Announcing the 2025 Edition of My Internet Law Casebook

July 30, 2025 · by · in General, Internet History

I’m pleased to announce the 2025 edition (16th edition) of my Internet Law casebook, Internet Law: Cases & Materials. The book is available in multiple formats: a PDF for $10, a Kindle ebook for $9.99, a softcover version for $20, and a hardcover version for $28. [All printed versions come with a free PDF on request.] For my thoughts about self-publishing an ebook casebook, see this article.

If you’re an academic and would like a free evaluation PDF, email me. I can also share my presentation slides. You might also check out (1) my Internet Law course page, which includes 28 years of syllabi and old exams with sample answers, (2) my article on “Teaching Cyberlaw,” (3) my blog post on teaching Internet Law as an online-only course, and (4) my Canvas modules for my Fall 2021 online-only course (I can email my most current ones on request).

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It has been a busy–and depressing–year for Internet Law, which led to a high number of changes to the book. Some of the most important changes this year:

Jurisdiction. Ever since I took the Step Two case out of the casebook, I’ve been unsure how to teach the personal jurisdiction topic. Last year’s casebook addition, AMB, was a fail. This year, I replaced the AMB case with the Ninth Circuit’s en banc ruling in Briskin v. Shopify. But the Briskin ruling is also a pedagogical mess, so I’m not sure how I’ll teach that case either.

Online Contracts. The Chabolla ruling, combined with the follow-on Godun ruling, are major precedents, so I added them to the book. Together, these rulings show how modern courts will apply exacting standards to every TOS formation detail; and if you aren’t using a “clickwrap,” your odds of TOS formation keep declining. I view pre-2025 TOS cases that upheld formation, especially for “sign-in-wraps,” as dubious precedent.

To make room for Chabolla and Godun, I reluctantly removed the Meyer v. Uber and Register.com opinions.

The Meyer v. Uber case was a good teaching case, but I’m dubious it’s still good law. After all, Uber’s TOS formation completely failed in Massachusetts, and Uber had to reimpose its TOS in Massachusetts and New York using a more rigorous “clickwrap” formation process. I am uncertain that the Uber’s mid-2010s-era TOS formation would survive today after Chabolla and Godun.

The Register.com ruling is an Internet Law chestnut that I enjoyed teaching for over 20 years. I took especial delight in mocking its apple stand analogy, and I blew students’ minds showing them how the court’s ruling didn’t mean that Verio was necessarily out of business. On the minus side, the opinion takes a long time to read and teach. Doctrinally, the case’s main payoff was to articulate the Restatements 69 contract formation workaround to standard TOS formation. However, Restatements 69 formation is a niche doctrine that has not found much traction in online contract formation in recent years, and it looks even more dubious post-Chabolla. Spending so much time on Restatements 69 gave students the misimpression that the workaround is more significant than it really is. I added a new casebook note about the Restatements 69 principle and will briefly teach the niche doctrine that way.

Because I took out Meyer and Register.com, I essentially rewrote the entire online contracts chapter. You can check out the rewritten chapter for free here.

Copyright Fair Use. The casebook includes a short note summarizing some basic fair use principles. To give students an illustration of those principles, for years, the book summarized the Google Books fair use ruling. However, I’ve lost confidence that the Google Books fair use ruling is still good law in light of the Generative AI fair use rulings this year. As a result, I removed the Google Books note and replaced it with the Griner v. King case on fair use and memes.

Keyword Advertising. The combination of the 1-800 Contacts v. Warby Parker (2d Cir.) and Lerner & Rowe (9th Cir.) decisions were devastating to keyword advertising plaintiffs. The Lerner & Rowe ruling addresses all of the same doctrinal issues as the Network Automation case, but it’s a current, comprehensive, and clearly stated summation of the law, so I replaced Network Automation with it.

Child Safety/Pornography. I reluctantly added the Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton decision. It’s a long opinion that is replete with countless incidents of intellectual slipperiness, so it’s a terrible teaching case. I mean…let me know if you think you can articulate a principled justification for how the court decided that intermediate scrutiny applied (other than the obvious Calvinball explanation) and why it conducted its own intermediate scrutiny analysis de novo without asking the lower courts to do that work first. In addition to the edited opinion, I wrote 5,000+ words of notes and questions to highlight and contextualize the opinion’s many problems.

I also added a 2,000 word note about the Take It Down Act.

In total, this year I replaced 4 principal cases, added 2 new principal cases, added 10k+ words of new explanatory material, and rewrote the online contracts chapter. As the (purportedly) Chinese proverb says, may you live in interesting times. 📉

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Over the years, I’ve posted a number of book excerpts, including:

(Some of the freely available excerpts are dated, but every year I update everything still in the book).

As always, I invite your comments and questions.

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Table of Contents

I. What is the Internet? Who Regulates It?
Overview
Noah v. AOL (E.D. Va.)
Determining the Geographic Location of Internet-Connected Devices

II. Jurisdiction
Evaluating Personal Jurisdiction
Briskin v. Shopify (9th Cir. en banc)

III. Contracts
Chabolla v. ClassPass (9th Cir.)
Godun v. JustAnswer (9th Cir.)
Canteen v. Charlotte Metro Credit Union (N.C. Sup. Ct.)

IV. Trespass/Computer Fraud & Abuse Act
Overview of Trespass to Chattels Doctrines
X v. Bright Data (N.D. Cal.)

V. Copyright
Copyright Basics (Copyright Office Circular 1)

Note About Fair Use
Griner v. King (8th Cir.)

Cartoon Network v. CSC (2d Cir.)
MGM Studios v. Grokster (Sup. Ct.)

Secondary Liability
Primer on Contributory and Vicarious Copyright Infringement
Overview of Section 512(c)
UMG v. Shelter Capital (9th Cir. revised opinion)

Recap
Ticketmaster v. RMG

VI. Trademarks and Domain Names
Trademark FAQs
Trademark Glossary

A. Domain Names and Metatags
Lamparello v. Falwell (4th Cir.)
Promatek v. Equitrac (7th Cir.) Original Order and Revision

B. Search Engines
Lerner & Rowe v. Brown Engstrand & Shely (9th Cir.)

Tiffany v. eBay (2d Cir.)

VII. Content Regulation and Child Safety
Pornography Glossary
Moody v. NetChoice (U.S. Sup. Ct)
A Note on Congress’ Early Regulation of Online Pornography
Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton (U.S. Sup. Ct.)
A Note on the Take It Down Act

VIII. Defamation and Information Torts
Bauer v. Brinkman (Iowa Sup. Ct.)

47 U.S.C. §230
An Introduction to Section 230
A Note About FOSTA
Zeran v. America Online (4th Cir.)
Lemmon v. Snap (9th Cir.)

Twitter v. Taamneh (U.S. Sup. Ct.)

Top Myths About Content Moderation
Section 230 and Foreign Liability for Third-Party Content

IX. Privacy
Excerpts from 16 C.F.R. Part 312, the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act’s
Regulations
Overview of the E.U.’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and State Consumer
Privacy Laws
In re. Pharmatrak (1st Cir.)

X. Spam

XI. Social Media
People v. Lopez (Cal. App. Ct.)
Moreno v. Hanford Sentinel (Cal. App. Ct.)

REVIEW QUESTION ANSWERS