Earlier this year, we wrote about a ridiculous state law up in Washington that sought to place liability on service providers for the actions of their users, all in the name of "protecting the children!" The Internet Archive quickly sued to stop the implementation of the law, winning a quick injunction blocking the law from being put into place. The court made it pretty clear that the law appeared to violate Section 230 of the CDA, the federal law that grants service providers clear immunity from certain user actions.

While the case had continued to move forward, Washington has now decided to stop trying to defend the law, effectively letting it die. Of course, you might still wonder why it was passed in the first place, but of course, the answer to that is basic politics. Either way, some states like to fight these kinds of things through multiple levels of appeals, wasting taxpayer money all the way, so it's nice that Washington state seemed to know to stop digging early on in the process.

This is a few weeks old, but Michael Scott points us to the story of how Backpages is asking a court to dismiss the lawsuit filed against it by a teen who was sold as a prostitute on the site. We covered the lawsuit when it was first filed, and had a rather frustrating discussion in the comments with people who simply couldn't understand the difference between blaming those actually responsible and blaming the tools those people used. We've discussed how the attempts to blame tool providers often helps those who are involved in child trafficking. It attacks the sites that work with law enforcement and help them identify those actually responsible, and instead drives traffickers to seek out other sites that don't work with law enforcement. In this case, the teen tries to claim that Backpages (owned by Village Voice Media) isn't protected by Section 230 because it "helped develop the ads":

"The website is a highly tuned marketing site with search tools, adult sex focused categories, and directions and features offered regarding how to increase the impact of your ads for a fee," M.A. argues. "Defendants advertise its website to increase page views of the ads; defendants removes spam from its website to increase page views of placed ad," M.A. adds. "All of these acts make defendants the creators and developers of the posted advertisements."

I don't see how any of those things overrides Section 230 safe harbors. It seems like a huge stretch to claim that advertising your service somehow makes you responsible for the content and the uses. Also, the fact that the site removes spam is totally meaningless, as the various Section 230 cases have shown time and time again that removing other content does not remove Section 230 safe harbors (if it did, no one would ever remove anything). Still, given the highly emotionally charged nature of this case, it wouldn't surprise me if a court ruled the other way, though the end result of that would be quite damaging -- especially to the people who many think this lawsuit is designed to protect.

With so much attention being paid to Craigslist over its "adult services" section, one thing that Craigslist often pointed out was that many other classifieds services allowed much worse -- with the Village Voice's Backpages.com often being used as a prime example. And while we haven't heard of state attorneys general getting ready to go after Backpages, apparently a former child who was sold as a prostitute is going to try. The girl, still a minor, going by the name M.A. is suing the Village Voice and specifically claiming that Section 230 of the CDA doesn't apply: The "pimp" who sold her via ads on Backpages has already plead guilty to a variety of charges involving prostitution and child pornography (for taking pornographic pictures of M.A. to put on Backpages).

As for getting around Section 230, the lawsuit points out that Section 230 includes an "exemption" for the exploitation of children. Perhaps I'm wrong (Section 230 experts, feel free to chime in), but I'm not sure this is quite true. Section 230 does state that nothing in Section 230 should be construed to "impair the enforcement" of laws related to sexual exploitation of children, but that doesn't mean that it makes service providers automatically liable if their services are used in that nature. And I don't see how what Backpages did "impaired the enforcement" of the law so it's not clear how that exemption really applies here.

Either way, this makes for an interesting test of Section 230 -- on a highly emotional issue. No one denies that what happened to M.A. sounds horrific and those involved should be punished to the fullest extent of the law (and, it's certainly good to hear that the main person involved has plead guilty and hopefully won't be able to do this to others). That it happened at all is horrifying and sickening. But does it make sense to blame a service provider who served as the bulletin board? That may be a bit extreme and risks adding significant liability to anyone who allows any sort of user-generated system.