Constitutional Challenge to Section 230 Fails On Standing Grounds–AFDI v. Lynch

This lawsuit involves a facial attack on Section 230 on First Amendment grounds. The plaintiffs are unhappy that, protected by Section 230, social media companies have squelched some of their speech while allowing other speakers to promulgate content they don’t…

Backpage Can’t Challenge the SAVE Act–Backpage v. Lynch

I never had a chance to blog the 2015 SAVE Act, but I always meant to. It’s one of the rare times that Congress intentionally circumscribed Section 230. However, instead of amending Section 230 directly, Congress added a federal criminal…

Google Loses Two Section 230(c)(2) Rulings–Spy Phone v. Google and Darnaa v. Google

Section 230(c)(2) doesn’t get a lot of love from practitioners or academics because it doesn’t get a lot of love in court. At the motion to dismiss stage, plaintiffs often can get past a Section 230(c)(2) defense by alleging the…

Court Upholds Airbnb’s Terms of Service–Selden v. Airbnb

This lawsuit alleges that Airbnb’s “hosts” racially discriminate when accepting customers’ bookings. Airbnb sought to send the case to arbitration per its Terms of Service, which the plaintiffs challenges. Contract Formation Trying to sort through the nomenclature confusion created by…

2H 2016 Quick Links, Part 1 (Special Election Edition)

I’ve already cast my ballot, and I hope you will vote too. I don’t normally wade into election politics but there have been several election issues that touch on topics of interest to this blog. So, for the first time,…

Stock Music Library Wins DMCA Safe Harbor Defense–Hempton v. Pond5

Gordon Hempton, an “acoustic ecologist,” creates sound clips of nature. Pond5 runs a stock library–similar to an online marketplace–consisting of 20M content items, including music clips, uploaded by 58,000 registered users. “ckennedy342” is a Pond5 uploader who, it turns out,…

Another Tortured DMCA Online Safe Harbor Ruling–EMI v. MP3Tunes

We’re inadvertently “celebrating” Section 512 week at the Technology and Marketing Law Blog, with Monday’s post on the Copyright Office’s kneecapping of designated agents, today’s post on the MP3Tunes ruling, and a forthcoming post on Pond5. In the past, blogging…