EFF Heads To Court To Fight Off Smart Grid Company That Can't Wrap Its Mind Around Section 230 Protections
from the internal-logic-failure dept
Apparently the legal battle between a bunch of contractors providing "smart meter" equipment to the city of Seattle and FOIA clearinghouse MuckRock isn't over. The last time we checked in, a judge had overturned his own hastily-granted injunction, relieving MuckRock of the impossible demands placed on it by miffed tech provider Landis+Gyr -- which included handing over the details of everyone who might have seen Landis+Gyr's documents and "retrieving protected information that may have been downloaded" from the site.
MuckRock was allowed to reinstate the documents and Landis+Gyr walked away from a debacle of its own making. Another contractor utilized by Seattle Power and Light (Ericsson) had pursued a similar injunction but dropped MuckRock from its complaint, following Landis+Gyr into battle against the entity that had released the documents to requester Phil Mocek: the city of Seattle.
But there's still one company pursuing a case against MuckRock. The EFF, on its way back into court to fight the tenacious litigant, points out that Elster Solutions, LLC is still hoping to hold MuckRock accountable for publishing documents received from the city of Seattle. But it's impossible to ascertain why it's going after MuckRock.
First off, Section 230 shields MuckRock from this sort of litigation.
Section 230 provides broad protections for online platforms such as MuckRock, shielding them from liability based on the activities of users who post content to their websites. Given that broad immunity, MuckRock cannot be sued for hosting public records sought by one of its users regardless of whether they contain trade secrets.
MuckRock isn't the correct target because it only hosts the documents. It did not demand them itself, nor did it actively participate in the posting of the documents. MuckRock's system is automated. Default user settings will, without addtional input or control, post all correspondence and responsive documents pertaining to public records requests routed through the site. This makes Mocek's request and published documents third party, user-generated content.
The other reason why Elster's decision to name MuckRock as a defendant is completely misguided is this simple fact:
MuckRock currently does not host any documents from the company, Elster Solutions, LLC, that are subject to the public records request.
Even if MuckRock were able to obtain these documents, it wouldn't be doing so directly -- which is exactly what Elster claims has happened or might possibly happen. It wants to prevent the release of unredacted documents to the site (via requester Phil Mocek), but its litigious attention should be solely focused on the entity releasing them, rather than the site hosting them. At this point, MuckRock doesn't have anything Elster wants to argue about, and yet, it's doing so anyway. Its complaint is not only seemingly unfamiliar with Section 230 protections, but also severely deficient. From the EFF's motion to dismiss [PDF]
The Court should dismiss MuckRock from the lawsuit due to the obvious deficiencies in in Elster’s allegations in the Complaint. With respect to MuckRock, the Complaint contains precisely the type of bare, conclusory, or formulaic allegations the Court said were insufficient in Iqbal. See Yates, 2014 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 71077, at *8 (“[b]are, conclusory and formulaic allegations of involvement do not state a claim for relief against a particular defendant”). The Complaint mentions MuckRock in only three paragraphs, and in all three instances fails to specify any conduct by MuckRock that underlies any purported claim against it. (See Complaint ¶¶ 2, 6, 18.) Paragraph 6 references MuckRock’s domicile and state of incorporation. Paragraph 18 merely recites that Phil Mocek made a request for certain documents. And paragraph 2 is an introductory paragraph vaguely alleging that Mocek “and/or” MuckRock submitted a records request.
This lawsuit shouldn't last for much longer. What's surprising is that it's lasted this long already.
Filed Under: cda 230, documents, foia, hosting, seattle, section 230, smart meter
Companies: eff, elster solutions, landis+gyr, muckrock
