Website Denied Section 230 for No Good Reason, Wins the Case Anyways–DF Pace v. Baker-White
[Warning: long and sad blog post ahead. Get the tissues now] This case involves the Plain View Project, run by Injustice Watch. The PVP republishes social media posts by law enforcement officers that might signal racist, misogynist, or other discriminatory…
The Israeli Chipmunk Emoji Mystery Resolved!
One of the most celebrated cases in emoji law is Dahan v. Shakaroff, an Israeli decision involving a landlord’s claim that prospective tenants Nir and Yarden (a married couple) engaged in bad faith negotiations over leasing an apartment. At issue…
Ninth Circuit Doubles Down on Bad Ruling That Undermines Cybersecurity–Enigma v. Malwarebytes
This case involves rival makers of anti-threat software. The defendant, Malwarebytes, classified its rival’s software as a PUP, or Potentially Unwanted Program. The rival sued. Malwarebytes defended on 47 USC 230(c)(2)(B), which provides a safe harbor for filtering software. Malwarebytes…
Top Internet Law Developments of 2019
It’s increasingly hard to find good news in Internet law, so I organized this year’s Internet Law roundup by categories of doom. Trigger warning: you should grab some tissues before proceeding. Doomed (in a Bad Way) Doomed: User-Generated Content. It…
Troublesome Emojis in Criminal Cases (Guest Blog Post)
By guest bloggers Jeff Breinholt and Madeline Brewer [Jeff is an Adjunct Professor at George Washington University Law School. Madeline is an LLM Candidate at George Washington University Law School] Emojis are frequently showing up in court cases throughout the…
Java API Classes as Fictional Characters―A Proposal for Google v. Oracle (Guest Blog Post)
by Marketa Trimble In disputes over the copyrightability of computer programs and their elements, it is common to invoke analogies from literature. In Google v. Oracle (in which the U.S. Supreme Court granted a cert petition on November 15, 2019), Oracle began…
New Civil FOSTA Lawsuits Push Expansive Legal Theories Against Unexpected Defendants (Guest Blog Post)
by guest blogger Alex Yelderman In the year and two-thirds since it was signed into law, FOSTA has reputedly shattered online networks that sex workers relied upon to keep safe, crippled human trafficking investigations, and scared websites into taking down…
Internet Access Provider Gets Another Devastating Result in a Secondary Copyright Infringement Case—Sony v. Cox
In a recent post, I lamented how courts are exposing IAPs to secondary copyright liability for their subscribers’ activities. This is the result of a breakdown in the détente associated with the failed Copyright Alert System, and its demise has…
Eric Goldman’s Comments to the California DOJ Draft Regulations for the Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) (Part 3 of 3)
[Introduction: initially, I aspired to write a blog post summarizing and analyzing the DOJ’s proposed CCPA regulations. After seeing the draft, I quickly abandoned that idea. The regulations are 10,000 words of dense, layered, heavily cross-referenced administrative-speak. There is ambiguity…
Some Lessons Learned from the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), 18 Months In (Part 2 of 3)
[Introduction: this is part 2 of a 3-part series on the California Consumer Privacy Act, spurred by my comments on the DOJ’s draft regulations (which I’ll post tomorrow). Part 1 of the series addressed how we got here. Today’s part…