District Court Blocks More of Texas’ Segregate-and-Suppress Law (HB 18)–SEAT v. Paxton
Texas enacted HB 18, a typical smorgasbord law packed full of policy ideas–all bad and undertheorized–under the pretext of protecting kids online. In September, the court enjoined part of the law. See CCIA v. Paxton. Now, the court enjoins much…
Celebrating the Blog’s 20th Blogiversary (Part 1 of 10)
🎶 It was 20 years ago today…Sgt. Pepper taught the band to blog… 🎶 (Close enough: the actual anniversary was Saturday). On February 8, 2005, I started blogging here. 🎉🎉🎉 Over the past 20 years: this blog has published a…
Section 230 Immunizes OnlyFans for User-Uploaded Video (Again)–Doe v. Fenix
A prior ruling summarized the facts the court describes as “harrowing”: In April 2022, Defendant Bendjy Charles (“Charles”) and Romelus raped Plaintiff. Charles and Romelus filmed each other while they raped Plaintiff. Romelus subsequently uploaded video footage of Romelus and…
Section 230 Still Works in the Fourth Circuit (For Now)–M.P. v. Meta
I’m going to classify this ruling as a “big deal,” with the crucial caveat that Section 230 is still doomed and this ruling doesn’t reverse that. Given how judges have turned against Section 230, at this point any appellate ruling…
Section 230 Protects Newspaper’s Removal of User Comments–Affleck v. Harvard Crimson
Here’s a twist. The plaintiff in this case, Jonathan Affleck, was the plaintiff in Martillo v. Twitter, but he sued then under a nom de plume. The court issues him a chastising warning against using unauthorized pseudonyms. In this case,…
Court Upholds Google’s Ad TOS Amendment to Add an Arbitration Clause–In re Google Digital Advertising Antitrust Litigation
This is a long-running litigation battle over Google’s advertising practices. In 2021, many individual advertiser claims were consolidated into an MDL in SDNY. Four years and 900+ docket entries later, the SNDY court holds that two plaintiffs’ claims must go…
Glassdoor Partially Fixes a Bad Section 230 Ruling–Nicholas Services v. Glassdoor
This case involves two interrelated companies in the private jet industry. One entity (Nicholas Air) was the public brand. The other entity (Corr Flight) provided all of the staffing to the public brand. Employees from the staffing company posted negative…
Copyright Owners Are Still Suing Over Embedding
I thought the legality of embedding was definitively resolved when the Ninth Circuit reaffirmed the “server test” in the Hunley v. Instagram case (note: the 9th Circuit has reaffirmed Hunley twice). Not so. Plaintiffs are still regularly bringing lawsuits over…
Supreme Court Upholds TikTok Ban, and Domestic and Foreign Censors Rejoice–TikTok v. Garland
In 2024, Congress enacted, and President Biden signed, the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, which bans “foreign adversary” ownership of certain types of Internet services. The bill specifically bans Bytedance/TikTok by name. TikTok and its users challenged…
Initial Comments on the Supreme Court’s TikTok Ban Opinion–TikTok v. Garland
[A much longer post is forthcoming. A few initial remarks] [Update: the longer post is live, and it includes these remarks and 4,000 other words. I recommend you read that instead of this] The Supreme Court’s ruling will foster more…