps by posting a notice on the website or by informing users by email what it knew about the activities of the rapists. . . . A post or email warning that Internet Brands generated would involve only content that Internet Brands itself produced. An alleged tort based on a duty that would require such a self-produced warning therefore falls outside of section 230(c)(1). In sum, Jane Doe's negligent failure to warn claim does not seek to hold Internet Brands liable as the "publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider." Id. at 897-98.