Supreme Court will not examine tech industry legal shield
Source: Reuters
The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday let stand a lower court's decision that an online advertising site accused by three young women of facilitating child sex trafficking was protected by a federal law that has shielded website operators from liability for content posted by others.
The refusal by the justices to take up the women's appeal in the case involving the advertising website Backpage.com marked a victory for the tech industry, which could have faced far-reaching consequences had the Supreme Court decided to limit the scope of the Communications Decency Act, passed by Congress in 1996 to protect free speech on the internet.
The women, who sued Backpage and several of its parent companies in Boston federal court in 2014, alleging that they were "repeatedly forced as minors to engage in illegal commercial sex transactions" in Massachusetts and Rhode Island starting at age 15 by pimps who placed advertisements in the website's "escorts" section.
They were appealing a March 2016 ruling by the Boston-based 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals dismissing their case. That court said the Communications Decency Act grants broad protections to internet publishers. The Communications Decency Act prevents an internet service from being held liable as the "publisher or speaker" of its user-generated content.
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Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-court-backpage-idUSKBN14T1OR
TECHNOLOGY NEWS | Mon Jan 9, 2017 | 10:23am EST
By Andrew Chung