Although its name sounds positively Orwellian, the Communications Decency Act contains provisions that provide significant protections for websites that post user-generated content. Those provisions have come into play once again, as a judge in New Jersey has exempted Wikipedia from a defamation trial based on comments posted by its users.

We described the suit previously, but it's worth a recap, if only for some of the choice quotes involved.  The case was filed by a literary agent, Barbara Bauer, who apparently ran afoul of a small horde of Internet users. It's difficult to reconstruct the temporal sequence of events based on the defamation suit she filed, but it seems likely her problems started when her name appeared on a list of the 20 Worst Literary Agents, hosted on the now-defunct site 20worstagents.com. According to accusations made there, Bauer was on the list because she'd inflated her credentials and never successfully closed a deal; she was also called a "scam artist" and a "con."

These accusations were picked up by a large number of personal blogs, where they were frequently amplified. In her complaint, Bauer quotes different blogs as referring to her as "that lunatic," her colleagues as a "posse of dumbshits," and their actions as "random nuttiness." In addition to roughly 20 private individuals, a few larger organizations that hosted some of the blogs were also named in the suit, including the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. In an event that should surprise no one, some of the accusations made their way into a Wikipedia entry, and Bauer names the Wikimedia Foundation as a defendant in her suit.

This is where the Communications Decency Act comes in. Section 230 of the act states, "No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider." Wikimedia's lawyers argued that the claims be dismissed, as it was an interactive computer service, and any defamatory information came from another content provider.

Although Bauer's lawyers fought the motion, Judge Jamie S. Perri of New Jersey's Superior Court found their arguments uncompelling. In an extremely cogent ruling running less than two pages, Perri granted Wikimedia's motion, and dismissed all charges against them "with prejudice, and without leave to amend." If Bauer can find evidence that a representative of Wikipedia was responsible for the offending text, the charges could be refiled, but otherwise, Wikipedia's off the hook.