Facebook Isn’t–and Shouldn’t Be–A Democracy (Forbes Cross-Post)
By Eric Goldman In 2009, Facebook ($FB) nominally enabled user governance by obligating itself to honor user votes before making certain site policy changes. This experiment in user self-governance was radical and largely unprecedented–especially given the size of Facebook’s userbase, which…
Facebook’s Proposed Amended Sponsored Settlement and Instagram’s TOS Revs
[Post by Venkat Balasubramani] Fraley v. Facebook, 11-cv-196193 (N.D. Cal.) (Amended Proposed Settlement) (Motion to Approve) (Preliminary Approval) (case docs, compiled by Citizen Media) I initially passed on blogging the amended proposed settlement agreement in Fraley v. Facebook, the Sponsored…
Google Defeats Trademark Challenge to Its AdWords Service–Jurin v. Google (Forbes Cross-Post)
By Eric Goldman Jurin v. Google, Inc., 2012 WL 5011007 (E.D. Cal. October 17, 2012). Google ($GOOG) makes billions of dollars a year selling AdWords ads triggered by third party trademarks. Over the past decade, trademark owners have brought about 20…
Wikipedia’s “Pay-for-Play” Scandal Highlights Wikipedia’s Vulnerabilities (Forbes Cross-Post)
By Eric Goldman Recently, two high-level Wikipedia UK insiders, Roger Bamkin and Maximillian Klein, were caught with apparent conflicts-of-interest. Bamkin, a Wikipedia UK trustee and “Wikipedian in Residence,” allegedly maintained a paid consultancy for the country of Gibraltar while editing and seeking additional exposure…
The Proposed “Cloud Computing Act of 2012,” and How Internet Regulation Can Go Awry (Forbes Cross-Post)
By Eric Goldman Sen. Amy Klobuchar has introduced a new bill, the “Cloud Computing Act of 2012” (S.3569), that purports to “improve the enforcement of criminal and civil law with respect to cloud computing.” Given its introduction so close to…
Having a Facebook or Twitter Account Shouldn’t Mean Mandatory California Vacations if You Get Sued (Forbes Cross-Post)
By Eric Goldman [Given how I feel about blogging on civil procedure topics, it’s ironic that my first substantive post to Tertium Quid is about Internet jurisdiction of all things. Still, this was an easy rehash of some recent blog…
Nathenson on Teaching Internet Law
By Eric Goldman Ira Nathenson is a law professor at St. Thomas University in Florida. He has posted to SSRN an article called “Best Practices for the Law of the Horse: Teaching Cyberlaw and Illuminating Law Through Online Simulations,” which…
Top Internet Law Developments of 2011
By Eric Goldman As usual, I’m running late with my year-end recap. This post begins with my countdown of the top 5 Internet Law developments of 2011, then it lists other interesting developments and cases. It concludes with some of…
New Essay on 47 USC 230(c)(2)
By Eric Goldman I have posted a new essay, Online User Account Termination and 47 U.S.C. §230(c)(2), to SSRN. I wrote this essay as a contribution to a virtual world symposium at UC Irvine, and it will be published in…
Fall 2011 Internet Law Reader and Syllabus
I have posted my Internet Law syllabus for Fall 2011. In addition, as I did last year, I have posted my Internet Law course reader to Scribd as a DRM-free pay-to-download PDF. You can also buy a print-on-demand copy at…