H2 2013 Quick Links, Part 1 (IP)
Copyright * Appellate briefs in the latest Second Circuit trip for YouTube v. Viacom. Prior blog post. * Fox Broadcasting Company, Inc. v. Dish Network L.L.C., 723 F.3d 1067 (9th Cir. 2013). Another case where remote DVR users made the copies, not…
The Sochi Olympics and European Answers to Cross-Border Copyright Questions (Guest Blog Post)
[by guest blogger Marketa Trimble] With the Sochi Winter Olympic Games approaching, it is time again to follow again one of the unofficial Olympic “sports” – the evasion of geolocation. Internet users around the globe will be bypassing websites’ geoblocking…
Top Ten Internet Law Developments Of 2013 (Forbes Cross-Post)
A look back at the Internet law highlights of 2013: #10: Copyright Defendants Get High-Stakes Wins. 2013 saw several copyright defendants win long-running litigation affairs–and potentially crack open new markets, including (1) Google’s stirring win in its nearly decade-long Google…
Is Sacramento The World’s Capital of Internet Privacy Regulation? (Forbes Cross-Post)
It’s only two hours between Sacramento, California’s state capitol, and the Silicon Valley, the world’s technology capital, but when it comes to regulating the Internet, philosophically they are worlds apart. The two worlds collided in 2013 when Sacramento enacted a…
Details About Amazon’s Confidential Settlement Terms For A Keyword Advertising Lawsuit (Forbes Cross-Post)
Most lawsuits settle; and most settlements are confidential. As a result, outsiders often don’t learn who “won” a settled lawsuit or the range of standard settlement terms. Fortunately, a dispute over the settlement agreement in a keyword advertising trademark lawsuit…
Florida Drops Ill-Conceived Proposal To Ban Competitive Keyword Advertising By Lawyers (Forbes Cross-Post)
In March, the Florida State Bar’s Standing Committee on Advertising proposed an ethics opinion (Proposed Advisory Opinion A-12-1). The opinion was designed to help Florida lawyers understand what they could ethically do with online marketing. It targeted a melange of…
AAUP Says Kansas Regents’ New Faculty Social Media Use Policy Violates Academic Freedom (Guest Blog Post)
[Eric’s introductory note: this guest blog post comes from my colleague Stephen Diamond. You may have seen that last week the Kansas Board of Regents adopted a “social media use” policy for faculty members, which sadly represents the kind of…
Court Won’t Order Google To Lift Manual Block For ‘Thin Content’–ICF v. Google
ICF provides web hosting services to hundreds of pornography websites. Google allegedly manually blocked these sites for spam, characterizing them as having “thin content,” which Google defines as “providing internet content that has little or no value to end-users.” The…
National Advertising Division (NAD) Doesn’t Consider Section 230 Defenses
In October, I spoke at the National Advertising Division’s (NAD) annual conference on a panel about Section 230 and advertiser liability for user-generated content (UGC). [Sorry for my delay posting this recap]. A paradigmatic example is a Facebook brand page…
Revenge Porn Plot Leads To Criminal Conviction–New York v. Piznarski (Forbes Cross-Post)
Recently, the California Attorney General’s office got a lot of attention for arresting Kevin Bollaert, the alleged operator of a revenge porn website. While the arrest was widely popular, it raised many questions. Why did the prosecutors seemingly stretch to…