In March 2008, a New York real estate broker filed a defamation lawsuit against The Real Estate Group of New York, Inc. over comments appearing on its website's message board.

The Supreme Court of New York, New York County, denied the real estate group's motion to dismiss based on Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (“Section 230”). On appeal, the Appellate Division, First Department, reversed. The court held that Section 230 barred the claim. The court explained that the complaint "makes no allegation that defendants authored any defamatory statements" and "merely alleges that defendants 'choose and administer content' that appears on the Web site," adding that "[t]his is precisely the kind of function that the CDA immunizes."

Update:

06/14/2011 - In a 4-3 decision, the New York Court of Appeals upheld the Appellate Division's ruling that Section 230 does indeed bar Shiamili's claim. The Court decided that the defendants' reposting and adding an image to the anonymous comment on their website did not constitute "developing" the allegedly defamatory content. The dissent argued that part of Section 230's purpose was to encourage website owners to voluntarily filter offensive content; reposting and highlighting offensive comments, then, should be outside Section 230's protections.

On February 1, 2010, counsel for  Miami City Commissioner Marc Sarnoff sent a demand letter to blogger Tom Falco, who publishes the Coconut Grove Grapevine.  The letter claimed that an anonymous comment to the site was false and defamatory. The comment in question was left below a blog post about a Commission hearing on bar closing times.

According to an attachment to the demand letter, the commenter pretended to leave a comment in Sarnoff's name expressing "support" for "drinking and driving after 3am even if it claims the lives of others," and signed "XOXO Marc Sarnoff." The comment appears to have been removed.

Sarnoff's demand letter stated that Falco had "a duty as the owner, editor, and publisher of the website, to police what is being posted on your website." It continued: "As such, since the post is the direct and proximate cause of injury to Commissioner Sarnoff, it is actionable against you and your website."  The letter made no mention of section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.

In February 2009, Vision Media TV, a company that makes video segments that advertise nonprofit companies, sued Julia Forte, who runs the website 800Notes, a forum site on which members of the public can discuss telemarketing companies and practices. Vision Media filed suit in federal district court in Florida after Forte refused to identify users who posted critical comments about the company and to remove the postings. The complaint, which has been amended several times, currently includes claims for libel, trademark dilution under Florida law, and "defamation by implication."

In January 2010, Forte moved to dismiss the complaint, or alternatively for summary judgment.  She argued, among other things, that the court lacked personal jurisdiction over her, and that Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act immunized her for publishing the statements of her users.  In an unusual move, Vision Media TV moved to strike Forte's motion to dismiss because her counsel posted the motion papers on the Public Citizen Litigation Group website. 

Update:

1/27/10 - Forte filed an Opposition to Motion to Strike and for Gag Order.

2/04/10 - The Court denied the Motion to Strike. 

In February 2009, Beverly Stayart filed a lawsuit against Yahoo! and two other internet services, Altavista and AdultFriendFinder, for unauthorized use of her name on the Internet. She claimed false designation of origin and false endorsement under the Lanham Act, as well as violation of her statutory and common law rights to privacy.

The dispute originated when Ms. Stayart inputted her name as a search term at yahoo.com and altavista.com and was bombarded with spam sites purporting to sell Cialis (and other drugs to treat erectile dysfunction) or containing explicit banner ads for adultfriendfinder.com.  These sites contained her name either in their “spamdexing” text or their nonsensical URLs (e.g. jewellery-makin-doorway.orge.pl/bev-stayart.html).

Ms. Stayart tried to rectify the situation by notifying the search engines of the misleading results and requested that they be removed. When they failed to take any action, Ms. Stayard filed suit. 

In September 2009, the federal district court in Wisconsin dismissed the case.  The court held that Stayart failed to state a claim under the Lanham Act, and alternatively that Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act barred her claim, although it is nominally an intellectual property claim outside Section 230's scope. After dismissing the federal claims, the court declined supplemental jurisdiction over the state law claims.

Stayart filed a notice of appeal on September 24, 2009.

Update:

11/25/2009: Stayart filed her appellate brief, arguing that she did have standing under the Lanham Act  because of her work for charity; alternatively, she argued that she should be able to amend her complaint to pursue state law claims under federal diversity jurisdiction.

2/10/2010: Appellees filed their brief, arguing that Stayart had shown no intention of using her name for commercial activity and even if she did, Section 230 would bar her claims.

2/19/2010: Stayart filed her reply brief.

9/30/2010: The Seventh Circuit affirmed the trial court, holding that Stayart does not have a commercial interest in her name, despite her charitable activities. Therefore, the Court held she that does not have standing under the Lanham Act. It also held that the trial court did not abuse its discretion when it denied her leave to amend her complaint, because it found that allowing her to pursue her state law claims under diversity jurisdiction would be "futile."