Privacy * A string of great articles from Kash Hill: – Roomba’s Next Big Step Is Selling Maps of Your Home to the Highest Bidder – The House That Spied on Me – Facebook Figured Out My Family Secrets, And It Won’t Tell…
Plaintiff Abid claims he has developed “a systems biology empirical approach based on prophetic medicine.” He created a website, Mighty Honey, that provides information about “prophetic medicine”/”Arabic herbal medicine” which appears to be supplement-infused honey (the screenshot to the right…
This is a class action lawsuit against Airbnb over racial discrimination. The lead plaintiff has never been an Airbnb member but requested to join if Airbnb ceased “implementation of its policies that discriminate against African-Americans and that allow hosts to…
Marketing/Advertising * Washington Post: See the cool kids lined up outside that new restaurant? This app pays them to stand there. * AdWeek: Burger King Dug Up a Bunch of Tweets From People Complaining About Wendy’s and Turned Them Into…
A vacationer found a listing of interest on VRBO (owned by HomeAway). After back-and-forth negotiations with the lister, he sent $46k for a week’s rental. The property proved to be fictional, so the vacationer got fleeced. VRBO investigated and, oddly,…
Censorship Spotlight on China * NY Times: China’s Internet Censors Play a Tougher Game of Cat and Mouse * Reuters: China’s Weibo looks to reward citizen censors with iPhones, tablets * NY Times: 68 Things You Cannot Say on China’s…
This morning, President Trump signed H.R. 1865, the Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act of 2017 (FOSTA), into law. The bill signing was anticipated, but that doesn’t make the outcome any less terrible. Today, Washington DC regulators…
Section 230 * Backpage.com, LLC, V. Hawley, 2017 WL 5726868 (E.D. Mo Nov. 28, 2017): Backpage cites Doe No. 1 for the proposition that, as an interactive computer service provider, its “choices about what content can appear on the website…
Innovation * NY Times: Russia Wants Innovation, but It’s Arresting Its Innovators * Contigiani et al, Trade Secrets and Innovation: Evidence from the ‘Inevitable Disclosure’ Doctrine. The abstract: Does heightened employer-friendly trade secrecy protection help or hinder innovation? By examining…
You probably remember this case. Copyright owners sued the video hosting site Vimeo for third party uploaded videos that allegedly infringed their copyrights. Given this was the paradigmatic situation the DMCA safe harbor was designed to address, you’d think this…