Three Decades of the 26 Words That Built the Internet 

It started with a cruel prank on a message board. In 1996, the owner of a Seattle real estate magazine, Ken Zeran, sued AOL after anonymous users linked him to T-shirts trivializing the tragic bombing of an Oklahoma City government building. A US federal court ruled for AOL, reasoning that the authors, not the platform, were responsible. 

The US Code Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, signed into law on February 8, 1996, codified that ruling into law, providing liability protection for publishers of third-party content.