Messaging App Isn’t Liable for an Offline Murder (Even Without Section 230)–Roland v. Letgo
This is a tragic case involving the marketplace app Letgo. Using an alias, Brown listed a stolen car for sale on the app. The Rolands agreed to meet Brown in person to buy the car. At the meeting, Brown tried…
9th Circuit Unceremoniously Dismisses Antitrust Lawsuit Against Google–Dreamstime v. Google
I previously summarized this case: Dreamstime sells stock photos. It had favorable organic indexing that made it some money, and it bought Adwords advertising that made it more money. Dreamstime was a big enough player that it got personal support…
Hello, You’ve Been Referred Here Because You’re Wrong About Web Scraping Laws (Guest Blog Post, Part 2 of 2)
by Kieran McCarthy [Eric’s note: this is the second of a two-part series on the denouement of the hiQ v. LnkedIn case, which ended this week with a total loss for hiQ. The prior part explained the most recent ruling,…
Prager’s Lawsuit Over Biased Content Moderation Decisively Fails Again (This Time, in State Court)–Prager v. YouTube
Adam Kovacevich has defined the “Prager Effect” as “suing Big Tech to make your MAGA censorship allegation, resulting in Courts significantly strengthening platforms’ legal rights to moderate.” Prager, which makes misleading videos that appear designed to radicalize kids to the…
As Everyone Expected Years Ago, hiQ’s CFAA Wins Don’t Mean It Can Freely Scrape–hiQ v. LinkedIn (Guest Blog Post, Part 1 of 2)
by Kieran McCarthy [Eric’s note: this is the first of a two-part series on the denouement of the hiQ v. LinkedIn case. This part explains the most recent ruling, a devastating but not unexpected loss for hiQ. The next part…
512(f) Plaintiff Must Pay $91k to the Defense–Digital Marketing v. McCandless
It’s typically pointless to bring a 512(f) claim because the law makes it almost impossible to win. Plus, 512(f) plaintiffs have to consider the possibility of a costly fee shift against them. The plaintiff in this case claims that the…
Facebook Can’t Shake Lawsuit Over OnlyFans Bribery Allegations–Dangaard v. Meta
This lawsuit involves troubling allegations that Facebook executives (allegedly, Nick Clegg, Nicola Mendelsohn, and Cristian Perrella) took bribes from OnlyFans-related entities to spike Facebook and Instagram posts that promoted competitors of OnlyFans. Allegedly, the spiking included naming the plaintiffs on…
Catching Up on Government Officials’ Censorship of Constituents on Social Media
Buentello v. Boebert, No. 1:21-cv-00147-DDD (D. Colo. Oct. 28, 2022) The court summarizes: on January 6, 2021, Plaintiff directed tweets at Defendant, criticizing public remarks Defendant made leading up to, during, and after the storming of the United States Capitol…
Another Rough Copyright Ruling for Internet Access Providers–Bodyguard v. RCN
This is another lawsuit against IAPs for subscribers’ BitTorrent activity. As I wrote previously: lawsuits against IAPs are problematic for many reasons, including the failure of 512(a), the danger of assuming that notices of claimed infringements (NOCIs) actually reflect infringing…
New Paper: “Assuming Good Faith Online”
As part of a symposium, I was asked to write a short paper about how the Internet has changed since the mid-1990s when Section 230 was adopted. I chose to address the 1990s stereotype that most early Internet users were…