radio station, KRXO, then owned by Diamond Broadcasting. At this point, Zeran's house was placed under protective surveillance, and he was unable to use his telephone for his home business, as the threatening calls were coming in approximately every two minutes. This continued until at least May 15, by which time the number of calls fell to approximately 15 per day. On January 4, 1996, Zeran filed suit against Diamond Broadcasting, and in April of the same year, he filed a separate suit against AOL. Lower court ruling At the district court for the Eastern District of Virginia Zeran alleged that as a distributor of media content, AOL was "negligent in failing to respond adequately to the bogus notices on its bulletin board after being made aware of their malicious and fraudulent nature." In Cubby, Inc. v. CompuServe Inc., a New York district court had found that "a defendant could not be held liable for distributing defamatory statements unless it knew or had reason to know of statements." In this case, since AOL did not dispute its knowledge of the defamatory statements, Zeran claimed to have grounds for alleging AOL's participation in the defamation of his character. In response to this claim, AOL argued that the CDA, which was passed in 1996, preempted the New York ruling, which was issued in 1991 and based on that state's law at the time. The questions at issue in the lower court ruling were determined to be: Preemption of the state negligence claim by the CDA In analyzing the preemption of the state laws, the court determined that the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution demands preemption of state laws where they conflict with federal laws. The court analyzed three ways in which the state and federal laws could conflict: Impossibility of compliance with both state and federal law Conflict of language between state and federal law Conflict between the state law and the "purposes and objectives of Congress" In analyzing the first theory of direct conflict, the court found that AOL could "comply with the CDA even if it is subjected to state liability for negligent distribution of defamatory material," and thus found that the federal law did not preempt the state laws. With regard to the second and third theories of conflict however, the court found that the CDA did preempt the state laws. Based on the findings in Cubby, Inc.