Attempted Trademark Workaround to 47 USC 230 Immunity Fails Badly—Ascentive v. PissedConsumer [Catch-Up Post]
By Eric Goldman [This is one of the top dozen or so most important Internet law opinions of 2011, but unfortunately it came out just as I was going into my exam-grading exile and I had to put blogging it…
TheDirty Denied 47 USC 230 Immunity–Jones v. Dirty World
By Eric Goldman Jones v. Dirty World Entertainment Recordings, LLC, 2012 WL 70426 (E.D. Ky. Jan. 10, 2012). Prior blog post on this case. A Kentucky federal judge rejected 47 USC 230 immunity for thedirty.com for third-party content. It’s entirely…
Nov.-Dec. 2011 Quick Links, Part 1
By Eric Goldman 47 USC 230 * Wang v. OCZ Technology Group, Inc., 2011 WL 4903190 (N.D. Cal. Oct. 14, 2011). In a false advertising suit, the plaintiff argued that the defendant quoted/linked to third party testimonials on the defendant’s…
Academic Literature Recap, Q4 2011
By Eric Goldman I’m mired in grading heck, slogging my way through 146 exams. As a result, blogging has taken a back seat. I have several key items to blog, including the UMG v. Shelter Capital and Ascentive v. Opinion…
Medical Justice Capitulates by “Retiring” Its Anti-Patient Review Contracts
By Eric Goldman It’s been a rough week for Medical Justice, the company that tries to help doctors suppress patient reviews. First, the Center for Democracy and Technology filed an FTC complaint alleging three main points: (1) Medical Justice deceives…
October 2011 Quick Links
By Eric Goldman Copyright * MUST READ from Techdirt: MPAA Helped Police Seize ‘Pirated’ DVDs That Were Actually Fully Authorized. On the topic of errors in determining copyright infringement, the incident a powerful reminder both that even those “in the…
Did California Unintentionally (?) Impose New Statutory Duties on Every Blogger? A Post on the Newly Enacted California Reader Privacy Act
By Eric Goldman California recently enacted the Reader Privacy Act, SB 602. See the EFF announcement. This new California law seeks to protect online book reader privacy to the same extent reader privacy is protected by libraries, by requiring heightened…
Q3 2011 Quick Links, Part 4
By Eric Goldman Content Regulation * Lawmakers are putting the squeeze on advertisers to be content police. Meanwhile, VeriSign begged for the right to act as content police before changing its mind. * Kowalski v. Koster, 2011 WL 4349365 (W.D….
Article on Bypassing Geographic Content Restrictions Using Borrowed IP Addresses
By Eric Goldman Marketa Trimble (UNLV Law) has posted a full copy of her article, The Future of Cybertravel: Legal Implications of the Evasion of Geolocation. I’ve highlighted this article before, such as in my coverage of the Internet Law…
Stock Trading Message Board Protected by 47 USC 230–Deer Consumer Products v. Little
By Eric Goldman Deer Consumer Products v. Little, Index No. 650823/11 (NY Sup. Ct. Aug. 31, 2011) SeekingAlpha is a message board for stock traders. This is their second appearance on the blog. In Desai v. Clark, a SeekingAlpha author…