California Courts Continue to Trim Section 230’s Protection for Amazon’s Marketplace (and Everyone Else)–Lee v. Amazon
The California Appeals Courts have turned against Amazon’s marketplace. In 2020, in Bolger v. Amazon, the court held that Amazon may be strictly liable for marketplace sales it fulfills. Then, last year, in Loomis v. Amazon, the court extended Bolger’s…
First Circuit Says Mirroring Qualifies for Section 230–Monsarrat v. Newman
I previously blogged this case last year. I summarized the facts: This case involves a LiveJournal community (the Davis Square community for Somerville, MA). In 2017, LiveJournal changed its policies. In response, Newman, the community moderator, copied all of the…
Justice Thomas Really, REALLY Wants Section 230 Repealed (Even If He Has to Do It Himself)
The Supreme Court denied certiorari in Doe v. Facebook, a FOSTA case. The Texas Supreme Court held that FOSTA excluded some claims from Section 230 (disregarding the statutory language Congress adopted), while other claims remain preempted by Section 230. The…
26 Trademark Academics Oppose the SHOP SAFE Act
[Today, Betsy Rosenblatt, Rebecca Tushnet and I sent the following letter to Congress on behalf of 26 trademark academics (here’s a PDF version). This complements a separate letter sent by 38 organizations and companies also opposing the SHOP SAFE Act….
Section 230 Doesn’t Apply to Publication of Private Emails–Crowley v. Faison
Faison runs the Sacramento chapter of Black Lives Matter (BLM). She received several racist and offensive emails from an email address purporting to be Karra Crowley. Faison posted the emails to BLM’s Facebook page and identified Karra as the sender….
Section 230 Immunizes TikTok for User-Posted Videos–Day v. TikTok
Day discovered videos on TikTok of her 2-year-old daughter being abused. That’s horrifying, but the opinion doesn’t address the many obvious followup questions, such as: where was the daughter during the abuse? who was abusing the daughter? was that person…
Section 230 Protects Google for Including Telegram In Its App Store–Ginsberg v. Google
The plaintiffs claim that violent extremists, anti-Semites, haters, and other malefactors use Telegram, and thus its availability in the Google Play Store violates Google’s Developer Guidelines. This is yet another remix of the old Noah v. AOL case, where a…
So Many Unanswered Empirical Questions About FOSTA
I read an article, “Sex Trafficking and Technology: A Systematic Review of Recruitment and Exploitation,” by Lindsay B. Gezinski & Kwynn M. Gonzalez-Pons (unfortunately paywalled). They did a comprehensive and systematic review to identify empirical studies that bear on online…
Another Problematic FOSTA Ruling–Doe v. Pornhub
A few observations from reading numerous FOSTA cases: sex trafficking victim cases are horrifying. courts cannot figure out how to interpret FOSTA. due to FOSTA’s ambiguities, judges are turning to judicial activism to favor victims regardless of the law. the…
A Twitter Thread on the EARN IT Act
I did a (rare for me) Twitter thread on this topic, which is so crucial that I’m sharing it here as well: On Thursday, the Senate Judiciary Committee will be marking up the EARN IT Act, which removes Section 230…