Dozen Amicus Briefs Oppose the Worst Section 230 Ruling of 2016 (and One Supports It)–Hassell v. Bird
You surely recall the Hassell v. Bird ruling from last year. A lawyer was unhappy with a Yelp review about her. The lawyer sued the putative author (with dubious service of process), got a default ruling that the review was…
The “Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act of 2017” Bill Would Be Bad News for Section 230
As expected, last week Rep. Ann Wagner introduced the “Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act of 2017” bill, H.R. 1865. This is a renamed version of the draft bill, the “No Immunity for Sex Traffickers Online…
A Complaint’s Silence About Section 230 Helps It Survive Judgment on the Pleadings–Moretti v. Hertz
This is a class action lawsuit against car rental companies for an alleged “currency exchange rate scam.” Allegedly, the rental car companies quote foreign rentals in dollars but then actually charge customers in the local currency at an inflated exchange…
WARNING: Draft “No Immunity for Sex Traffickers Online Act” Bill Poses Major Threat to Section 230
I rarely blog about draft bills that have not yet been introduced. Sometimes those drafts never get introduced at all; other times, the draft bills are revised in key ways before introduction. This particular draft has been circulating for a…
Judge Balks At Section 230 Protection For Email Forwarding–Samsel v. DeSoto County School District
Today’s blog post covers a very long opinion (70 pages!) involving a school principal effectively firing a successful football coach in football-crazed northern Mississippi. If you want a taste of how much angst that can create, try to wade through…
eBay Isn’t Liable for Patent-Infringing Marketplace Sales–Blazer v. eBay
Blazer owns patent 8,375,624 for “Carpenter Bee Traps.” He filed NOCIs with eBay alleging the sale of infringing items on eBay. The court says “eBay has a policy to quickly remove listings when a [patent] NOCI provides a court order,…
Constitution Protects Publication of Politicians’ Home Address/Phone Number–Publius v. Boyer-Vine
Doe Publius (nice alias) runs the “The Real Write Winger” blog, hosted by WordPress. He was unhappy about California’s ammunition purchase registry, which publishes “the driver’s license information, residential address and telephone number, and date of birth for anyone who…
New Paper: “The Defend Trade Secrets Act Isn’t an ‘Intellectual Property’ Law”
Congress worked on the Defend Trade Secrets Act (DTSA) for years, yet the final product has a number of rough edges and curiosities. One example is the following sentence: This section and the amendments made by this section shall not…
Section 230 Protects Grindr From Harrassed User’s Claims–Herrick v. Grindr
This is a well-constructed and thoughtful Section 230 ruling. If this case keeps going in the same direction, it has the potential to become a major Section 230 precedent. Herrick claims that ex-boyfriend JC used Grindr to launch a vicious…
Copyshop Covered By “Non-Commercial” Creative Commons License–Great Minds v. FedEx
Great Minds developed a math curriculum called Eureka Math. It commercializes the Eureka Math materials itself but also released the materials pursuant to a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-Sharealike (CC BY-NC-SA) 4.0 license. Great Minds discovered at least two circumstances where school…