On November 10 2017 Eric Goldman and Jeff Kossoff published Commemorating the 20th Anniversary of Internet Law’s Most Important Judicial Decision to mark the 20th anniversary of Zeran v. AOL, a landmark decision by the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals that clarified and defined 47 U.S.C. §230 aka Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act which established the principle of immunity from liability for ‘intermediary’ providers e.g. ISPs. The article notes
Together, §230 and the Zeran ruling helped create a trillion-dollar industry centered around user-generated content. Because of its influence on such a key issue, the Zeran ruling is widely considered the most important Internet Law ruling ever.
The article introduces a series of essays by Internet law experts, including Jonathan Zittrain, James Grimmelmann, and Olivier Sylvain,on the history, merits and impact of the ruling.
