Section 230 Immunizes Twitter From Liability For ISIS’s Terrorist Activities–Fields v. Twitter
Abu Zaid, an alleged “lone wolf,” killed two American contractors in Jordan. ISIS claimed responsibility for the deaths, but “Plaintiffs do not allege that ISIS recruited or communicated with Abu Zaid over Twitter, that ISIS or Abu Zaid used Twitter…
Repeat Plaintiff Can’t Sue Search Engines Because Employers Won’t Hire Him–Despot v. Baltimore Life Insurance
The plaintiff, David Despot, has “filed many cases in various courts over the years.” Apparently there is some disagreement about the exact number: “Casetext indicates that its own website reveals 10 lawsuits, BLIC refers specifically to 5, Google states that…
Search Engine Snippets Protected By Section 230–O’Kroley v. Fastcase
The plaintiff’s vanity Google search results included the following snippet: “indecency with a child in Trial Court Cause N . . . Colin O’Kroley v Pringle.” The linked result (to Google Book’s indexing of Texas Advance Sheet–see image) contained a…
Message Board Operator May Be Liable For Moderator’s Content–Enigma v. Bleeping
It’s been a brutal year for Section 230 jurisprudence, and the hits keep coming. In today’s case, the parties ran into a judge who seemed unshakably determined–for reasons I can’t determine–to deny the motion to dismiss. This produces an outlier…
Sideloading Service Defeats Copyright Infringement Claims–BWP v. Polyvore
BWP Media is a celebrity photo agency and a repeat online copyright plaintiff. Polyvore is…well, I don’t really get what they do. They say the site “is a new way to discover and shop for things you love in fashion,…
Twitter May Be Liable for Sending Texts to Recycled Cellphone Numbers–Nunes v. Twitter
This is a TCPA lawsuit against Twitter. The claims are based on text messages sent to phone numbers where the subscriber was a Twitter user and signed up to receive text updates but later the phone number got recycled to…
Yelp Isn’t Liable For User-Submitted Photos Of Businesses–Albert v. Yelp
The last time I blogged about a lawyer who sued Yelp for defamation, I spilled 3,000 words (and shed many tears). Fortunately for my mental health and your reading queue, I’m pleased to report that today’s case has better–and more…
Section 230 Protects YouTube’s Removal of User’s Videos–Lancaster v. Alphabet
This is one of those pro se cases where the court isn’t sure what the plaintiff is complaining about, so I apologize if my parsing is garbled as well. The court expends the most energy on the plaintiff’s allegation that…
Vimeo’s Second Circuit DMCA Safe Harbor Win Over Capitol Records
This is an important DMCA safe harbor opinion. It’s from the Second Circuit, an influential court, and it extends the Second Circuit’s 2012 key Viacom v. YouTube ruling in important ways. Still, the DMCA safe harbors remain defectively designed, and…
Q2 2016 Quick Links, Part 3 (Defamation, Online Reviews, Section 230)
Defamation * Pritchard v. Van Nes, 2016 BCSC 686 (April 20, 2016): Ms. Van Nes was responsible for the defamatory comments of her [Facebook] “friends”. When the posts were printed off, on the afternoon of June 10th, her various replies…