More Perspectives About Van Buren v. US (Guest Blog Post)
by guest blogger Kieran McCarthy [Eric’s comment: this is a supplement to my more comprehensive post on Van Buren v. US] This was a critically important case with far-reaching policy implications across dozens of industries. 23 amici curiae were filed….
Do We Even Need the Computer Fraud & Abuse Act (CFAA)?–Van Buren v. US
Last week, the Supreme Court decided Van Buren v. US. Many hoped the decision would clarify how owners can delimit third-party usage of their computer resources for purposes of the Computer Fraud & Abuse Act (CFAA). Disappointingly, the court explicitly…
Social Media Ownership Disputes, Part I: the Satanic Temple of Washington Can’t Get Its Facebook Pages Back
This is part 1 of a 2-part series covering social media ownership disputes. This dispute involves the online accounts of the Satanic Temple of Washington: two Facebook pages, one of which had 17,000 followers, a Twitter account, and a “google…
Selling Keyword Ads Isn’t Theft or Conversion–Edible IP v. Google
It’s been years since I’ve blogged a lawsuit against Google for selling trademarked keyword ads. About a decade ago, Google was dealing with about a dozen cases. Google won some of them and settled the rest, and everyone moved on….
Facebook Can Block Scraper (For Now)–Facebook v. BrandTotal
BrandTotal offered a Chrome extension called “UpVoice.” Once installed, the extension allegedly scraped public and non-public information from the users’ Facebook and Instagram accounts. Facebook attempted to crack down on the extension. It terminated BrandTotal’s Facebook and Instagram pages and…
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…
hiQ Labs v. LinkedIn Corp., the Web Scraping Saga Continues (Guest Blog Post)
by guest blogger Kieran McCarthy hiQ Labs v. LinkedIn Corp. is arguably the most important case in the history of web-scraping jurisprudence. In 2019, the Ninth Circuit concluded that “when a computer network generally permits public access to its data,…
Facial Recognition Database Vendor May Not Qualify for Section 230–Vermont v. Clearview
As you recall, Clearview AI is a facial recognition database vendor. Some law enforcement departments have adopted its service, but we aren’t sure how many. We also aren’t sure about its facial recognition accuracy (or, for that matter, how much…
A Closer Look at a Troubling Anti-Scraping Ruling from Spring–Compulife Software v. Newman (Guest Blog Post)
by guest blogger Kieran McCarthy Compulife Software, Inc. v. Newman is the first circuit court case in more than half a decade to expand liability for web scrapers under state and federal law. The two most recent circuit court opinions…
Another Court Significantly Limits the Scope of Criminal CFAA–Sandvig v. Barr
The plaintiffs want to create fake job profiles to research algorithmic discrimination. Fearing that their research activities would expose them to criminal CFAA prosecution, they challenged the CFAA as violating their First Amendment rights. Venkat blogged a preliminary ruling in…