By Diana Novak Jones
July 14 (Reuters) – A U.S. judge has dismissed a proposed class action accusing Apple of failing to stop the dissemination of child sexual abuse material through its iCloud data storage platform, saying the company is broadly shielded from the claims under a federal law protecting online services from liability for user content.
U.S. District Judge Noël Wise in San Jose, California, in a ruling late Monday, agreed with Apple’s argument that the company is immune from claims brought by plaintiffs who say Apple failed to take action to prevent images of their sexual abuse as children from being shared and stored on iCloud.
Wise said the lawsuit sought to hold Apple responsible for failing to remove or block content created by users, placing the claims within the scope of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, a 1996 federal law.
Plaintiffs were suing on behalf of a class of 2,680 people with similar allegations, and estimated the compensatory damages to be as high as $32.8 billion, according to court filings. The lawsuit also sought a court order directing Apple to make changes to iCloud.
More U.S. courts have been grappling with Section 230’s protections, particularly in lawsuits alleging that technology companies caused harm through design of their products rather than content created by users.
Nothing in federal law requires Apple to proactively utilize available technology or develop new technology to identify and report child sexual abuse material on its cloud platform, Wise wrote.
“Lawmakers can fix this problem that is contributing to the exploitation of children,” Wise wrote. “This Court cannot.”
Wise dismissed the case with prejudice, meaning it cannot be refiled.
James Marsh, an attorney for the plaintiffs, who go by the pseudonyms Amy and Jessica, said they are considering an appeal and evaluating whether other legal claims are possible.
While the plaintiffs disagree with the judge’s conclusion on the law, “we agree with her conclusion that Congress should do more to protect children online and address the skyrocketing harms from online exploitation,” Marsh said.
Representatives for Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
CLASS CLAIMS
Amy and Jessica sued Apple in 2024, claiming that years-old images of their abuse as children continued to be stored and shared on Apple’s iCloud platform.
The lawsuit claimed Apple knew there was a problem with child sexual abuse material on iCloud, but chose not to use widely available technology to identify and report it.
In 2021, Apple announced it was going to launch a program known as NeuralHash to identify child sex abuse material, but by the following year it said it would no longer be implementing it, according to the lawsuit. At the same time, the company made end-to-end encryption available on iCloud data, making it nearly impossible for law enforcement or Apple to identify child sexual abuse material on iCloud, the lawsuit said.
Apple has said it has worked hard to eliminate the spread of child sexual abuse material on its devices. In filings, the company said it elected to use methods other than NeuralHash in a bid to eliminate risks to users’ security and privacy.
Wise previously dismissed a version of the complaint but gave the plaintiffs a chance to amend it, according to court records.
Apple is facing a similar lawsuit filed by West Virginia’s attorney general. The state called the case the first of its kind by a government agency over the distribution of child sexual abuse material on Apple’s data storage platform.
(Reporting by Diana Novak Jones, Editing by Alexia Garamfalvi and David Gregorio)