A First (But Very Incomplete) Crack at Inventorying the California Consumer Privacy Act’s Problems
If you haven’t seen it, I summarized the California Consumer Privacy Act in a 3,000 word primer. If you aren’t familiar with the law, read that first. This post addresses the law’s multitudinous errors and major ambiguities. The list in this…
Businesses Cannot Contractually Ban “Abusive” Consumer Reviews
An article recently posted to SSRN argues that the Consumer Review Fairness Act (CRFA) purportedly lets businesses contractually ban “abusive” reviews. If this is correct, it could affect millions of businesses and hundreds of millions of consumers. However, the article’s…
COMO: Content Moderation at Scale Conference Recap
The COMO: Content Moderation at Scale conference was held in Washington DC in early May. It was a follow-up to the Content Moderation and Removal at Scale conference held at Santa Clara University in early February. See my recap of…
Q2 2018 Quick Links, Part 5 (Potpourri)
My email inbox has gotten out of control, and I had to declare partial email bankruptcy. In this post, I’m largely quoting highlights from 18 cases I had flagged for closer review or possible posting over the past 18 months…
Indianapolis Police Have Been “Blinded Lately Because They Shut Backpage Down”
In the policy discussions about FOSTA, the #1 question always was: if the law works as the organizers predict, will it actually help the victims of sex trafficking? There has always been good reason to believe the answer is no;…
Ten Reasons Why California’s New Data Protection Law is Unworkable, Burdensome, and Possibly Unconstitutional (Guest Blog Post)
By guest blogger Jeff Kosseff [Jeff Kosseff is an assistant professor of cybersecurity law at the U.S. Naval Academy. The views in this post are only his, and do not represent the Naval Academy, Department of Navy, or Department of…
Q2 2018 Quick Links, Part 4 (Social Media, Section 230, Defamation)
Social Media * NY Times: They Tried to Boycott Facebook, Apple and Google. They Failed * Reuters: Philippines complains Facebook fact-checkers are biased * D.R. v. D.A., 17-P-339 (Mass. App. Ct. May 8, 2018). A judge can interpret a Facebook “like”…
Section 230 Helps Facebook Defeat Pro Se Defamation Suit–Jefferson v. Facebook
The court tries to summarize the complaint: On November 17, 2017, Plaintiff Curtis Jefferson filed a Complaint seeking $700 million dollars for character defamation in connection with events that transpired during his arrest in Baltimore, Maryland on September 16, 2015….
Constitutional Challenge Against FOSTA Filed–Woodhull v. US (Guest Blog Post)
by guest blogger Alex F. Levy Pres. Trump signed the “Allow Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act” (FOSTA) into law on April 11, 2018. As many critics predicted, the law had an immediate chilling effect on a significant amount…
First Amendment Doesn’t Prevent Probationer Condition Restricting the Display of Illegal Activity on Social Media–In re Jawan S.
17 year old Jawan S. was convicted of aggravated unlawful use of a weapon and unlawful possession of a firearm. The court sentenced him to 2 years probation. Among other probation conditions, the court said no “illegal gang, guns & drug…