This decision holds that the federal Communications Decency Act (47 USC 230(c)) does not shield an internet website owner from potential liability under state law for failing to warn users of its website for aspiring models that a couple of rapists were using the site’s postings to target vulnerable females whom they then lured into fake modeling auditions at which they drugged, raped, and filmed the aspiring models. The CDA shields the website owner from liability for material posted by others, but not from a duty to post its own warnings about use of the site.
Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals (Clifton, J.); May 31, 2016; 2016 WL 3067995