If TOS Formation Fails, Bad Legal Outcomes Are Likely to Follow–Doe v. Roblox
This case involves Roblox, a virtual world. Allegedly, a majority of Roblox users are under 13. Roblox has an in-game currency, Robux. Users can manufacture virtual items in-game, and other users can buy those items using Robux, with Roblox taking…
Messaging Apps Raise Tricky E-Discovery Issues (Guest Blog Post)
by guest blogger Philip Favro Several recent court cases spotlight the challenges that messaging apps present in litigation. In particular, these cases show that messaging apps—whose features may cause message content to either be kept or deleted—have an outsized impact…
Section 230 Protects Retweeting–Banaian v. Bascom
[I’m forestalling more analysis of the Texas social media censorship law until we get some clarity on what happened and what’s next.] A student hacked the school website and added scandalous content about a teacher, Debbie Banaian, a/k/a “Banaianator.” [Aside:…
Minnesota Wants to Ban Under-18s From User-Generated Content Services
As part of an omnibus bill, the Minnesota House of Representatives passed a troubling bill restricting how under-18 users engage with user-generated content (UGC) services. [At the bottom of this post, I’ve included the text as passed by the Minnesota…
Court Explains How Smileys Are “Prone to Multiple Interpretations”–In re State
This case involves a real estate dispute that’s been in the courts for almost 30 years. (Any case tied up in the courts that long is bound to have lots of drama associated with it and usually has gone well…
COVID Skeptics’ Anti-Jawboning Lawsuit Fails–Changizi v. Department of HHS
Yet another COVID denier lawsuit over getting kicked off social media. These cases seem endless. On the plus side, these plaintiffs didn’t sue Twitter for deplatforming them. Instead, they directed their fire solely at the Department of Health and Human…
COVID Skeptic Loses Lawsuit Over Account Terminations–Hart v. Facebook
Both Facebook and Twitter restricted Hart’s account access due to various posts over COVID, masking, and other culture war issues. Hart sued them for violating the First Amendment. You can guess how that went. The court says they are not…
Twitter Defeats Trump’s Deplatforming Lawsuit–Trump v. Twitter
In July 2021, Trump sued Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube for terminating/suspending his accounts. At the time, I made a 6-step prediction for how the lawsuits would go: Step 3 in the Twitter case, the transfer from Florida to California, occurred…
My Comments on the California Consumer Privacy Rights Act (CPRA) Rulemaking
[Today, I made brief remarks at the CPRA “stakeholder sessions” in the “dark patterns” session. My written transcript:] I’m Eric Goldman, a law professor at Santa Clara University School of Law, where I direct the school’s Privacy Law Certificate. My…
Section 512(c) Protects Pinterest Despite Its Algorithms–Davis v. Pinterest
“Plaintiff contends that Pinterest has infringed the copyrights of 51 of his works by displaying these works in proximity to advertisements and by displaying and distributing them to users via notifications.” The court gives this screenshot as an example. Davis’…