SEC’s Proposed Guidance on Hyperlinking Contravenes 47 USC 230
By Eric Goldman In August, I blogged about the SEC’s most recent guidance regarding companies’ liability for linking to third party content. Today, I submitted comments to the SEC pointing out that their general position regarding linking contravenes 47 USC…
Defamation Lawsuit Against Blogger Dismissed on Jurisdictional Grounds–Fahmy v. Hogge
By Eric Goldman Fahmy v. Hogge, 2008 WL 4614322 (C.D. Cal. Oct. 14, 2008). The Justia page. This lawsuit involves the blog hogonice.com (Hog on Ice). The blog’s topical coverage includes “Guns, God, Food, Beer, Tools, Politics, and Whining,” and…
September 2008 Quick Links, Part 3
By Eric Goldman eBay * Universal Grading Service v. eBay, Inc. More fallout from the National Numismatic v. eBay case–another lawsuit alleging antitrust and defamation because eBay designated some coin rating services as preferred and impliedly devalued others. * Windsor…
September 2008 Quick Links, Part 2
By Eric Goldman Copyrights * In the Harry Potter fair use case, the court declared that the Lexicon encyclopedia isn’t fair use. * The judge declared a mistrial in the Jammie Thomas case. * Designer Skin v. S&L Vitamins has…
Bloggers’ Defamation Liability Not Dismissed–Saadi v. Maroun
By Eric Goldman Saadi v. Maroun, 2008 WL 4194824 (M.D. Fla. Sept. 9, 2008). One of the complaints (doesn’t everyone know that just blacking out data in a PDF doesn’t prevent people from learning the info???). The opposition to the…
August 2008 Quick Links, Part 2
By Eric Goldman Net Neutrality * The FCC gets on Comcast’s case for deceptively blocking BitTorrent connections without disclosure. While I don’t know anyone who has defended Comcast’s behavior here, at the same time there is an undercurrent of concern…
August 2008 Quick Links, Part 1
By Eric Goldman eBay * Mazur v. eBay Inc., 2008 WL 2951351 (N.D. Cal. July 25, 2008). See my previous blog post on the case. Some commentators are excited about this ruling because it rejects eBay’s motion to dismiss a…
Principal Loses Lawsuit Against Students and Parents Over Fake MySpace Page–Draker v. Schreiber
By Eric Goldman Draker v. Schreiber, 2008 WL 3457023 (Tex. App. Ct. Aug. 13, 2008). The majority opinion. The concurrence. John O. and I have previously blogged about teenagers creating fake web pages targeting someone at their school. See, e.g.,…
July 2008 Quick Links, Part II (Non-IP Edition)
By Eric Goldman Search Engines * Google explains all of the ways that it reinterprets the actual search query provided by a consumer to deliver results for words the searcher didn’t use. As I’ve said before, Google’s intermediation makes it…
The Sex Tape Problem…and a Possible Legislative Solution?
By Eric Goldman An inescapable fact of the digital era is that people will be depicted in digitized sex videos (“sex tapes”) that they wish did not exist. Sex tapes can be classified into a variety of types: * sex…