Vermont Supreme Court Dismisses Nonconsensual Pornography Prosecution–State v. VanBuren
Last year, the Vermont Supreme Court upheld Vermont’s sui generis crime of nonconsensual pornography dissemination (13 V.S.A. § 2606) from a facial constitutional challenge. This ruling was surprising because the court said that the law didn’t fit into any of…
D.C. Circuit Issues Sweeping Pro-Section 230 Opinion–Marshall’s Locksmith v. Google
The DC Circuit has produced some defense-favorable Section 230 rulings, including Klayman v. Zuckerberg and Bennett v. Google. This opinion may be the most favorable yet. The plaintiffs are self-styled “legitimate” locksmiths who claim that Google gives too much prominence…
Contract Breach Claims Against Google Survive First Amendment Defense–Dreamstime v. Google
Dreamstime sells stock photos. It alleges that Google partnered with its competitors and then maliciously downgraded Dreamstime’s visibility, first in organic search results and then in keyword ads. Google allegedly also kicked Dreamstime’s app out of Google Play. Dreamstime sued…
“IAPP Content Moderation in 2019” Conference Recap
In May, the IAPP held a conference in DC called “Content Moderation in 2019.” Though the conference was not officially part of the COMO conference series, it was a logical extension of the series. The IAPP’s event page. My photo…
Section 230 Doesn’t End Lawsuit Claiming Facebook Facilitated Sex Trafficking–Doe v. Facebook
As you may recall, Facebook embraced SESTA/FOSTA during the legislative proceedings. First, following advice from its political advisor Definers, Facebook decided SESTA was less important than the myriad of other political initiatives targeting it. As a result, Facebook caused the…
Section 230 Helps Facebook Easily Defeat Claims Over a User’s Post–Richard v. Facebook
A former employee, Malepeai, posted negative remarks on Facebook about his past employer and his family. The past employer sued Facebook for defamation, civil conspiracy, outrage, and intentional infliction of emotional distress. This direct assault on Facebook for third party…
A Recap of My Recent Section 230 Papers
I’ve been actively writing about Section 230 recently, so I thought it might help to round them up into a single post: * An Overview of the United States’ Section 230 Internet Immunity (2019). This is the basic primer you’ve always wanted….
Section 230 Protects Facebook’s Account and Content Restriction Decisions–Ebeid v. Facebook
Courts, at least in the Ninth Circuit, have collapsed the distinction between Sections 230(c)(1) and 230(c)(2). As a result, (c)(1) now routinely protects a service’s content filtering and account restriction decisions, which is nominally the job of (c)(2). This is…
Airbnb Gets Mixed Results in Challenge to Boston’s Anti-Airbnb Law–Airbnb v. Boston
Boston enacted a law against short-term housing rentals that included these provisions: (1) a $300/violation/day fine for booking illegal short-term rentals (the “penalties” provision), (2) a city-wide ban on booking agents that don’t honor notice-and-takedown or verify vendor licenses (the…
Wisconsin Supreme Court Fixes a Bad Section 230 Opinion—Daniel v. Armslist
In 2018, the Wisconsin Court of Appeals issued a bizarre opinion suggesting that plaintiffs could avoid Section 230 by targeting the service’s design and operation. The authoring judge seemed confident that he had spotted a statutory interpretation flaw that hundreds…