Facebook Not Liable for Private User Groups Per 230–Finkel v. Facebook
By Eric Goldman Finkel v. Facebook, Inc., 2009 N.Y. Slip Op. 32248 (N.Y. Sup. Ct. Sept. 15, 2009) This is a really interesting legal dispute with an entirely predictable outcome for Facebook as a defendant. See my initial blog post…
Craigslist Isn’t Liable for Erotic Services Ads–Dart v. Craigslist
By Eric Goldman Dart v. Craigslist, Inc., 09 C 1385 (N.D. Ill. Oct. 20, 2009) Yesterday, Judge John F. Grady of the Northern District of Illinois federal court dismissed Cook County Sheriff Dart’s lawsuit against Craigslist for user-posted advertisements in…
DePaul Reputation Talk Slides
By Eric Goldman Last week I presented on my long-running Economics of Reputational Information project once again–this time at a DePaul conference on cyberlaw. I titled the talk “A Tale of Two Reputation Systems” and approached it as a comparative…
Q3 2009 Quick Links, Part 4
By Eric Goldman Spam * Ars Technica: “a disturbing number of e-mail users respond to spam, and not just because they’re dumb—some of them did so because they were actually interested in the product or service.” I collected some empirical…
Q3 2009 Quick Links, Part 3
By Eric Goldman Copyright * AP v. All Headline News settles. My initial blog post. The settlement order. * The Turnitin case has settled. My blog post on the district court ruling. * Corbis Corp. v. Starr, No. 3:07CV3741 (N.D….
Q3 2009 Quick Links, Part 2
By Eric Goldman Trademark * Venkat: Twitter makes the dictionary. * Federal Circuit says Hotels.com is generic. * Steve Madden sues eBay for trademark infringement. Marty’s coverage. Justia page. I found the fifth cause of action, “trademark delusion,” a surprisingly…
Q3 2009 Quick Links, Part 1
By Eric Goldman My system of managing news items that don’t warrant a full blog post but can’t fit into a 140 character Twitter post has broken down. So, I’m belatedly catching up on my backlog of things that caught…
Sex Predator Stung By Undercover Officer Who Self-Reported 3 Different Ages–US v. Haile
By Eric Goldman US v. Haile, 2009 WL 3163556 (W.D. Ky. Sept. 29, 2009) Let me start out by stating the obvious: sexual predation of minors is an unacceptable crime. I remain deeply troubled by how many Westlaw cases report…
A Fuller Explanation of Why the FTC Endorsement/Testimonial Guidelines Violate 47 USC 230
By Eric Goldman Last week’s release of the FTC’s new Endorsement and Testimonial Guidelines has generated a significant amount of angst online. The resulting commentary has been strongly and almost uniformly negative. Frankly, none of the sources I read have…
Ochoa on the Duration of James Joyce’s Copyrights
By Tyler Ochoa [Eric’s note: my colleague Tyler Ochoa contributes to the blog from time to time. This time, he submits a modified version of a letter he sent to the editors of the San Francisco Chronicle, wherein he explains…