(Washington) The Supreme Court of the United States agreed on Monday to examine two cases raising the question of legal immunity which allows companies in the technological sector to deny any responsibility for the contents published on the Internet by the users of their services, and could make a decision that could have far-reaching consequences.
Posted at 2:30 p.m.
One of the files is carried by the family of Nohemi Gonzalez, a 23-year-old American who was one of the 130 people killed in the attacks of November 13, 2015 in Paris, who accuses Google of having violated federal anti-terrorism law by relaying Islamic State (IS) videos inciting violence on YouTube (owned by Google).
“Google’s services have played a critical and unique role in building ISIS’s image, its success in recruiting new members around the world, and its ability to carry out attacks,” according to the complaint.
In the Gonzalez case, a lower court ruled in favor of Google citing Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act passed in 1996 to regulate pornographic content on the Internet, which provides that companies such as Google, Facebook and Twitter are not considered publishers and are not legally responsible for content posted by their users.
Section 230 has come under attack from both Democratic and Republican lawmakers, however, with the left claiming that tech companies encourage far-right hate speech, and the right claiming that they allow companies to censor conservative voices.
Among those who have criticized Section 230 is Donald Trump, banned from Twitter and Facebook after the storming of the Capitol on January 6, 2021.
In the second case to be heard by the Supreme Court, Twitter is accused of “complicity in terrorism”.
A lower court declined to rule on whether the courier had legal protection under Section 230.