Section 230 Protects Facebook’s Account and Content Restriction Decisions–Ebeid v. Facebook
Courts, at least in the Ninth Circuit, have collapsed the distinction between Sections 230(c)(1) and 230(c)(2). As a result, (c)(1) now routinely protects a service’s content filtering and account restriction decisions, which is nominally the job of (c)(2). This is…
Using Third Party Trademarks as Hashtags Creates an Implied Association–Align v. Strauss (Guest Blog Post)
by guest blogger Alexandra Jane Roberts When does using a competitor’s trademark as a hashtag create a false impression of association? While plenty of cases have assessed whether a company’s use of competitors’ marks in its advertisements constitutes trademark infringement,…
Airbnb Gets Mixed Results in Challenge to Boston’s Anti-Airbnb Law–Airbnb v. Boston
Boston enacted a law against short-term housing rentals that included these provisions: (1) a $300/violation/day fine for booking illegal short-term rentals (the “penalties” provision), (2) a city-wide ban on booking agents that don’t honor notice-and-takedown or verify vendor licenses (the…
Wisconsin Supreme Court Fixes a Bad Section 230 Opinion—Daniel v. Armslist
In 2018, the Wisconsin Court of Appeals issued a bizarre opinion suggesting that plaintiffs could avoid Section 230 by targeting the service’s design and operation. The authoring judge seemed confident that he had spotted a statutory interpretation flaw that hundreds…
New Essay: The Complicated Story of FOSTA and Section 230
I’m pleased to announce my essay, The Complicated Story of FOSTA and Section 230. This essay tries to simplify a very complicated set of topics and summarize it in a fairly short and readable piece. I hope this essay provides one-stop-shopping…
Ninth Circuit Chunks Another Section 230 Ruling—HomeAway v. Santa Monica (Catch-up Post)
I’m finally blogging this Airbnb/HomeAway 230 ruling from 6 weeks ago. Why so long? Honestly, I lacked the emotional fortitude to blog it. The outcome isn’t novel—it reaches the same conclusion as the Airbnb v. San Francisco ruling from 2016 (a…
Roundup of February’s ‘COMO at Scale Brussels’ Event
On Wednesday, I’m attending the IAPP event, Content Moderation in 2019, in Washington DC. We’ll be getting some of the old band back together again. Hope to see you there. In anticipation of that, I’m finally posting my delayed roundup…
Photographer Sues for Failure to Provide Creative Commons-Required Attribution–Philpot v. WOS
“Philpot has been a professional photographer, in his view, since 2008.” (“in his view” = ouch). He has not found financial success. For example, “he once earned $0.88 for an image of Prince that he took at a concert he…
New Paper: “Why Section 230 Is Better Than the First Amendment”
I’m pleased to share a new article, “Why Section 230 Is Better Than the First Amendment.” It’s still in draft, so I’d be grateful for your comments. As you know, the future of Section 230 looks bleak. This paper addresses…
Forming an Online Contract May Be Harder Than Tough Mudder’s Salmon Ladder
This case reaches a relatively non-controversial outcome. It rejects an arbitration clause in an online TOS. Still, how the court reaches that conclusion should set off warning bells for everyone trying to impose arbitration in an online TOS. The bar…