Q4 2012 Quick Links, Part 3 (47 USC 230 and more)
By Eric Goldman
47 USC 230/Review Websites
* Sulla v. Horowitz, 2012 WL 4758163 (D. Hawai’i Oct. 4, 2012): “§ 230 does not provide this court with exclusive jurisdiction over defamation claims arising from statements made via the internet….While a plaintiff cannot avoid removal by failing to plead necessary federal questions, id., § 230 is clearly in the nature of a defense. Section 230 therefore does not provide this court with federal question jurisdiction.”
* What does the Internet look like without 47 USC 230? BBC: Google liable for defamatory search results in Australia.
* Shrader v. Beann, 2012 WL 5951617 (10th Cir. November 29, 2012). Summarily affirming the District Court’s 47 USC 230 ruling. Prior blog post.
* EFF: Washington State Drops Defense of Unconstitutional Sex Trafficking Law. Prior blog post.
* Amerigas v. Opinion Corp. (PissedConsumer) settles. Prior blog post.
* RedOrbit: “Online Physician Reviews Skewed By Too Few Posts Says Study.” The long-term detrimental consequences of Medical Justice’s efforts to suppress patients’ reviews of doctors. Fortunately, this will be fixed over time.
* Politico: Yelp pushes for federal anti-SLAPP laws
* British ASA Skytrax ruling: “to justify the claims of authenticity made in the ad, Skytrax needed to demonstrate that they took all reasonable steps to ensure that reviews were checked, trusted and made by “real” people with “real” opinions”
* Yelp is flagging businesses that it suspects of trying to buy reviews. NY Times coverage. I wonder if any competitors will try to game this by falsely trying to buy reviews in their competition’s name?
* Company Doe v Tenenbaum. Restricting CPSC from publishing a report to SaferProducts.gov.
Miscellaneous
* What happened at the ITU/WCIT meeting in Dubai? Nothing good, but fortunately, nothing. NY Times and CNET News.com.
* Wired: Google Throws Open Doors to Its Top-Secret Data Center
* WSJ on online price discrimination. Surprisingly, the article doesn’t address whether Staples was trying to harmonize prices between its offline and online stores and what opportunities Staples’ pricing scheme presents to Staples’ online competitors.
* Wired: Noncompetes Are Lame — Let’s Set the Creators Free
* NY Times: Did a Facebook post by Reed Hastings violate Regulation FD?
* AdWeek: People have a love/hate relationship with Facebook.
* Pew: How Teens Do Research in the Digital World:
Three-quarters of AP and NWP teachers say that the internet and digital search tools have had a “mostly positive” impact on their students’ research habits, but 87% say these technologies are creating an “easily distracted generation with short attention spans” and 64% say today’s digital technologies “do more to distract students than to help them academically.”///a significant portion of the teachers surveyed here report spending class time discussing with students how search engines work, how to assess the reliability of the information they find online, and how to improve their search skills. They also spend time constructing assignments that point students toward the best online resources and encourage the use of sources other than search engines
* Bay Citizen: PACER federal court record fees exceed system costs.
* Ewert v. eBay appealed to 9th Circuit.
* Are record labels playing games with YouTube viewer counts?