PublicData.com Faces Liability Over Its Online Credit Reports

The Communications Decency Act doesn’t protect public records provider The Source of Public Data LP from claims that it violated federal law by not giving the plaintiffs copies of reports it generated about them, the Fourth Circuit said Thursday.

The plaintiffs alleged that Public Data acquires public records from various businesses and government sources, parses the information, and puts it in a proprietary format. For criminal records, they said that Public Data distills the information and creates its own summaries.

Public Data allegedly published the information on PublicData.com without looking for errors, disclaimed any responsibility for inaccuracies, and won’t correct ...