The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday heard arguments in a major case that could weaken a legal shield that protects internet companies from a wide array of lawsuits in a dispute involving YouTube and the family of an American student fatally shot in a 2015 rampage by Islamist militants in Paris.
"These are not the nine greatest experts on the internet," liberal Justice Elena Kagan said of the members of the court, eliciting laughter in the courtroom.
Kagan noted that "any time anybody looks at anything on the internet, there is an algorithm involved, whether it's a Google search engine or whether it's this YouTube site or a Twitter account or countless other things - that everything involves ways of organizing and prioritizing material." The lawsuit, accusing the company of providing "material support" for terrorism, was brought under the U.S. Anti-Terrorism Act, a federal law that lets Americans recover damages related to "an act of international terrorism."
"I'm trying to get you to explain to us how something that is standard on YouTube for virtually anything that you have an interest in suddenly amounts to aiding and abetting because you're in the ISIS category," Justice Clarence Thomas told Schnapper, using initials for the Islamic State group.Google and its supporters have said a win for the plaintiffs could prompt a flood of litigation against platforms and upend how the internet works.
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