Hi all
Today, we joined an amicus brief filed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), Eric Goldman, Rebecca Tushnet, the Organization for Transformative Works, Engine, GitHub, Medium, Snap, and Yelp encouraging the California Court of Appeal to review the ruling of the trial court in *Cross v. Facebook*.
You can find our blogpost about it here https://blog.wikimedia.org/2017/01/10/cross-v-facebook/. The EFF's blogpost is here https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/01/eff-court-dont-let-right-publicity-eat-internet .
Thanks for reading!
Best, Jan
On Mon, Jan 9, 2017 at 6:58 PM, Jan Gerlach jgerlach@wikimedia.org wrote:
Dear all
Some of you may have read about the case *Cross v. Facebook*, which is before the Court of Appeal for the State of California, First Appellate District. The case concerns the provision in the United States’ Communications Decency Act, Section 230 that protects online intermediaries from liability https://policy.wikimedia.org/policy-landing/liability/ related to user-generated content. There are two good blog posts that explain the case here https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160606/00343634630/another-bad-ruling-california-threatens-to-massively-undermine-section-230-exempting-publicity-rights.shtml and here http://blog.ericgoldman.org/archives/2016/06/wtf-is-going-on-with-section-230-cross-v-facebook.htm .
Section 230 immunity is an important cornerstone of the internet, and it's an important part of the legal background that allows the Wikimedia projects to operate neutrally. We are preparing to file an amicus brief in this case to educate the court about the importance of intermediary liability protections for freedom of expression and free knowledge.
We will keep you updated about this when we have more information to share.
Best, Jan
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Jan Gerlach Public Policy Manager Wikimedia Foundation 149 New Montgomery Street, 6th Floor San Francisco, CA 94105 jgerlach@wikimedia.org