Scenario in US

Cases

Zeran vs. America Online, Inc.
Six days after the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, an unidentified person posted a message on an America Online (AOL) bulletin board on April 25, 1995, advertising some "Naughty Oklahoma T-shirts" with features of tasteless and offensive slogans related to the bombing. The advertisement said that interested buyers of the T-shirts could call Kenneth Zeran at his residential phone number in the State of Washington. It was a vicious hoax that Zeran was innocent and did nothing with the advertisement nor the production and selling of those T-shirts.

However, in result of that abhorrent advertisement, Zeran received numerous angry calls from the readers of the bulletin board, some even composed death threats towards Zeran. Zeran contacted AOL immediately and AOL assured him that the posting would be removed but AOL would not post a retraction as a matter of policy. In the next few days, the same anonymous message was posted again and again everyday with even more disgusted slogans and products. As a result, Zeran received more threatening calls. He called AOL repeatedly and got an answer that the account of those messages would soon be closed. Living in a nightmare, Zeran reported the situation to the FBI.

Unfortunately, an Oklahoma City radio station reported the messages and intensified the number of calls to Zeran's home. Not until May 14, after an Oklahoma City newspaper reported the messages as a hoax and after the radio station apologized on air, did the number of calls to Zeran reduced greatly, but still 15 per day.

Zeran finally put the case to trial in April 1996 and asserted that AOL unreasonably delayed in removing defamatory messages, refused to post retractions and failed to screen similar posting thereafter. He asserted that AOL was liable for the distribution of these defamatory materials as they knew them defamatory. The AOL instantly raised Section 230 of the CDA as a defense but Zeran countered by arguing that Section 230 of CDA could not be retroactively applied in this case because his claims occurred prior to the effective date of Section 230, February 8, 1996.

The suit was first put to the federal district court where the court agreed with AOL that the CDA barred Zeran's claims. Zeran then filed appeal to the circuit court. However, the court affirmed that Section 230 applied to all complaints brought after its enactment and Zeran filed his claims 2 months after Section 230 became effective. The court therefore affirmed the judgment of the district court.