We blog pretty much every scraping case we see; we just don’t see many of them. As I’ve told you before, scraping is ubiquitous but of dubious legality. Today’s case reiterates just how hard it is for scrapers to win…
[Warning: Brutally ugly opinion and long blog post ahead] The evisceration of Section 230 continues. Yesterday I explained that the last 12 months have been tough for Section 230 jurisprudence. Today’s opinion is worse than *all* of the cases I…
It’s been a tough year for Section 230. In one case after another, I’ve had to “explain away” Section 230 losses: * Doe #14 v. ModelMayhem. The 9th Circuit embraced a dubious “failure to warn” exception to Section 230. *…
There are several alternative tests for gauging “substantial similarity” in copyright cases. The flagship test is the “ordinary observer” test, but variations include the (baffling) extrinsic/intrinsic test and the abstraction-filtration-comparison test. With respect to sampling sound recordings, the Sixth Circuit’s…
Why does the Ninth Circuit find Section 230 so baffling? Several of its precedential Section 230 rulings have been angst-fests. Roommates.com required a 3 opinion ruling from a 3 judge panel, then an internally inconsistent en banc ruling, then a…
By now you’ve heard that Peter Thiel, a well-known Silicon Valley billionaire, has been waging a lawfare campaign against Gawker. The New York Times described his modus operandi: he retained a legal team to watch for cases against Gawker, then…
The Copyright Office has issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) regarding a new electronic submission process for websites and online services to designate agents to receive 512(c)(3) copyright takedown notices. The agent designation process is crucial to the 17…
You’d probably be hopping mad if Google manually kicked your website out of its search index; and if you’re an SEO company and Google also kicked all of your clients out, you’d probably feel pretty litigious. But courts have repeatedly…
This is an awesome parody account/First Amendment case. Todd Levitt is a self-described “badass lawyer” (this description comes from his since-deleted Twitter account) and an adjunct instructor at Central Michigan University (CMU). His Twitter account looked interesting, to say the…
The Supreme Court issued its opinion in Spokeo v. Robins. A six Justice majority reversed the Ninth Circuit’s decision on the basis that the Ninth Circuit did not sufficiently consider whether Mr. Robins’s alleged harms were “concrete.” On the question…