Pat Carome’s Long Career in Shaping Internet Law Receives Center for Democracy and Technology Recognition

• 12.23.2022

Pat Carome was recently recognized by the Center for Democracy and Technology for his history-making legal career in which he helped shape the contours of American law regarding free speech on the Internet.

During CDT’s “The Future of Speech Online” virtual event in December, Carome was credited “for his many contributions to the development of the law concerning the First Amendment and free speech, particularly as the country’s pre-eminent advocate around Section 230” of the Communications Decency Act of 1996, said Samir Jain, the organizations vice president for policy.

“He has represented a literal who’s who of the Internet industry,” Jain said of Carome, listing some of the world’s largest and best-known technology companies and noting that Carome also worked in legacy media, such as when he was in-house counsel at The Washington Post. “And he has been a thought leader shaping the development of the law through his writing and speaking, and as a leader in entities such as the Media Law Center, the American Bar Association, the DC Bar and the Student Press Law Center… Pat, congratulations on an extraordinarily impactful career.”

Carome’s key role in the 1997 case known as Zeran v. America Online was highlighted during the event. In Zeran, a case that some have said essentially created the internet as we know it, the US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit Court upheld Section 230’s immunity for internet providers and platforms, saying that internet service providers and platforms were not to be viewed as the publishers or speakers of defamatory or other dubious content created by others. Carome led AOL’s defense in the case.

That landmark decision and others like it that Carome won lifted a cloud of litigation and potential liability that hung over internet companies, leading to an era of their explosive creation and growth. It eventually also led to some right of center political figures, including then President Trump, threatening to seek changes in Section 230 to punish tech companies which, they painted as left of center opponents.      

Asked if he ever envisioned the way Section 230, once the sole province of Internet lawyers and tech companies, could play a central role in the culture wars, Carome said: “No, I saw myself as a geek practicing in this little corner of the legal universe. So I’m somewhat astounded by this. At the same time, it is a critical piece of the foundation for today’s internet and today’s information society.”

Carome had planned to retire from his practice at WilmerHale after 36 years at the firm at the end of 2022. He decided, however, that important work lay ahead of him when the US Supreme Court granted certiorari, for the first time to a Section 230 challenge, in Gonzalez v. Google, as well as in Twitter v. Taamneh, a case examining whether online platforms can be subject to claims under the Anti-Terrorism Act.

“After many years of denying cert in Section 230 cases the Court has taken one,” Carome said. “It’s an interesting development but potentially a momentous development. I’m hopeful that perhaps, in the end, the Court won’t actually use the Gonzales case to opine on Section 230.” The Court may find it can and should decide the Taamneh in a manner that resolves both cases without opining on Section 230.