Angie’s List Defeats Lawsuit Over Alleged “Pay-to-Play” Rankings–Strauss v. Angie’s List
Strauss spent over $200,000 on Angie’s List advertising over about a decade. After he stopped advertising, he claimed Angie’s List treated him poorly, including deindexing him from its search, then degrading his positioning in search results, and other malfeasance. All…
Defendant Can’t Send Virtual Gambling Claims to Arbitration
Churchill Downs’ Big Fish Casino is accused of violating Washington’s gambling statute. It moved to dismiss and was successful in district court. On appeal, the Ninth Circuit said that the Big Fish casino may violate Washington’s anti-gambling statute. (Previous blog…
Racial Discrimination Lawsuit Against Airbnb Has the Potential to Change Online Marketplaces–Harrington v. Airbnb
Airbnb has admitted that some of its vendors have engaged in racial discrimination. It really had no choice in this admission, after both empirical and anecdotal evidence demonstrated it. Plaintiffs sued Airbnb for violating Oregon’s discrimination law. The magistrate judge…
Seventh Different Lawsuit Against Social Media Providers for “Material Support to Terrorists” Fails–Taamneh v. Twitter
By my count, this is the seventh different lawsuit concluding that social media providers are not liable for materially supporting terrorists (Cain, Crosby, Fields, Force/Cohen, Gonzalez, Pennie, Taamneh). [If I’m missing any, please let me know.] This is an impressive…
Video Advertising Contract Descends Into Possible “Cyberattack”–Radian Weapons v. GY6Vids
This is a lawsuit between Radian Weapons and GY6Vids, a company that Radian hired to promote Radian’s products on YouTube. (GY’s YouTube channel currently has almost seven hundred thousand subscribers. Press coverage of the lawsuit from The Bulletin here.) The…
Section 230 Protects Twitter’s Decision to Suspend User’s Account–Mezey v. Twitter
This decision is from July but just showed up in Westlaw. Mezey sued Twitter for suspending his account. The opinion doesn’t provide any background about the account or why Twitter suspended it. The court easily dismissed the lawsuit on Section…
Ninth Circuit Interprets Autodialer Broadly For TCPA Purposes
Marks signed up for a gym membership with Crunch Fitness. He received three text messages. He sued on behalf of a putative class. The key question is whether the messages were sent using an “automatic telephone dialing system” (ATDS) under…
Swedish Court Misunderstands Memes (Guest Blog Post)
by guest blogger Stacey Lantagne Memes are everywhere. Part of the essential communicative fabric of social media, it’s hard to imagine Twitter or Instagram or even texting without them. They get used to react to matters of national debate, sports…
An Analysis of Title II of Public Law 115-264: The Classics Protection and Access Act (Guest Blog Post)
by guest blogger Tyler Ochoa On October 11, 2018, President Trump signed into law H.R. 1551, the Orrin G. Hatch-Bob Goodlatte Music Modernization Act, which became Public Law 115-364, 132 Stat. 3676. The Act contains three titles pertaining to copyright law. Title…
Call for Papers/Participation: 9th Annual Internet Law Works-in-Progress, SCU, March 2, 2019
We invite your participation in the Ninth Annual Internet Law Works-in-Progress conference at Santa Clara University School of Law, March 2, 2019. The conference series is co-sponsored by the High Tech Law Institute at Santa Clara University School of Law and the Innovation Center for Law and Technology at the New…