The Communications Decency Act of 1996 (CDA) was enacted to regulate online speech, and in particular, to protect minors from “patently offensive,” “obscene,” and “indecent” content on the Internet. In the 1997 case Reno v. ACLU, however, the Supreme Court struck down many of the CDA's content-related proscriptions, concluding that they violated the First Amendment by “suppress[ing] a large amount of speech that adults have a constitutional right to receive and to address to one another.”

Among the CDA provisions spared by the Court's ruling was Section 230, a provision designed to “promote the continued development of the Internet” and “to preserve the vibrant and competitive free market… for the Internet and other interactive computer services, unfettered by Federal or State regulation.” To these ends, Section 230 provides, among other things, 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.” Section 230 also contains a broad preemption clause, providing, with certain exceptions discussed below, that “no liability may be imposed under any State or local law that is inconsistent with this section.”

The direct beneficiaries of Section 230 have been “interactive computer services”—a term encompassing a wide variety of companies that aggregate, arrange and host user-created content online, including blog- and photo-hosting sites, news sites, social networks, classifieds, auction sites and consumer ratings services. In these contexts, Section 230 has frequently provided complete immunity in litigation arising from third-party content. Accordingly, companies operating in this space should be aware of Section 230's basic contours and key limitations.