A senior Google lawyer asked Monday whether Internet companies an...

Access Project forum in San Jose, Calif., on “The Future of Content and Control.” Wong told us afterward that Google’s interest stems from recent appeals rulings on section 230, Chicago Lawyers’ Committee v. Craigslist from the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago in March and Fair Housing Commission v. Roommates.com in the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in May 2007. These decisions “seem to carve a little out of that immunity,” she said. Panelists warned against seeking changes. Copyright Alliance Executive Director Patrick Ross said an effort like that would provide a vehicle to members of Congress who want to regulate the Internet. Mike Godwin, general counsel of the Wikimedia Foundation, which publishes Wikipedia, said, “I think we shouldn’t,” because of the risk that reopening the provision could produce unwanted results. Under the immunity, “individuals can say pretty much anything online” because Web site operators don’t fear being held legally responsible for the comments, he said. There’s a tendency for those angered by comments online to mutter that “there ought to be a law” allowing them to sue the forum operator as well as the person who makes the statements, Godwin said. But “it’s going to be very culturally damaging” if site operators get new incentive under a changed law not “to provide fully free-speech-capable platforms.” Former FTC Commissioner Mozelle Thompson said of the CDA proposals that might be raised, in Washington, “no bad idea ever goes away.” European and Asian governments whose laws aren’t as protective as the CDA have been influenced by the U.S. law to leave Web sites alone, he said. Putting the immunity in play “could send a signal” to those governments “to reopen that hands-off policy,” he warned. Before Wikimedia moved its headquarters to San Francisco from St. Petersburg, Fla., over the winter, it considered destinations including London. “There’s absolutely no way we could operate Wikipedia out of London,” Godwin said he advised the foundation. In fact, it seeks “as small a footprint as possible in the U.K.,” because of unfavorable rules including the defamation laws, he said. Wikimedia has no servers in the country and it advises Wikipedia editors there to avoid connections with each other that could make them more vulnerable to legal action, Godwin said. But law Professor Mark Lemley of Stanford University said from the audience that Google presumably is concerned not with the main section 230 immunity rule but with the “rather bizarre patchwork of intellectual property ISP immunity” in exemptions to the provision. Godwin said he hadn’t been thinking about those exemptions in his initial comments, and “obviously there is still a lot of work to be done” on section 230.