Eric Goldman riferisce (e dà link al testo) di US District court-East. Distr. of California 24 agosto 2023, No. 2:22-cv-01904-DJC-JBP, Republican National Committee v. Google.
Il gruppo politico di destra accusa Google (G.) di filtraggi illegittimi delle sue mail.
G. si difende con successo eccependo il safe harbour ex 230.c.2.a (No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be held liable on account of—
(A) any action voluntarily taken in good faith to restrict access to or availability of material that the provider or user considers to be obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected;)
Il punto critico è l’accertamento dei requisiti di objectionable e della buona fede.
Come osserva Eric Goldman, interessante è pure la considerazione di policy della corte:
<<Section 230 also addresses Congress’s concern with the growth of unsolicited commercial electronic mail, and the fact that the volume of such mail can make email in general less usable as articulated in the CAN-SPAM Act. See 15 U.S.C. § 7701(a)(4), (6). Permitting suits to go forward against a service provider based on the over-filtering of mass marketing emails would discourage providers from offering spam filters or significantly decrease the number of emails segregated. It would also place courts in the business of micromanaging content providers’ filtering systems in contravention of Congress’s directive that it be the provider or user that determines what is objectionable (subject to a provider acting in bad faith). See 47 U.S.C. § 230(c)(2)(A) (providing no civil liability for “any action voluntarily taken in good faith to restrict access to . . . material that the provide or user considers to be . . . objectionable” (emphasis added)). This concern is exemplified by the fact that the study on which the RNC relies to show bad faith states that each of the three email systems had some sort of right- or left- leaning bias. (ECF No. 30-10 at 9 (“all [spam filtering algorithms] exhibited political biases in the months leading up to the 2020 US elections”).) While Google’s bias was greater than that of Yahoo or Outlook, the RNC offers no limiting principle as to how much “bias” is permissible, if any. Moreover, the study authors note that reducing the filters’ political biases “is not an easy problem to solve. Attempts to reduce the biases of [spam filtering algorithms] may inadvertently affect their efficacy.” (Id.) This is precisely the impact Congress desired to avoid in enacting the Communications Decency Act, and reinforces the conclusion that section 230 bars this suit>>.