Can AOL Be Forced To Put Safe Sex Notices In Chat Rooms?

Legal Issues

from the under-what-sort-of-law? dept

An interesting battle is brewing between some health officials and AOL. The health officials are worried that people using chat rooms to set up real-life sexual encounters aren’t doing anything to protect themselves during sex, and its leading to an increase in sexually transmitted diseases. Thus, they’re trying to sue AOL to force them to put up safe-sex messages on those chat rooms. From a general community standpoint, that seems to make sense, but AOL has pretty good reasons for not doing it. As they point out, they’re just setting up an open chat room system that anyone can use to chat about anything. They don’t have the capability to determine which chat rooms are being used for these purposes, and they point out that users may get upset if they feel they’re being spied on in some way. At the same time, there’s simply no legal basis under which AOL should be compelled to post such a warning. Of course, taking a step back from all that, would anyone actually pay attention to such a warning?