Is Regulation of the Internet Explicitly a Federal Domain?

Posted on March 29, 2007
Filed Under Public Policy |

"Because material on a website may be viewed across the Internet, and thus in more than one state at a time, permitting the reach of any particular state’s definition of intellectual property to dictate the contours of this federal immunity would be contrary to Congress’s expressed goal of insulating the development of the Internet from the various state-law regimes. See 47 U.S.C. §§ 230(a) and (b); see also Batzel, 333 F.3d at 1027 (noting that "courts construing § 230 have recognized as critical in applying the statute the concern that lawsuits could threaten the ‘freedom of speech in the new and burgeoning Internet medium’")."

This does appear to be a pretty important decision regarding regulation of web sites, it would seem to suggest that web sites are by their nature viewable across the entire web and therefore subject to Federal regulation and immune from state regulation that conflicts with Federal law. In other words, if Federal law regulates a specific aspect of the web, then states are pre-empted from regulating them on their own. This case applies specifically to intellectual property but it would seem reasonable that this would be used in other cases involving regulation of the web

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