A federal court has ruled that ConsumerAffairs.com, an online forum where customers can write about their experiences with various companies, is not legally responsible for comments left by users.

Finding that the Web site is protected as an “interactive service provider” under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, the court dismissed a lawsuit brought by New York-based Nemet Chevrolet in March 2008. The car dealer had filed the complaint against ConsumerAffairs.com after finding what it viewed to be defamatory posts on the site. Six user comments were listed in Nemet’s complaint, many from the same account.

The dealership, which denied the truth of the comments, accused the Web site of defamation, tortious interference, and violations of the Lanham Act, the federal false advertising law. The complaint said the comments “discredited Plaintiff’s honesty, credit, and business reputation,” and that because of the “misleading articles,” it lost business and was entitled to damages.

The court disagreed, finding that ConsumerAffairs.com was not involved enough in content creation to be liable for either defamation or tortious interference. As for the Lanham Act claims, the court found that Nemet lacked standing because the other parties involved were not competitors of the dealership and the “alleged injury is not of the sort that the Lanham Act sought to prevent.”

Web site owners that host online communities have successfully sought the safe harbor of Section 230 of the CDA a number of times in recent years. For instance, in a highly publicized case, a court found that Craigslist was not liable for allegedly discriminatory housing ads, since the online classified ad site was not a “publisher,” but merely a provider of online “interactive services.”