Vermont’s “Revenge Porn” Crime Survives Constitutional Challenge–State v. VanBuren
Like many other states, Vermont has a relatively new crime against nonconsensual pornography (NCP) dissemination. A lower court ruled that the crime was facially unconstitutional. The state appealed. In this ruling, the Vermont Supreme Court grants the “extraordinary” relief of…
California Lawmakers Want a Study of Fake News (If Someone Else Pays for It)
“Fake news” is a defining fear about our post-factual Trumpian era, which makes it important enough (or perceived to be so) that government regulators surely must do something about it. In response, the California legislature, demonstrating its characteristic leadership on…
Comments on Trump’s Empty Tweetstorm Threatening Social Media Providers
[Over the weekend, a reporter asked me to provide up to 300 words about Trump’s weekend tweetstorm threatening to regulate social media provider due to their alleged bias against conservatives. In light of subsequent events, it’s now clearer that Trump…
“Material Support for Terrorists” Lawsuit Against YouTube Fails Again–Gonzalez v. Google
This is one of numerous lawsuits against social media providers, seeking to hold them liable for terrorist attacks because they publish third party-provided terrorist-related content. These lawsuits have gone nowhere, including this one. I blogged the dismissal of the Second…
Twitter Gets Powerful Win in “Must-Carry” Lawsuit–Taylor v. Twitter
This is one of several lawsuits brought by disseminators of anti-social content (in this case, white supremacist content) seeking to prevent social media providers from cutting them off. In June, the lower court surprisingly rejected Twitter’s dismissal motion for the…
An Update on the Constitutional Court Challenge to FOSTA–Woodhull Freedom v. US (Guest Blog Post)
by guest blogger Alex F. Levy Following the initial filings in Woodhull v. Sessions (summarized here), defendants filed a combined opposition to the motion for preliminary injunction and motion to dismiss (Dkt #16) on July 12th, 2018. Plaintiffs then filed…
A Cautionary Tale of Sarcasm in Social Media–Ross v. City of Jackson
An unspecified Facebook friend of Ross posted a meme that was something like this: Ross favors gun control. He replied with a comment: “Which one do I need to shoot up a kindergarten?” Perhaps feeling satisfied that he had won the…
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…