Written by: Haim Ravia, and Dotan Hammer
A federal court in New York found that the online e-commerce giant eBay bears no liability for products sold on its platform by merchants when these products are banned by federal laws. The decision was handed down in the Justice Department’s lawsuit against eBay, which alleged that eBay has been allowing businesses to use its platform to sell banned engine performance enhancers harmful to the environment and paint removers and pesticides that contain carcinogenic materials, among other things.
The court found that eBay is shielded from liability under section 230 of the 1996 federal Communications Decency Act which provides that platforms, such as eBay, cannot be deemed the publishers of user content and therefore cannot be held liable for unlawful user content and cannot be forced to filter it.
The justice department’s complaint was filed in September 2023, accusing eBay of allowing users on its platform to sell illegal products banned by the Clean Air Act, the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act, and the Toxic Substances Control Act.
In granting eBay’s motion to dismiss, the court accepted that the three criteria of the immunity test under section 230 of the federal Communications Decency Act apply:
- eBay is a provider of an interactive computer service;
- eBay’s actions, administrative and technical support provided to sellers, do not constitute assistance in the development of the unlawfulness of the content; and
- imposing liability would force the court to treat eBay as if it were the publisher of a third party’s content.
Click here to read the Federal District Court’s decision in the matter of U.S. v. eBay Inc.
