Scribd Must Comply With The Americans With Disabilities Act (Forbes Cross-Post)
The Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) is an important civil rights law intended to ensure that people with physical disabilities can enjoy the same social and economic interactions as everyone else. The law had ambitious visions about social equality, but…
QVC Can’t Stop Web Scraping–QVC v. Resultly (Forbes Cross-Post)
“Web scraping,” also called crawling or spidering, is the automated gathering of data from someone else’s website. Scraping is an essential part of how the Internet functions. For example, Google uses web scraping to build its search database worth hundreds…
GA Supreme Court Fixes Overbroad Injunction Against Message Board Operator–Chan v. Ellis
This case involves message board posts by a community that criticized Ellis’s copyright enforcement efforts. Ellis sought and obtained a protection order against Chan, the operator of the message board, on the legal grounds that the users’ posts constituted “stalking”….
Court Rejects Bizarre Attempt To Scrub Consumer Review–Goren v. Ripoff Report
I previously blogged about this matter (see also Venkat’s update). A Massachusetts attorney, Goren, was unhappy about a user review of his law firm posted to Ripoff Report, which is well-known for not removing user posts. The plaintiffs sued the…
In IMDb Privacy Case, 9th Circuit Rejects Hoang’s Appeal
Hoang alleged that IMDb improperly used her personal information to find out her real age and published her real age on its website. She argued that this harmed her employment prospects in the industry. The jury ruled for IMDb. Hoang…
Morel Denied Attorneys’ Fees In Long-Running Suit Over Photos Lifted From Twitpic
Daniel Morel uploaded iconic Haiti earthquake photos to Twitpic and shared them via Twitter. Getty Images and AFP republished the photos without permission, and Morel scored a big $1.2M verdict when the jury ruled in his favor. However, the court…
Online Dating App Grindr Isn’t Liable For Underage ‘Threesome’ (Forbes Cross-Post)
Many online dating services undertake some efforts to screen out dangerous or problematic members, but what should the law do if those screening efforts aren’t perfect? As a recent case involving Grindr shows, the answer is nothing. Grindr is an…
Court Says Uber and Lyft Drivers May be Employees
Drivers for Uber and Lyft claimed they are employees, not independent contractors. Two different judges hearing these cases both held that factual questions preclude summary judgment in favor of Uber and Lyft. As Judge Chhabria, who is hearing the Lyft…
Theater Employee’s Post-Termination Blogging Isn’t a Matter of “Public Concern”
This is a long-running and vitriolic dispute between James Ryan and Yvonne Johnson. Johnson was the director of the Spokane Civic Theater. She hired Ryan to be the music director. A few months after the hiring, Johnson fired Ryan allegedly…
GoDaddy Gets Important Section 230 Win in Second Circuit–Ricci v. Teamsters Union Local 456
GoDaddy won a Section 230 case in the Second Circuit. It’s a short and efficient ruling, but it’s a published opinion and the court says it’s the first Second Circuit opinion on Section 230 (I haven’t double-checked), which makes it…