The United States Supreme Court on Monday agreed to hear a challenge to federal protections that benefit Internet and social media companies and release them from liability for content posted by users, in a case involving an American student. who was assassinated in 2015 by Islamist militants in Paris.
The judges accepted the appeal of the parents and other relatives of Nohemi González, a 23-year-old Californian woman studying in Paris, against a lower court’s ruling that exempted YouTube, owned by Google LLC, from having committed an infringement in a lawsuit for damages that the family filed under an anti-terrorism law.
Google and YouTube are part of Alphabet Inc.
The lawsuit accused Google of materially supporting terrorism in violation of the Anti-Terrorism Act, a federal law that allows Americans to recover damages related to “an act of international terrorism.”
The suit argued that YouTube, through computer algorithms, recommended to certain users videos of the Islamic State militant group, which claimed responsibility for the Paris attacks.