Don’t Shoot The Messenger Over User Content, Courts Confirm

People are lining up to sue sites like Yelp and Ripoff Report over their users’ misbehavior, but courts continue to slam the door in their face. A new report shows the sites’ traditional legal shield is still strong, but that some are trying to use intellectual property laws to crack it. In “2011 State of the Law Regarding Website Owner Liability for User-Generated Content,” Internet lawyer Catherine Gellis offers a helpful update of websites’ ongoing effort to fight off lawsuits created by their users. Gellis found that websites’ core legal shield (Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act) continued to gain traction as courts last year again confirmed that businesses like auctioneers and consumer review sites can’t be sued over what their users do.