North Carolina State Supreme Court Strikes Down Cyberbullying Statute
Dillion Price, the putative victim, was the subject of Facebook discussions by his high school peers. A classmate of Price’s posted a screenshot of a sexually themed text message Price allegedly sent him. Commentary ensued, and defendant Robert Bishop commented…
Scraping Lawsuit Survives Dismissal Motion–CouponCabin v. Savings.com
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…
Yelp Forced To Remove Defamatory Reviews–Hassell v. Bird
[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…
WTF Is Going On With Section 230?–Cross v. Facebook
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. *…
De Minimis Music Sampling Isn’t Infringement–Salsoul v. Madonna
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…