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…
The Righthaven Debacle, 5 Years Later
You probably recall Righthaven, the now-defunct copyright enforcement entity (some might call it a copyright troll) that purchased newspapers’ copyrights so it could sue small-time bloggers who republished articles; after suing, it would demand financial settlements the bloggers couldn’t afford….
It Takes a Default Judgment to Win a 17 USC 512(f) Case–Automattic v. Steiner
In enacting the DMCA’s notice-and-takedown system, Congress knew copyright owners and others might send takedown notices overzealously. To discourage abuses of the notice-and-takedown system, Congress enacted 17 USC 512(f) to create a new cause of action for sending bogus takedown…
Adware Advertiser Sidesteps Liability
This case involves a browser plug-in from IMS, whose affiliates allegedly surreptitiously installed the plug-in on users’ computers. The plug-in allegedly caused pop-up ads to appear when users visited designated websites. Reed Elsevier allegedly advertised via these pop-up ads, triggering…
Blogiversary Bonus! A Video Interview About the Blog
Earlier this month, we celebrated the blog’s 10 year anniversary. In preparation for the anniversary, my RA Addam suggested making a video to help celebrate. After all, we don’t normally generate video content, so I thought it might be fun…
Catching Up on Section 230 Cases From the Past 18 Months
I try to blog every Section 230 case I see. However, over the past year and a half, I’ve collected a few Section 230 cases that I had hoped to blog but that fell through the cracks for one reason…