Zeran v. America Online, Inc.

Zeran v. America Online, Inc., 129 F.3d 327 (4th Cir. 1997),cert. denied, 524 U.S. 937 (1998), is a case in which the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals determined the immunity of Internet service providers for wrongs committed by their users under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (CDA). Section 230(c)(1) of the CDA provides that "No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider."

The Fourth Circuit held that each of the plaintiff’s claims was barred by the CDA, holding that Section 230 "creates a federal immunity to any cause of action that would make service providers liable for information originating with a third-party user of the service." In the words of the Zeran court:

[L]awsuits seeking to hold a service liable for its exercise of a publisher's traditional editorial functions – such as deciding whether to publish, withdraw, postpone or alter content – are barred. The purpose of this statutory immunity is not difficult to discern. Congress recognized the threat that tort-based lawsuits pose to freedom of speech in the new and burgeoning Internet medium. [...] Section 230 was enacted, in part, to maintain the robust nature of Internet communication [...] ."

On April 25, 1995, six days after the Oklahoma City bombing, a message was anonymously posted on America Online’s (AOL) "Michigan Military Movement" bulletin board advertising items with slogans glorifying the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building. These items included slogans such as, "Visit Oklahoma ... It’s a BLAST!!!", "Putting the kids to bed ... Oklahoma 1995", and "McVeigh for President 1996". Persons interested in making a purchase were instructed to call the plaintiff, Kenneth M. Zeran, whose home phone number was posted in the message but who had neither posted the message nor had anything to do with the content of the ad. Shortly after the posting of the messages, Zeran began receiving a barrage of threatening calls. He contacted AOL to have the message removed, which they soon did.

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