Airline Sues to Stop Popular Web-Scraping Service–American Airlines v. The Points Guy (Guest Blog Post)
by guest blogger Kieran McCarthy Those interested in web scraping legal issues had high hopes that the Supreme Court’s opinion in Van Buren v. United States last summer would provide clear guidelines on which types of online data access were…
How Fair Use Helps Bloggers Publish Their Research (Cross-Post)
[I published this post initially on the Association of Research Libraries blog in celebration of Fair Use Week 2022. Prayers for Ukraine.] Bloggers play an increasingly important role in the research ecosystem, especially as investigative journalism has declined. Bloggers often…
A Glimmer of Hope That the Copyright Claims Board (CCB) Won’t Turn Into a Troll Factory
This is much-delayed blog coverage of the Copyright Office’s Notice of Proposed Rulemaking addressing “procedures related to conducting an active proceeding, post-determination review, smaller claims, and the conduct of parties.” The NPRM would allow (1) anyone in a corporate family…
Section 230 Protects Google for Including Telegram In Its App Store–Ginsberg v. Google
The plaintiffs claim that violent extremists, anti-Semites, haters, and other malefactors use Telegram, and thus its availability in the Google Play Store violates Google’s Developer Guidelines. This is yet another remix of the old Noah v. AOL case, where a…
So Many Unanswered Empirical Questions About FOSTA
I read an article, “Sex Trafficking and Technology: A Systematic Review of Recruitment and Exploitation,” by Lindsay B. Gezinski & Kwynn M. Gonzalez-Pons (unfortunately paywalled). They did a comprehensive and systematic review to identify empirical studies that bear on online…
Apple Defeats Copyright Lawsuit Over Emoji Depictions–Cub Club v. Apple
The court summarizes the case: Cub Club Investment created an app that allowed people to send racially diverse emoji. According to the complaint, when Apple learned of the app, it liked the idea—so much so, in fact, that it copied…
Georgia Supreme Court Blesses Google’s Keyword Ad Sales–Edible IP v. Google
Edible Arrangements objected to Google selling its trademark to trigger keyword ads. They filed a trademark lawsuit in 2018 but abandoned the suit when it got sent to arbitration. However, they didn’t give up! The Edible team had the brilliant…
Another Problematic FOSTA Ruling–Doe v. Pornhub
A few observations from reading numerous FOSTA cases: sex trafficking victim cases are horrifying. courts cannot figure out how to interpret FOSTA. due to FOSTA’s ambiguities, judges are turning to judicial activism to favor victims regardless of the law. the…
California Appellate Court Rejects Poorly Executed “Sign-In Wrap”–Sellers v. JustAnswer (Guest Blog Post)
By guest blogger Kieran McCarthy Contracts are a state-law issue. And online contracts, even though they exist in the friction-less, boundary-less world of the internet, are also generally governed by state-law principles. Which is why it is perhaps odd that…
Constituents Can Sue Chicago Alderman for Blocking Their Facebook Comments–Czosnyka v. Gardiner
James Gardiner is Alderman for Chicago’s 45th district. Six of his constituents allege that they were blocked from engaging with Gardiner’s Facebook page or their comments were hidden/deleted. They sued him for First Amendment violations. Gardiner made the weak argument…