Fifth Circuit Affirms Lower Court in MySpace Case, Dismisses Doe Lawsuit

The Fifth Circuit has dismissed the Julie Doe lawsuit against MySpace, indicating that Section 230 protects third party networking sites. A lower court had also dismissed the suit last year. The plaintiff was assaulted by a sexual predator she met online via MySpace and wished to hold MySpace responsible for the harm. On appeal, the Does attempted to argue that MySpace failed to use “measures that would have prevented Julie Doe from communicating with Solis.” Because this issue was not raised below, the Court refused to consider it. The Does also attempted to argue for the first time that MySpace created content by “facilitating” the profiles that users presented and “[chose] the information they [will] share with the public through an online questionnaire.” [The “Roommates.com argument].

The Fifth Circuit rejected these arguments and noted that Julie Doe lied about her age to create her profile and exchanged informtion with her attacker, which the Does admitted to the lower court. Read the opinion here.