How 47 USC 230 Improves Marketplace Efficiency
By Eric Goldman I have been working on a draft article currently titled “In Defense of 47 USC 230” (I’m probably going to change the name). As part of our 15 year retrospective of 47 USC 230, I presented a…
Court Refuses to Set Aside Order Requiring Disclosure of Twitter Users’ IP Addresses
[Post by Venkat Balasubramani with some comments by Eric] In re: sec. 2703(d) Order; 10GJ3793; Miscellaneous Case No. 1:11dm00003 (E.D. Va. March 11, 2011) [pdf] A federal magistrate judge refused to vacate a previously issued order granting the government’s request…
Social Search Services Duel Over “Post Post” Mark — Boathouse Group v. TigerLogic
[Post by Venkat Balasubramani] Boathouse Group v. TigerLogic Corp., 10-12125-NMG (D. Mass.; March 7, 2011) Background: Boathouse developed a “social media search and curation application” called POSTPOST which it launched at postpo.st in August 2010. Its application allows users to…
Copyright Take-Backs? Supreme Court Grants Cert in Golan v. Holder
by Ethan Ackerman The Supreme Court has agreed to hear a long-running copyright dispute over a 1994 law that retroactively restored copyright in some expired foreign works. In what ScotusBlog is calling “a major test of copyright power,” the Supreme…
Google Not Liable for Suggested Vanity Searches–Stayart v. Google
By Eric Goldman Stayart v. Google, Inc., 2011 WL 855316 (E.D. Wis. March 8, 2011) Beverly Stayart (a/k/a Bev Stayart) has graced these pages so many times, I feel a little silly recapping her story yet again. The short story…
Important Ninth Circuit Ruling on Keyword Advertising, Plus Recaps of the Past 4 Months of Keyword Ad Decisions
By Eric Goldman Network Automation, Inc. v. Advanced System Concepts, Inc., 2011 WL 815806 (9th Cir. March 8, 2011) [warning: this blog post is nearly 5,000 words] Introduction We’ve had surprisingly few appellate decisions involving keyword advertising generally, and almost…
Stanford Technology Law Review Symposium on Secondary IP Liability
By Eric Goldman Last week we had a cyberlaw-fiesta in the Silicon Valley, the likes of which have been rarely (if ever) seen before. The Stanford Technology Law Review hosted a symposium on Thursday on Internet intermediary liability, then we…
Jan.-Feb. 2011 Quick Links, Part 4
By Eric Goldman Internet Freedom * The EFF points out the inconsistency between Hillary Clinton’s speech championing Internet freedom abroad when our own US government has gone rogue on its own citizens, including unlawful domain name seizures and an obsessive…
Unsuccessful 230(c)(2) Defense for Blog Comment–Mealer v. GMAC
By Eric Goldman Mealer v. GMAC Mortgage LLC, 2011 WL 744895 (D. Ariz. Feb. 24, 2011) Mealer is an automotive entrepreneur. He posted about General Motors to his company blog. He alleges that Kordella, a GM engineer, disparaged Mealer in…
Jan.-Feb. 2011 Quick Links, Part 3 (Trademarks, Domain Names and Trade Secrets Edition)
By Eric Goldman Trademarks and Domain Names * From my perspective, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) domain name seizures are one of the US government’s top 5 all-time worst assaults on the Internet’s integrity. DHS’s ICE division is grabbing…