The United States Telecommunications Act of 1996 contains a segment called Title V,

which is often referred to as the Communications Decency Act of 1996, or CDA.

The CDA contains many sections, different portions related to different things that set different terms within this act's auspices,

and though there are many important and influential bits of law included in this act and this particular segment of that act,

Section 230 is of particular note because it outlines under what circumstances certain types of companies

have immunity and when they don't, when users of their services do things that are illegal.

Said another way, if you build a website with a comment section and someone comes to your site

and writes something illegal in that comment section.

They incite violence against someone else, for instance.

You, as the builder of the website, would not be legally liable for that person's actions, under most circumstances.

That person is doing an illegal thing on a page you created, and your page

is thus technically delivering that illegal bit of text to the world, but that illegality

does not translate over to you because of Section 230. This is interesting, in part, because of how it divides tech companies from traditional media

companies. A newspaper that published the work of someone who was clearly inciting violence

would generally be held at least partially accountable for pushing those words. They may not have

written them, but they distributed them to the world.

A tech company that does a very similar thing in distributing the words of someone else,

that end up being illegal words, would not be liable in the same way.

This legal distinctiveness arose because of two lawsuits that were leveled against

internet service providers, or ISPs, in the 1990s. And internet service providers are the

companies that help people get online. So these days companies like Comcast, CenturyLink, and AT&T

are internet service providers. But back in the day, this was a bit of a wild west.

...