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Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak has recently won an appeal in a lawsuit against YouTube over videos used in a Bitcoin scam that exploited his likeness. The latest appellate court decision overturns a lower court ruling that had exempted YouTube from any liability.
Legal Battle Concludes
According to Bloomberg, the San Jose appellate court ruled that YouTube cannot rely on a controversial communications statute to absolve itself of responsibility for a scam that used an edited video to exploit the popularity of Apple’s co-founder to defraud people.
The recent decision will allow Wozniak to continue his lawsuit against the video streaming platform and could potentially lead to changes in the federal law that shields platforms like YouTube from liabilities associated with videos published on their platform.
Apple’s co-founder and 17 others, including Bill Gates, Elon Musk, and Michael Dell, filed a lawsuit against YouTube and its parent company Google after manipulated videos promoting a fake scam went viral on YouTube in 2020. The manipulated video was supplemented with text and images promising free Bitcoin, and viewers were asked to send Bitcoin to a certain address to double their money.
Key Details of the Issue
The latest appellate court decision is seen as a significant win for Wozniak and others since a Santa Clara County Superior Court judge had previously ruled in 2022 that companies were protected from liability under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.
The appellate judges observed that popular YouTube channels are frequently hacked to promote scams. Google and YouTube were held accountable for contributing to the scam by providing verification badges to compromised YouTube channels.
The platform also failed to remove these verification badges when channels began broadcasting scam videos, and during the scam process, a verification badge was awarded to one of them. Therefore, the appellate court observed that by providing verification, the companies might not be protected by the immunity of Section 230. Wozniak’s attorney, Joe Cotchett, stated that the decision means social media platforms like Google and YouTube must take responsibility for their actions and cannot use Section 230 as a complete shield for their behavior.
