Barnes v. Yahoo!, Inc.
court case involving internet service providers and user content

Barnes v. Yahoo!, Inc., 570 F.3d 1096 (9th Cir. 2009), is a United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit case in which the Ninth Circuit held that Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (CDA) rules that Yahoo!, Inc., as an Internet service provider cannot be held responsible for failure to remove objectionable content posted to their website by a third party. Plaintiff Cecilia Barnes made claims arising out of Defendant Yahoo!, Inc.'s alleged failure to honor promises to remove offensive content about the plaintiff posted by a third party. The content consisted of a personal profile with nude photos of the Plaintiff and her contact information. The United States District Court for the District of Oregon had dismissed Barnes' complaint.
History
In 2004, Cecilia Barnes ended a relationship with her boyfriend. Following the breakup, her now ex-boyfriend tried to harass her by creating multiple unauthorized Yahoo! profiles about her that included solicitation to engage in sexual intercourse. These profiles seemed like they came from Barnes herself and contained nude photographs of her that were taken without her knowledge as well as her real contact information.
“Barnes v. Yahoo!, Inc.” enters the record as court case involving internet service providers and user content. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Barnes, Yahoo and court can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Feb 12, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4861562. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1096, 2009 and 2004.
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This entry incorporates text from “Barnes v. Yahoo!, Inc.” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.