Amicus Brief as to § 230(c)(1) in Gonzalez v. Google
Here’s the Summary of Argument:
An interactive computer service’s automated recommendations qualify for statutory immunity under Section 230(c)(1). Congress enacted this policy choice in clear text, supported by powerful statutory context, including express findings and purposes that it wrote into the statute itself. And Congress did so in service of a national policy favoring free and open discourse on the still-developing internet—a policy that has proved enormously successful in the years since. This Court should resist Petitioners’ invitation to impose sweeping changes on the Nation’s internet policy, and instead leave any such changes—if they ever prove necessary—to Congress.
Section 230’s text should decide this case. Section 230(c)(1) immunizes the user or provider of an “interactive computer service” from being “treated as the publisher or speaker” of information “provided by another information content provider.” And, as Section 230(f)’s definitions make clear, Congress understood the term “interactive computer service” to include services that “filter,” “screen,” “pick, choose, analyze,” “display, search, subset, organize,” or “reorganize” third-party content. Automated recommendations perform exactly those functions, and are therefore within the express scope of Section 230’s text.
Section 230(c)(1)’s use of the phrase “treated as the publisher or speaker” further confirms that Congress immunized distributors of third-party information from liability. At common law, a distributor of third-party information could be held liable only when the doctrine permitted the distributor to be treated as the publisher. As Petitioners and the United States agree, Congress understood and incorporated that common-law meaning of “treated as the publisher” into Section 230(c)(1). Given that a distributor cannot be “treated as the publisher” of certain third-party inf
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