Social Networking Sites and the Law
By Eric Goldman On Monday, the High Tech Law Institute is co-sponsoring an event entitled “Friends, Lovers, Trust, Safety: The Present and Future of Social Networking.” The principal audience is undergraduate students, but everyone is welcome. One of the hot…
Blogger Protected by Anti-SLAPP Statute–GTX v. Left
By Eric Goldman GTX Global Corp. v. Left, 2007 WL 1300065 (Cal. Ct. App. May 4, 2007) This is one of the first cases explicitly holding that a blogger is protected by anti-SLAPP laws. It’s not really surprising that bloggers…
Utah’s “Don’t Email the Kids” Registry a “Financial Failure”
By Eric Goldman A couple of years ago, Utah and Michigan adopted laws creating “don’t email the kids” registries (called the “Child Protection Registry”–see Utah’s and Michigan’s). These laws allow parents to register email addresses held by kids and requires…
March 2007 Quick Links Part 2
By Eric Goldman Yesterday I posted the Google edition of my list of interesting items from March. Today I post the remainder of items that caught my eye last month. Trademarks/Brands * Bosley Medical Institute v. Kremer, 2007 WL 935708…
February 2007 Quick Links
By Eric Goldman * The California Highway Patrol (which, for reasons unclear to me, has investigatory power here) has concluded that the Angelides campaign did not break any laws when they reverse-guessed URLs on Schwarzenegger’s website and found an unrestricted…
MySpace Suit for Liability for Sexual Assault Dismissed
By John Ottaviani Doe v. MySpace, Inc., No. A-06-CA983-SS (W.D. Tex. 2/13/2007). “If anyone had a duty to protect Julie Doe, it was her parents, not MySpace.” (Sparks, J.) This is a HUGE win for MySpace! Plaintiff’s negligence and gross…
Humane Society Barks at the Wrong Defendant–Humane Society v. Amazon
By Eric Goldman The Humane Society of the United States v. Amazon.com (DC Superior Ct complaint filed February 8, 2007) I’m going to start this post with two (relatively uncharacteristic for me) moralistic assertions that I think are largely beyond…
Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006
By Eric Goldman No one is better at coughing up legislative hairballs than Congress. The Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006 (grafted to the end of the SAFE Port Act) was passed over 2 months ago, but my repeated…
Nov. 2006 Quick Links
By Eric Goldman My monthly roundup of noteworthy tidbits: * Yesmail, an email outsource vendor, was busted by the FTC under CAN-SPAM for failing to honor opt-out requests because Yesmail’s incoming email filters blocked those opt-out requests as spam. This…
Griping Blog Post Leads to Lawsuit–BidZirk v. Smith
By Eric Goldman BidZirk, LLC v. Smith, 2006 WL 3242333 (D.S.C. Nov. 7, 2006) Despite all of the hype about blog law, the reality is that we’ve had comparatively few blog-specific lawsuits. As a result, we give extra attention to…