2H 2015 Quick Links, Part 5 (Section 230, Pornography)
Section 230 * Backpage.com, LLC v. Dart, 2015 WL 7717221 (7th Cir. Nov. 30, 2015) In his public capacity as a sheriff of a major county (Cook County has a population of more than 5.2 million), Sheriff Dart is not…
2H 2015 Quick Links, Part 4 (Content Regulation & More)
* Miquel Peguera: “The man who won the right-to-be-forgotten case in the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) has now been denied the right to suppress links to comments about that case by the Spanish Data Protection Authority…
YouTube Wins Another Case Over Removing And Relocating User Videos (Forbes Cross-Post)
I recently blogged about a lawsuit against YouTube for taking down a user’s video and relocating it to a different URL. Users get upset when their videos are removed-and-relocated because the process strips the video of its view count and…
Bashing Your Litigation Opponent in an Online Message Board? Go For It! (Forbes Cross-Post)
As Marshall McLuhan said, the medium is the message, and this principle is influencing online defamation jurisprudence. Judges frequently bend defamation standards for cases involving the rough-and-tumble world of online message boards (see, e.g., LeBlanc v. Skinner, Seldon v. Compass…
No Fee Shift In Bogus Lawsuit Against Review Website–Roca v. PissedConsumer
In October, a court issued a really interesting and decisive Section 230 defense win. I ran out of time to blog it, but a recent follow-on ruling gives me an opportunity to ccover both rulings. The October Ruling Roca Labs…
Senate Passes Consumer Review Freedom Act
As you recall, the Consumer Review Freedom Act would prevent businesses from restricting consumers’ reviews of their businesses. This week, the Senate approved the bill by unanimous consent. On the floor, the sponsors introduced a new version of the bill….
Can YouTube ‘Remove And Relocate’ User Videos Capriciously?–Darnaa v. Google (Forbes Cross-Post)
Most of us uploading YouTube videos aren’t deeply invested in their continued availability. If YouTube removed our videos or relocated them to a different URL, we might be puzzled why but otherwise would probably shrug our shoulders. However, YouTube is…
Stockholders Can’t Sue Yelp Because Of Fake Reviews (Forbes Cross-Post)
Are there fake user reviews on Yelp? Sure–Yelp freely admits it. Nevertheless, plaintiffs have attempted a variety of legal theories to hold Yelp legally responsible for those fake reviews. Recently, a federal court shut down one of those lawsuits, holding…
Facebook Can Legally Block Pages Without Any Explanation–Sikhs For Justice v. Facebook (Forbes Cross-Post)
For many users, Facebook feels like a utility. Facebook users use Facebook to create new things and expect it to work reliably; users don’t expect Facebook will terminate them capriciously. Thus, when Facebook blocks users’ content, it can be shocking…
Senate Commerce Committee Approves Consumer Review Freedom Act (Forbes Cross-Post)
The Consumer Review Freedom Act (S. 2044) would prevent businesses from contractually restricting their customers from writing online reviews (I call those “anti-review clauses,” but they are also called “gag clauses” and “non-disparagement clauses”). It seems ridiculous that we need…