California Anti-SLAPP Law Doesn’t Protect Negative Patient Review of Doctor–Premier Brain & Spine v. Cudia

Cudia was a patient of Premier Brain & Spine Institute, Inc., and Edward Rustamzadeh, M.D. In 2019, she reviewed them negatively on Yelp. (This appears to be her Yelp page,…

Publicity Rights Claim Isn’t Preempted by Section 230–Albert v. Tinder

This is a pro se lawsuit against Match and Tinder for fake dating profiles in the plaintiff’s name. I’m going to focus on the publicity rights claim piece of the…

11th Circuit UPHOLDS a 512(f) Plaintiff Win on Appeal–Alper Automotive v. Day to Day Imports

I’m going on a limb and saying that I believe this is the first appellate court upholding a 512(f) plaintiff win. The closest plaintiffs have gotten in the past is…

Wrapping Up the “Lessons from the First Internet Ages” Project (New Content Alert!)

…watch the videos here. As a followup, some conference participants wrote reflections about the materials, including Cory Doctorow, Eric Goldman, Mike Masnick, Margaret O’Mara, Sarita Schoenebeck, and T.L. Taylor. There’s…

Facebook Defeats Jawboning Lawsuit Over COVID Misinformation Removal–Rogalinski v. Meta

Rogalinski made several posts about COVID. Facebook added “missing context” labels to two of them and removed another one. Rogalinski claims that Facebook “censored” him on behalf of the government,…

HuffPost Contributor Isn’t an “Agent,” So Their Content Qualifies for Section 230–KGS v. Huffington Post

This long-running lawsuit relates to publications made in 2015. I previously blogged a related Alabama Supreme Court ruling involving Facebook in 2019. In that post, I summarized the complicated and…

Retweets ≠ Endorsements (As a Matter of Law)–Flynn v. CNN

Some members of Gen. Michael Flynn’s family sued CNN for implying that they are QAnon followers. The case involves: a report aired by CNN on February 3, 2021, which was…

Police Officer’s Racist Memes on a Personal Facebook Page Address “Matters of Public Concern”–Hernandez v. Phoenix

Hernandez was a Phoenix police officer. He posted anti-Muslim memes to his personal Facebook page, which apparently was open to the public. Unusually, the court opinion displays four of Hernandez’s…

Announcing the Sixth Edition of Advertising & Marketing Law: Cases & Materials by Tushnet & Goldman

…would like a free evaluation copy, please email me (egoldman@gmail.com). A sample chapter, Chapter 14 (on publicity rights and endorsements), is available as a free download. We also have two…

A Short Explainer of Why California’s Social Media Addiction Bill (AB 2408) Is Terrible

It’s “burn-down-the-Internet” week on the blog, during which I am recapping three bad California bills that the California legislature is poised to enact. Monday, I covered AB 2273, the Age-Appropriate…

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