Judge Kozinski Talks About Cyberlaw

By Eric Goldman Last October, Judge Alex Kozinski of the Ninth Circuit chatted with me in my Cyberspace Law course for 75 minutes. If you listen to the recording, you’ll hear Judge Kozinski’s humorous thoughts on receiving gifts when he…

February 2007 Quick Links

By Eric Goldman * The California Highway Patrol (which, for reasons unclear to me, has investigatory power here) has concluded that the Angelides campaign did not break any laws when they reverse-guessed URLs on Schwarzenegger’s website and found an unrestricted…

Steinbuch’s Second Battlefront Against Cutler Shut Down

By Eric Goldman Steinbuch v. Cutler, 2007 WL 486626 (E.D. Ark. Feb. 7, 2007) Everyone’s favorite blog law case, Steinbuch v. Cutler, spilled over to a second front. While the lawsuit over Cutler’s blog posts continues in DC, Steinbuch initiated…

Griping Blog Post Leads to Lawsuit–BidZirk v. Smith

By Eric Goldman BidZirk, LLC v. Smith, 2006 WL 3242333 (D.S.C. Nov. 7, 2006) Despite all of the hype about blog law, the reality is that we’ve had comparatively few blog-specific lawsuits. As a result, we give extra attention to…

Amazon’s Display of Book Cover Doesn’t Violate Publicity Rights—Almeida v. Amazon.com

By Eric Goldman Almeida v. Amazon.com, Inc., 2006 U.S. APP. LEXIS 17989 (11th Cir. July 18, 2006) Introduction Product photos on e-commerce websites’ product pages are a notorious liability trap. During my tenure at Epinions, product page photos were the…

Stay at Home Mom K’s Johnny Damon’s Right of Publicity Claim

By John Ottaviani Last week, ESPN.com reported yet another unsuccessful and ridiculous attempt to use trademark law to stifle negative commentary. According to the article, Ann Sylvia, a Massachusetts mother of two children, has operated an on-line store on eBay…

Ebates Sued for Trespass to Chattels–Sotelo v. Ebates

By Eric Goldman Sotelo v. Ebates Shopping.com, No. 06C-2531 (N.D. Ill. complaint filed May 5, 2006) The Collins Law Firm has filed a third class action lawsuit over adware, this time targeting Ebate’s Moe Money Maker client software. The complaint…

Your License, Registration and DNA, Please?

Congress Passes, President Signs, Press ignores…

As broader nationwide DNA database becomes law, states rush to fill database with expanded collection laws of their own.

Web Term Paper Lawsuit Settles

By Eric Goldman In September, I blogged about Macellari v. Carroll. In that case, a student sued a website that allegedly offered her term paper for sale. The case has settled under a confidentiality cloak (registration required). However, a defendant…

Latest Junk Fax Lawsuit–Adler v. Vision Lab Telecommunications

By Eric Goldman Adler v. Vision Lab Telecommunications, Inc., 2005 WL 2621984 (D.D.C. Oct. 17, 2005). I’ve set up a Westlaw alert to notify me of new TCPA cases and I’m pretty shocked by the volume of cases being reported…