Court Sides With Vimeo In Lawsuit Over Video Takedowns, But Ducks Section 230 09/27/2021

by Wendy Davis  @wendyndavis, 8 hours ago A federal appellate panel has taken the extremely rare step of issuing a third opinion in a lawsuit brought by “former homosexual” James Domen against Vimeo over its decision to remove his videos.The new opinion, like the prior two rulings, sided with the online video platform. But in the latest decision, issued Friday, the judges sidestepped what has become a controversial and politically charged question: Whether Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act protects web services like Vimeo from discrimination claims rooted in content-moderation decisions.Instead, the appellate judges said for the first time that they didn’t need to rule on questions about Section 230 because Domen’s complaint didn’t have the kind of factual allegations that would prove intentional discrimination by Vimeo.“Because appellants’ complaint fails to plausibly plead a claim for discrimination under the state statutes there is no need to consider Vimeo’s defense that such claims are pre-empted under Section 230,” the judges wrote.advertisementadvertisementIn their prior two decisions, the judges agreed with Vimeo that Section 230 shielded it from Domen’s lawsuit.Section 230, which dates to 1996, broadly immunizes web publishers from liability for users’ posts, including ones that are defamatory.The law also protects…
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