Web Scraping for Me, But Not for Thee (Guest Blog Post)
by guest blogger Kieran McCarthy There are few, if any, legal domains where hypocrisy is as baked into the ecosystem as it is with web scraping. Some of the biggest companies on earth—including Meta and Microsoft—take aggressive, litigious approaches to…
Court Doesn’t Expect YouTube to Moderate Content Perfectly–Newman v. Google
This is one of several ideologically motivated lawsuits against YouTube for allegedly engaging in “discriminatory” content moderation. The initial cohort of plaintiffs were conservatives (Prager); but then as a purported “gotcha,” the law firm added LGBTQ (Divino) and people of…
Ninth Circuit Easily Dismisses Account Termination Case–King v. Facebook
This is a standard account termination case. The specific facts don’t matter to the outcome, but I enumerate a little more detail in my prior blog post. The 9th Circuit panel’s very short narrative includes: “there is no private right…
Another Doctor Learns Why It’s Unwise to Sue Patients
Dr. Wilbur Hah is a board-certified cosmetic surgeon in Texas. In 2020, he performed procedures for four patients, Chesson, Gage, Melton, and Robinson (tragically now deceased). All of the patients signed a “Contract of Reasonable Expectations” that restricted “post[ing] any…
More Chaos in the Law of Online Contract Formation
Another 3k+ word post about the jurisprudential chaos in online contract formation law. You’ll notice that this post gets increasingly surly as the cumulative effect of the judicial inanity weighed on me. Two top-line takeaways you might get from this…
Instagram Account Termination Case Fails–Johnson v. Instagram
This is yet another account termination case. I just blogged one involving LinkedIn yesterday. Different social media service, same result–case dismissed. Johnson’s Instagram account, @LICKMYKAKEZ, had 2.8M followers. She ran a business selling adult toys and promoted the business on…
Another LinkedIn Account Termination Case Fails–Gundogdu v. LinkedIn
Another account termination case. The plaintiff shared “her religious conservative opinions” on LinkedIn. LinkedIn closed the account because she allegedly shared misleading COVID information. “Plaintiff claims that her beliefs against the COVID-19 vaccines are rooted in religion.” She also claims…
Texan J6er’s Social Media Censorship Case Moved to California–Davis v. Facebook
Paul Davis is a lawyer and a self-described “J6er,” i.e., a participant in the January 6, 2021 U.S. Capitol insurrection. (His current Instagram bio: “God-fearing, freedom-fighting, ultra-MAGA🔥⬆️TX lawyer for patriots ✝️⚖️🇺🇸 J6er”). His legacy Facebook and Instagram accounts got suspended…
Chegg Is Likely to Prevail on Its Anti-Scraping Contracts Claim…But Doesn’t Get an Injunction–Chegg v. Doe (Guest Blog Post)
by guest blogger Kieran McCarthy Most web-scraping cases fit into one of two categories: Cases where companies are innovating with data in ways that data hosts/owners don’t like, and courts try to accommodate competing interests in accordance with prevailing legal…
Amazon Can Freely End Book Reviewer’s Authoring Privileges–Haywood v. Amazon
Charles Haywood wrote book reviews at Amazon. He says “his style tends to be megalomaniacal and apocalyptic. He likes to fight.” (For more, see this story and his own self-analysis using Jordan Peterson’s personality test 🙄). No thank you. For what…