Redbox’s Terms of Use Fail (OUCH)–Wilson v. Redbox
Redbox allegedly sent unwanted texts to Wilson. Wilson sued for TCPA violations. Redbox invoked the arbitration clause in its TOU. The court says the TOU did not properly form and denies the arbitration request. Ouch. Wilson joined Redbox in 2007…
YouTuber Loses Lawsuit Over Channel Termination–Mishiyev v. Alphabet
Mishiyev, a/k/a “DJ Short-e,” is a YouTuber who claims he had 100M+ views and 250k subscribers. His videos started getting copyright complaints in 2016. He counternoticed those, but he claims he nevertheless saw traffic dropoffs and started making demands of…
Defendants Keep Getting Arbitration Despite the Anarchy in Online Contract Formation Doctrine
Online contract formation law has gotten strange. The proliferation of “wrap” variations has tied up judges in knots. Despite the increasingly baroque and incoherent legal doctrines, the bottom line has largely remained the same: most online contracts are properly formed…
Facebook Still Isn’t Obligated to Publish Russian Troll Content–FAN v. Facebook
In response to Russian interference with our 2016 presidential elections, Facebook belatedly purged content that it believed came from Russian trolls. That crackdown shut down the account of the “Federal Agency of News” (FAN), which allegedly has ties to Russia’s…
A Blog’s RSS Feed May Not Grant an Implied Copyright License–MidlevelU v. Newstex
MidlevelU publishes a blog on nursing topics. Like most blogs, it contains an RSS feed. Newstex subscribed to the RSS feed and republished the blog posts as part of its now-defunct subscription service called “Scholarly Blog Index.” MidlevelU sued Newstex…
The Israeli Chipmunk Emoji Mystery Resolved!
One of the most celebrated cases in emoji law is Dahan v. Shakaroff, an Israeli decision involving a landlord’s claim that prospective tenants Nir and Yarden (a married couple) engaged in bad faith negotiations over leasing an apartment. At issue…
Huuuge Mistake in Contract Formation
This is a lawsuit alleging that Huuuge’s gaming app violates Washington’s gambling statute. The particular ruling focuses on whether the app can force users to arbitrate their claims. The district court (Judge Leighton, who is hearing a slew of these…
Breach of Contract/Promissory Estoppel Claims Bypass Section 230 But Fail Anyways—Yue v. Miao
(Sometimes Westlaw indexes magistrate reports only after the district court judge acts on them, which I what I think happened here). Miao ran a Chinese language social media site called “bian-wang.com.” Yue operated a rival service. Miao allegedly secretly poached…
Copyright, State Sovereignty, and Pirates: Some Thoughts on Oral Argument in Allen v. Cooper (Guest Blog Post)
by guest blogger Glynn Lunney, Texas A&M Law School When our country was founded, one of the central issues was how much of their sovereignty the states would cede to the new federal government and how much they would retain…
State Court Rejects Prager University’s Lawsuit Against YouTube
Prager University publishes videos on YouTube. YouTube demonetized some of its videos and placed some in “restricted mode,” meaning that users of YouTube’s restricted mode functionality won’t see them. Prager claimed that YouTube took these steps due to anti-conservative bias,…