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Article
Imposing Tort Liability on Websites for Cyber Harassment
Faculty Scholarship
  • Nancy Kim, California Western School of Law
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
1-1-2008
Disciplines
Abstract

Several female law students were the subject of derogatory comments on AutoAdmit.com, a message board about law school admissions. When one of the women asked the website administrator to remove certain comments, the administrator discussed her request in an online post, prompting further attacks. An undergraduate student’s rape was revealed on a gossip site, JuicyCampus.com, where posters engaged in a cruel session of “blame the victim.” Another student on that site was falsely identified, by name, as being a stalker, bi-polar, and suicidal. When officials at her university asked JuicyCampus.com to remove the most egregious posts, the company refused.

These recent examples have brought the vexing problem of cyber-harassment to the public’s attention. Under § 230 of Title 47 of the U.S. Code,4 websites are not liable as publishers for the content on their sites so long as they are not involved in the creation of the objectionable content. Accordingly, much of the relevant scholarship has focused on repealing §230 or imposing liability upon posters.

Citation Information
Nancy Kim, Imposing Tort Liability on Websites for Cyber Harassment, 118 YALE L. J. POCKET PART 115 (2008).