Q1 2016 Quick Links, Part 3 (DOJ v. Apple, ISIS, Censorship & More)
Surveillance * The whole Apple v. DOJ fracas was insane! NY Times: In Nod to Law Enforcement, Obama Ends Attempt to Straddle Privacy Divide. Vice: Obama’s Call for Encryption ‘Compromise’ Is Hypocritical. NY Times: For Apple, a Search for a…
Sketchy Suit Between Native Advertising Competitors Produces Sketchy Section 230 Ruling–Adblade v. RevContent
This case is filled with sketchiness. First, the litigants compete in the “native advertising industry,” which doesn’t have a great reputation (and this lawsuit isn’t likely to improve it). Second, the ads in question promote wrinkle creams, diet pills and…
Q1 2016 Quick Links, Part 2 (Online Jurisdiction)
Oh yay, an entire quick links post dedicated to online jurisdiction! * Kindig It Design, Inc. v. Creative Controls, Inc., 2016 WL 247574 (D. Utah. Jan. 20, 2016) Furthermore, maintaining an interactive website is no longer the sole purview of…
Q1 2016 Quick Links, Part 1 (Trademarks and Domain Names)
* Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences v. GoDaddy.com, Inc., 2015 WL 5311085 (C.D. Cal. Sept. 10, 2015). A major win for GoDaddy—and domain name parking programs generally—against a long-running cybersquatting suit by the Motion Picture Academy. This ruling…
Alleged “Conspiracy” Among Disgruntled Ex-Employees Defeats Section 230–Tanisha v. Chandra
[Note: as I’ve mentioned before, sometimes Westlaw randomly spits out cases months after they were issued. This opinion is 4 months old but just appeared in my Westlaw alerts this week. Despite its age, I’m blogging it because of its…
Amazon Defeats Publicity Rights Lawsuit Over ‘A Gronking To Remember’ Book Cover (Forbes Cross-Post)
Greg McKenna writes as a woman using the pen name Lacey Noonan. In 2014, McKenna wrote the book “A Gronking to Remember,” an erotic “fan fiction” book about New England Patriots tight end Rob Gronkowski. He self-published the book digitally…
Big Win For Free Speech Online In Backpage Lawsuit (Forbes Cross-Post)
Regulators and plaintiffs have been trying to eradicate online prostitution ads for a decade. These efforts have been partially hampered by 47 U.S.C. 230 (Section 230), a law Congress enacted in 1996 to protect websites from liability for third party…
Facebook Isn’t Liable For Fake User Account Containing Non-Consensual Pornography–Caraccioli v. Facebook (Forbes Cross-Post)
Franco Caraccioli is a third-year law student in San Diego. For reasons not explained in the opinion, someone created a fake Facebook account named “Franco Caracciolijerkingman” and posted photos and videos of Caraccioli “sexually arousing or pleasuring himself.” (All facts…
PGA Can Turn Caddies Into ‘Human Billboards’–Hicks v. PGA Tour
As I’ve written before, marketers are in a never-ending quest to find and exploit new ways to capture consumer attention. With the rise of DVR ad-avoidance technologies, marketers keep finding more unskippable broadcast TV ad exposures like product placements. And…
Google Defeats Lawsuit Over Duplicate Content Penalty–D’Agostino v. Appliances Buy Phone
D’Agostino provided web development services to the Appliances Buy Phone (ABP) website. He wanted to sharpen his SEO skills, so he agreed in 2009 with the ABP owners to create a mirror version of ABP, called Appliances4Sale (AFS) as a…