Cubby v. CompuServe was a 1991 court decision in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York which suggested that online companies would not be liable for the acts of their customers. CompuServe exerted no control whatsoever over the presumably false and defamatory statements which were the subject of the suit; their forum sysops were independent entrepreneurs. Prior to this decision, the liability risk was largely undecided.

A later case, the 1995 New York state court decision in Stratton Oakmont, Inc. v. Prodigy Services Co., clarified liability further. Because Prodigy assumed some control over the content of their service (they had filtering software that prevented posts containing certain language, and had people who removed offensive content from their service) the court held that Prodigy had assumed responsibility for the content.

As these decisions were not appealed to higher level courts, they were not as binding as a legal precedent. However, in the 1996 Communications Decency Act, Congress provided significant immunities for internet service providers, largely along the lines of the Cubby and Stratton decisions.

External links

• The decision