Free for a Fee

You surely recall the Hassell v. Bird ruling from last year. A lawyer was unhappy with a Yelp review about her. The lawyer sued the putative author (with dubious service of process), got a default ruling that the review was defamatory along with a removal injunction, and then delivered the injunction to Yelp and demanded removal. Yelp refused to remove the review. In a shocking turn of events, the California appeals court held that Yelp was required to remove the review. That ruling accomplished a rare trifecta. It screwed up not one, not two, but THREE cherished American legal principles: the First Amendment, Due Process, and Section 230. If it survives, the consequences of the appellate court’s ruling could be severe: it would create a giant workaround to Section 230, and it would create a synthetic right to be forgotten in the US. Fortunately, the California Supreme Court granted a petition to review. This blog post will summarize what’s happened since then.

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The content in this post was found at http://blog.ericgoldman.org/archives/2017/04/dozen-amicus-briefs-oppose-the-worst-section-230-ruling-of-2016-and-one-supports-it-hassell-v-bird.htm and was not authored by the moderators of freeforafee.com. Clicking the title link will take you to the source of the post.