Apple dodges liability for child porn after judge lays blame on lawmakers

SAN JOSE, Calif. (CN) — A federal judge has dismissed a civil suit against Apple filed by child pornography victims, determining that no law obligates companies to identify and report child abuse material.

Two women using pseudonyms filed the putative class action in 2024, claiming the tech giant knew its products and services had defective designs that enabled the proliferation of child sexual abuse material. Implementing detection tools for those materials could have prevented its spread, but Apple continuously failed to act.

U.S. District Judge Noël Wise initially dismissed the suit, saying the women claimed Apple was only willfully ignorant of child porn on its servers. The women amended their complaint twice, and Wise dismissed it Monday for the third and final time.

“As it stands, nothing in the law prevents any company, including Apple, from utilizing available technology or creating new technology to identify and report child pornography stored and distributed on their traditional servers or through their cloud services,” wrote Wise, a Joe Biden appointee. “Conversely, there is no law that obligates companies to proactively do so.”

If lawmakers want companies to address the dissemination of child sexual abuse material, Wise emphasized, they must pass a law requiring it. The dismissal of the case, like many before it, shows anything less is inadequate.

“In other words, lawmakers can fix this problem that is contributing to the exploitation of children,” Wise added. “This court cannot.”

The women had argued that Apple’s competitors like Microsoft and Google used PhotoDNA, a program in their products that identified and reported child porn to authorities. However, Apple failed to use any child protection tool until August 2021, after years of criticism.

Initially, experts and child safety professionals lauded the move. The praise soon changed to accusations against NeuralHash, Apple’s software, calling it less precise than PhotoDNA. Also, Apple soon revealed that it would delay NeuralHash’s rollout. A year later, Apple said it would implement no tools to detect child sexual abuse material, the women said.

According to the women, Apple said it decided any such tool would imperil the security and privacy of its users.

Apple argued the Communications Decency Act barred the suit, noting it states that “[n]o provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.” Additionally, Ninth Circuit precedent makes Apple immune to liability because it’s a provider of an interactive computer service and the plaintiffs tried to treat it as a publisher or speaker of information offered by someone else.

In her decision, Wise focused her analysis on whether that act applied to each cause of action and whether it stemmed from Apple’s status or conduct as a publisher or speaker. Those causes of action were product liability, negligence and emotional distress.

Wise determined the women in their suit treated Apple as a publisher of the child porn that caused their injuries. The duties they said Apple had stemmed from its perceived status as a publisher, the judge found, meaning immunity applies.

The women argued Apple was a creator, not a publisher, and deserves no immunity. However, Wise wrote they made no claim that Apple modified or augmented the content on its servers, making the women’s argument meritless.

The women’s injuries come from third parties who used iCloud to share child porn, which Apple neither condones or prevents, Wise wrote. And despite their claim that Apple knew people probably used its tools to distribute child porn, the company still enjoys immunity under the law.

“In the current legal framework, there is no protection for members of the putative class — individuals who as children were photographed and filmed while being abused in the vilest ways imaginable, and who now are repeatedly victimized each time the intimate and tortured images of their trauma are distributed to others,” Wise wrote. “Those children are the collateral damage of our ineffective legal landscape. They deserve better.”

Hillary Nappi — a partner with AWK Survivor Advocate Attorneys and one of the plaintiffs’ attorneys — said in a statement to Courthouse News that the legal team is reviewing the ruling and evaluating its options.

“This decision only adds urgency to the pending legislative efforts to ensure technology companies can be held accountable for the harm caused by their design choices,” Nappi said. “We remain committed to pursuing accountability for our clients.”

Apple couldn’t be reached for comment.