Court Might Enforce A Contract Ban On Consumer Reviews (Forbes Cross-Post)
Claude and Violaine Galland own an apartment in Paris, France. They offer it for rental through VRBO, an online service for vacation rentals. The Gallands’ rental agreement include the following language: “The tenants agree not to use blogs or websites…
Q4 2014 & Q1 2015 Quick Links Part 3 (Facebook)
* AP: Facebook Tells DEA To Stop Operating Fake Profile Pages. Really, that even needs to be said??? Facebook’s letter. WSJ Law Blog: U.S. to Pay Woman $134,000 for Impersonating Her on Facebook * What do people mean when they “like”…
Q4 2014 & Q1 2015 Quick Links Part 2 (Dating, Sex, Pornography)
Dating and Sex * The Atlantic: The Adultery Arms Race * NY Times: Extramarital Dating Site Unsettles the Land of Discreet Affairs * San Francisco Magazine: The cold mathematics of sugar daddy dating. * FTC: Online Dating Service Agrees to…
Q4 2014 & Q1 2015 Quick Links Part 1 (Privacy/Security)
Sony * Fusion: The Sony Pictures Hack Included Many Employees’ Detailed Medical Information * WaPo: The cyberattack on Sony Pictures made employees collateral damage * Fusion: More from the Sony Pictures Hack: Budgets, Layoffs, HR Scripts and 3,800 Social Security Numbers…
A Bibliography About Federal Trade Secret Law Reform (Guest Blog Post)
Eric’s introduction: patent and copyright reform get a lot of attention, and they have overshadowed proposals to create a new federal trade secret civil cause of action that have been floating around in Congress for a few years. I’ve previously…
Scribd Must Comply With The Americans With Disabilities Act (Forbes Cross-Post)
The Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) is an important civil rights law intended to ensure that people with physical disabilities can enjoy the same social and economic interactions as everyone else. The law had ambitious visions about social equality, but…
QVC Can’t Stop Web Scraping–QVC v. Resultly (Forbes Cross-Post)
“Web scraping,” also called crawling or spidering, is the automated gathering of data from someone else’s website. Scraping is an essential part of how the Internet functions. For example, Google uses web scraping to build its search database worth hundreds…
Court Rejects Bizarre Attempt To Scrub Consumer Review–Goren v. Ripoff Report
I previously blogged about this matter (see also Venkat’s update). A Massachusetts attorney, Goren, was unhappy about a user review of his law firm posted to Ripoff Report, which is well-known for not removing user posts. The plaintiffs sued the…
Online Dating App Grindr Isn’t Liable For Underage ‘Threesome’ (Forbes Cross-Post)
Many online dating services undertake some efforts to screen out dangerous or problematic members, but what should the law do if those screening efforts aren’t perfect? As a recent case involving Grindr shows, the answer is nothing. Grindr is an…
GoDaddy Gets Important Section 230 Win in Second Circuit–Ricci v. Teamsters Union Local 456
GoDaddy won a Section 230 case in the Second Circuit. It’s a short and efficient ruling, but it’s a published opinion and the court says it’s the first Second Circuit opinion on Section 230 (I haven’t double-checked), which makes it…