## Facts

- An Ohio couple sued under pseudonyms after their wedding photograph was used, without consent, as the cover image for a self-published erotic fiction book.
- The author obtained the photograph online and used it to market and distribute the book through Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Smashwords.
- The distributors did not create the book, select the image, design the cover, or participate in the book’s editorial or creative process.
- Each distributor’s publishing agreement required the author to warrant that he had necessary rights and that the work did not infringe others’ privacy or publicity rights.
- The plaintiffs asserted Ohio-law claims for appropriation of likeness/right of publicity, invasion of privacy, and false light, alleging the cover placed them in a humiliating sexualized context.
- The plaintiffs’ theory against the distributors was that they had a duty to investigate whether the author had permission to use the photograph and should be liable for distributing the book.

## Issues

1. Whether online book distributors can be liable under Ohio privacy, false-light, and appropriation theories for distributing a book with an allegedly unauthorized cover image when they did not create the content and lacked knowledge or reason to know of the alleged wrongdoing.
2. Whether the First Amendment limits the imposition of state-law tort liability on distributors of expressive works absent a knowledge or reason-to-know showing.

## Decision

- The Sixth Circuit affirmed summary judgment for Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Smashwords.
- The court held the distributors could not be liable on these facts because they neither knew nor had reason to know of the alleged unauthorized use tied to the specific content.
- The court rejected imposing a general duty on distributors to pre-screen or investigate authors’ rights as inconsistent with constitutional protections for distributing expressive works.

## Legal Principles

- Distributors of expressive works generally may not be subjected to civil liability for distributing specific unlawful content absent actual knowledge or reason to know of the alleged illegality.
- State-law privacy, false-light, and appropriation claims applied to expressive works must be construed to avoid burdens that would chill distribution protected by the First Amendment.
- Reliance on an author’s contractual warranties of rights, without additional case-specific indicators of illegality, does not alone create distributor liability or a duty to investigate.

## Conclusion

The court held that Ohio tort claims based on an unauthorized book-cover photograph could not be imposed on online distributors that played no role in creating the content and lacked knowledge or reason to know of the alleged violation, and it affirmed summary judgment for the distributor defendants.


Roe v. Amazon.com, Inc., 714 F. App’x 565 (6th Cir. 2017)