Company That Facilitates Digital Access to Public Records Uses CFAA to Block Scraper
[Eric’s introduction: this post has been sitting in our tank over a month. I put a hold on it when I was considering using this fact pattern for my Internet Law exam. I decided to go in a different direction,…
Florida Drops Ill-Conceived Proposal To Ban Competitive Keyword Advertising By Lawyers (Forbes Cross-Post)
In March, the Florida State Bar’s Standing Committee on Advertising proposed an ethics opinion (Proposed Advisory Opinion A-12-1). The opinion was designed to help Florida lawyers understand what they could ethically do with online marketing. It targeted a melange of…
Minors’ Suit Over Facebook Credits Continues – I.B. v. Facebook
This is a lawsuit over minors’ purchase of Facebook credits. The court only partially granted Facebook’s motion to dismiss on the first go-around, and on the second go-around does the same. (Previous post: Minors’ Suit Over Facebook Credits Survives in Part…
AAUP Says Kansas Regents’ New Faculty Social Media Use Policy Violates Academic Freedom (Guest Blog Post)
[Eric’s introductory note: this guest blog post comes from my colleague Stephen Diamond. You may have seen that last week the Kansas Board of Regents adopted a “social media use” policy for faculty members, which sadly represents the kind of…
Court Won’t Order Google To Lift Manual Block For ‘Thin Content’–ICF v. Google
ICF provides web hosting services to hundreds of pornography websites. Google allegedly manually blocked these sites for spam, characterizing them as having “thin content,” which Google defines as “providing internet content that has little or no value to end-users.” The…
National Advertising Division (NAD) Doesn’t Consider Section 230 Defenses
In October, I spoke at the National Advertising Division’s (NAD) annual conference on a panel about Section 230 and advertiser liability for user-generated content (UGC). [Sorry for my delay posting this recap]. A paradigmatic example is a Facebook brand page…
Court Accepts Narrow View of CAN-SPAM Preemption but Ultimately Dismisses Claims – Davison Design v. Riley
This is a lawsuit over spam emails. I know, it’s 2013, but bear with me. Riley sent a demand letter alleging that numerous emails sent by or on behalf of plaintiff violated California’s spam statute. Plaintiff turned around and filed…
Revenge Porn Plot Leads To Criminal Conviction–New York v. Piznarski (Forbes Cross-Post)
Recently, the California Attorney General’s office got a lot of attention for arresting Kevin Bollaert, the alleged operator of a revenge porn website. While the arrest was widely popular, it raised many questions. Why did the prosecutors seemingly stretch to…
Should We Cheer The California Attorney General’s Revenge Porn Arrest–Or Find It Alarming? (Forbes Cross-Post)
The California Attorney General’s office announced the arrest of Kevin Christopher Bollaert for his role in a revenge porn scheme. Most folks are cheering the arrest for understandable reasons: revenge porn is odious, especially when victims must pay to remove…
Prosecutor Makes Ill-Advised Tweets During Criminal Case–State v. Polk
Polk was convicted of assaulting an 11 year old some 20 years after the event, in part based on DNA evidence. The prosecutor (@JenniferJoyceCA) tweeted about the case during the trial: Circuit Attorney Jennifer M. Joyce repeatedly used her Twitter…