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…
Email Ad Network Isn’t Liable for Unsolicited Email–Ferron v. Echostar
By Eric Goldman Ferron v. Echostar Satellite LLC, 2008 WL 4377309 (S.D. Ohio Sept. 24, 2008). The Justia page. John Ferron is one of several “repeat” plaintiffs around the country suing over unsolicited email (perhaps not coincidentally, he’s also an…
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…
Affiliate Liability Extravaganza
By Eric Goldman [Note: I recently published a version of this article at InformIT. Here’s the pre-edited version I sent them.] Introduction This article discusses marketers’ liability for the actions of their marketing affiliates (what I refer to as “affiliate…
Spam Revisited: Virginia-style
By Ethan Ackerman The Virginia Supreme Court revisits its First Amendment holding in Jaynes. In what is likely a second stroke of luck for criminal spammer Jeremy Jaynes, the Virginia state Supreme Court recently granted a discretionary rehearing on the…
47 USC 230 Trifecta of Cases–Friendfinder, e360insight, iBrattleboro
By Eric Goldman 47 USC 230 cases have been coming at such a rapid clip that I’ve fallen behind. In this blog post, I’ll catch up on three recent cases: Friendfinder Doe v. Friendfinder Network, Inc., 2008 WL 803947 (D.N.H….
Still Standing? Catching Up on the Jaynes Case
By Ethan Ackerman Virginia’s 1st-Amendment-deficient Spam law is still standing, but only because the Va. Supreme Court closely split over whether Jeremy Jaynes had standing to challenge it. A cynic could dismiss the most recent ruling in this fairly well-covered…
March 2008 Quick Links, Part I
By Eric Goldman It’s a sign of my busy March/April that I am just now posting these… Reputation/47 USC 230 * I have a lot to say about the JuicyCampus story (AP, MSNBC, Chronicle of Higher Education). Unfortunately, I ran…
Feb. 2008 Quick Links
By Eric Goldman Advertising * BusinessWeek: Monetizing social networking sites isn’t as easy as everyone had hoped, clickthrough rates are through the floor (0.04%!), and ad proliferation on the sites is driving users away. * Wilbur, Kenneth C. and Zhu,…