Court Enjoins Texas' Attempt to Censor Social Media, and the Opinion Is a Major Development in Internet Law--NetChoice v. Paxton

Court Enjoins Texas’ Attempt to Censor Social Media, and the Opinion Is a Major Development in Internet Law–NetChoice v. Paxton

Earlier this year, the Texas legislature enacted HB 20, a blatant attempt to censor social media service. The Texas law emulated a similar Florida censorship law. In June, a Florida district court enjoined based on the First Amendment and Section…

Texas Enacts Social Media Censorship Law to Benefit Anti-Vaxxers & Spammers

Texas Enacts Social Media Censorship Law to Benefit Anti-Vaxxers & Spammers

State legislatures are competing with each other to see who can enact the most ill-advised laws to impose censorship on the Internet. Florida made a splash enacting its social media censorship bill SB 7072, only to have a federal district…

Plaintiffs Request Preliminary Injunction Against Florida's Censorship Law (SB 7072)--NetChoice v. Moody

Plaintiffs Request Preliminary Injunction Against Florida’s Censorship Law (SB 7072)–NetChoice v. Moody

Last week, I blogged about Florida’s censorship law, SB 7072. Late last week, NetChoice and CCIA filed a preliminary injunction request. I hope the court strikes down the law quickly, decisively, and with all of the opprobrium (and/or mockery) it…

Consent Via "Clickwrap" Defeats Privacy Claims--Javier v. Assurance

Consent Via “Clickwrap” Defeats Privacy Claims–Javier v. Assurance

Javier got a life insurance quote from Assurance. It appears this page contained javascript served from a vendor named ActiveProspect (via a service called “TrustedForm”), which tracks each user on Assurance’s site and records the users’ keystrokes. For Assurance, these…

CAN-SPAM Requires Falsity or Deception, But What Do Those Words Mean?--Rad v. US

CAN-SPAM Requires Falsity or Deception, But What Do Those Words Mean?–Rad v. US

This is an unusual federal appellate ruling interpreting CAN-SPAM because it came to the court from the Board of Immigration Appeals. Rad was tried and convicted of violating CAN-SPAM. The Third Circuit affirmed his conviction in 2014. Rad was a…

One Minute Spent Reviewing a Junk Fax Received via Email is Not Injury for Article III Purposes

One Minute Spent Reviewing a Junk Fax Received via Email is Not Injury for Article III Purposes

This is a junk fax case. Plaintiff (Daisy), a corporation, used Vonage to receive faxes. It received a junk fax, but rather than receiving it on its fax machine, Daisy received the fax via email, as a .pdf. Daisy alleged…

Court Says California’s Anti-Spam Statute Doesn’t Regulate Affiliate Networks–Bank v. Hydra

This judgment followed a bench trial in a case over three unwanted email messages. The case was originally filed in 2010! The plaintiff is a lawyer suing pro se. The defendant is Hydra Group, which operated an affiliate network. The…

Best and Worst Internet Laws [Repost from Concurring Opinions’ Archive]

[In 2007, I guest-blogged at the group law professor blog Concurring Opinions. With the demise of that blog, I am now archiving my guest posts on my own blog. This post first appeared on February 15, 2007.] __ [Preface: I’ve already…

Ninth Circuit Easily Dismisses YouTube Remove-and-Relocate Case–Darnaa v. Google

This is one of the many lawsuits against YouTube for removing videos and relocating them to a new URL, which resets the view count and breaks inbound links. This case, involving the “musician” Darnaa, generated a little buzz a couple…

Another YouTube Remove-and-Relocate Case Fails–Kinney v. YouTube

This is one of numerous cases relating to YouTube’s crackdowns on videos allegedly promoted by bots. YouTube removed the videos from the promoted URLs and relocated them to new URLs, thus stripping the initial videos of the benefits of the…