The court summarizes the facts: A.M. was eleven years old in 2014 when Omegle, a “free online chat room that randomly pairs strangers from around the world for one-on-one chats,” paired her with Ryan Fordyce, a man in his late…
The federal government is prosecuting Wiley for drug dealing. The government seeks to introduce as evidence YouTube videos that Wiley posted showing him “holding unknown sums of cash, sitting in or near various luxury vehicles, and performing rap songs that…
Today marks the 1-month anniversary of the Copyright Claims Board, so I thought it’s a good opportunity to take a very quick snapshot of the filings we’ve seen so far. My dataset. Number of Filings. The CCB has received 58…
This is a troubling ruling on TOS amendments. 🚨🚨🚨 It apparently requires clickthroughs to form TOS amendments, regardless of what the TOS specifies as the amendment process. Given how rarely TOS amendments use clickthroughs, this opinion could anticipate the widespread…
The underlying dispute involved a copyright and trademark enforcement action against Goodman over a parody/satire video. The court summarizes Goodman’s arguments in this collateral lawsuit: Plaintiff alleges that Defendants abused process and engaged in attorney misconduct when the Academies sued…
I’m pleased to announce the 2022 edition (13th edition) of my Internet Law casebook, Internet Law: Cases & Materials. The book is available as a PDF at Gumroad for $10, a Kindle ebook for $9.99, a softcover version for $20,…
* FTC v. Match Group LLC, 2022 WL 877107 (N.D. Tex. March 24, 2022). A rare and surprisingly bad loss for the FTC on Section 230. The FTC alleged that: from 2013 to mid-2018, nonsubscribers were unaware that “as many…
A high school teacher allegedly used Snapchat to groom a sophomore student for a sexual relationship. (Atypically, the teacher was female and the victim was male, but the genders are irrelevant to this incident). Among other defendants, the victim sued…
James Freed is city manager for Port Huron, MI. (It appears this is an appointed, not elected, position). He had a personal Facebook profile that, over time, exceeded the 5k friend cap. Freed converted the profile to a public Facebook…
This case involves a pseudonymous Twitter account, “@CallMeMoneyBags.” The account tweeted some remarks, including photos, critical of billionaire Brian Sheth. Soon after, an entity called Bayside asserted copyright ownership of the photos and sent 512(c)(3) takedown notices to Twitter followed…