Internet’s legal shield faces crucial legal test in the US Supreme Court

MLex Market Insight

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4.9 • 9 Ratings

🗓️ 3 March 2023

⏱️ 13 minutes

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Summary

Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, the foundational law that underpins the modern Internet, is facing its first-ever review in the US Supreme Court. The lawsuits targeting Twitter and YouTube are set to establish whether the platforms should be held responsible for hosting extremist content. The case could lead to one of the most important court decisions of the first three decades of online commercial activity, with Big Tech lawyers warning that the court’s decision could “upend the Internet.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome back. It's great to be with you again. My name is James Panicki. This is M-X's weekly podcast, covering the top stories in regulatory affairs with the help of our team of reporters around the world.
0:21.9	This week we're returning to Section 230. That's the US law that ensures that digital platforms
0:28.3	aren't held legally responsible for the material that their users post. It's unlike laws in
0:34.3	any other jurisdiction and it has enabled digital platforms to grow
0:38.5	larger and larger without having to worry about pesky defamation or copyright lawsuits.
0:45.0	Today though, Section 230 appears to be facing considerable pushback.
0:49.2	The issue was at centre stage recently as the US Supreme Court considered two lawsuits targeting
0:55.6	respectively Twitter and Google. Google, of course, is the owner of YouTube. To discuss
1:01.5	these challenges, I'm joined by our DC-based reporter Madeline Hughes and our Global Digital Risk
1:07.9	Correspondent Mike Swift, who usually dials in from San Francisco, but who
1:12.4	is in Toronto, Canada this week, covering an unrelated story. Maddie, firstly, last week we heard
1:18.5	Google warn the Supreme Court that this case could upend the internet. Those are clearly
1:24.0	fighting words there. What's it all about? Yeah.
1:27.7	So last week, I was at the Supreme Court listening to two different cases.
1:32.6	Both of them were families of those killed in terrorist attacks,
1:37.6	attempting to hold two different social media companies liable for terrorist content on those particular websites.
1:45.8	And the one where they talked about it potentially upending the internet, that was in the
1:51.7	Google v. Gonzalez case where the lawyers wrote in the briefs about a month ago that a ruling
1:59.1	against Google could potentially upend the internet.
2:02.4	And that's because this case centered on the potential liability that Google had because of
2:10.1	the website's use of algorithms. So the family was suing because YouTube, which is owned by Google, has ISIS content on it.
2:22.0	And they were saying that because Google uses these kind of recommendation algorithms to push content to people because they potentially like something.
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