First Amendment Precludes Disorderly Conduct Conviction for Ranting on Police Department Facebook Page
Smith was convicted following a jury trial of disorderly conduct and unlawful use of a computerized communication system. His charge stemmed for comments to the local police department’s Facebook page (access the town’s webpage here). The police department initially posted…
Criminal Cyberbullying Statute Violates First Amendment–New York v. Marquan
Albany County enacted a criminal cyberbulling statute, which defined cyberbulling as: any act of communicating or causing a communication to be sent by mechanical or electronic means, including posting statements on the internet or through a computer or email network,…
Stalking Conviction For Friending a Prosecutor’s Facebook Friends?–State v. Moller
Online stalking and threats are hot topics today, especially in light of the Supreme Court granting cert in US v. Elonis (we plan to recap that case before oral arguments). Today’s case highlights the grey area between veiled threats and…
Email Harvesting: Repeated Emails From LinkedIn May Violate Publicity Rights
This is a lawsuit alleging that LinkedIn improperly mined users’ contact lists and sent them repeated invitation emails. While Judge Koh eliminated the Stored Communications Act and California anti-hacking statute claims, a chunk of the lawsuit remains. Harvesting contact lists…
Revenge Porn/Cyberstalking Conviction Doesn’t Violate First Amendment–US v. Osinger
V.B. and Osinger had a relationship. When it terminated, he continued to contact her in a variety of ways (email, text, etc.). They originally lived in Illinois, but V.B. moved to California, where she accepted a job. Before she moved,…
Path May Be Liable for Text-Spamming Users’ Contact Lists
Sterk, of Sterk v. Redbox fame, sued Path, alleging that he received unsolicited marketing texts from Path. The court declined Path’s request to stay the case in favor of FCC proceedings, and the parties filed summary judgment motions on the…
Police Officers Aren’t Liable For Investigating Cyberstalking and Revenge Porn–Keaton v. Hannum
Keaton is an Indiana lawyer who was charged with stalking and otherwise harassing his ex-girlfriend, Zook (then a law student). When she broke it off, Keaton continued to contact her. When she changed her phone number, he engaged a private…
CAN-SPAM Preemption Doesn’t Apply To Fraud…And More
This a spam case. Plaintiff sued, alleging violations of California’s spam statute with respect to 49 emails. Plaintiff alleged that defendants: register[ed] its domain names used to send spams to unregistered fictitious business names claiming their addresses to be boxes…
Hulu Unable to Shake Video Privacy Protection Act Claims
Plaintiffs were Hulu Plus subscribers who alleged that Hulu improperly disclosed their personal information to third parties (comScore and Facebook) in violation of the Video Privacy Protection Act. On Hulu’s motion for summary judgment, the court grants it as to…
Disclosing Unique User IDs In URLs Doesn’t Violate ECPA–In re Zynga/Facebook
In separate lawsuits, plaintiffs alleged Facebook and Zynga violated the Stored Communications Act (in Zynga’s case, also the Wiretap Act). The crux of plaintiffs’ allegations was that when a Facebook user clicked on an ad or a link, the HTTP…