by guest blogger Tyler Ochoa On October 11, 2018, President Trump signed into law H.R. 1551, the Orrin G. Hatch-Bob Goodlatte Music Modernization Act, which became Public Law 115-364, 132 Stat. 3676.  The Act contains three titles pertaining to copyright law.  Title…

Call for Papers/Participation: 9th Annual Internet Law Works-in-Progress, SCU, March 2, 2019

We invite your participation in the Ninth Annual Internet Law Works-in-Progress conference at Santa Clara University School of Law, March 2, 2019. The conference series is co-sponsored by the High Tech Law Institute at Santa Clara University School of Law and the Innovation Center for Law and Technology at the New…

Glassdoor is a consumer review site for employees reviewing employers. The plaintiff in this case is a franchisor. Purported employees of a franchisee posted six negative reviews about the franchisee on Glassdoor. The reviews mentioned the francishor’s CEO,  Suzanne Schalow,…

FOSTA Doesn't Help Pro Se Litigant's Defamation Claim Against Facebook

This is a typical pro se defamation lawsuit against Facebook. The plaintiff claims that other Facebook users defamed him in a Facebook group. The court treats this as an easy Section 230 case. The court applies the standard three-part test…

Constitutional Challenge to FOSTA Dismissed for Lack of Standing (Guest Blog Post)

by guest blogger Alex F. Levy On September 24, 2018, the U.S. District Court of the District of Columbia dismissed a case challenging the constitutionality of the Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (FOSTA). FOSTA, which…

Some AdWords advertisers are suing Google for allegedly misimplementing negative keywords. Google seeks to move the dispute to arbitration. In 2013, Google’s AdWords TOS said: 11 Term. Google may add to, delete from or modify these Terms at any time…

Brian MacFarland runs a blog, lazymanandmoney.com. For his own home, he held an in-home demonstration of a RainSoft water softener system by Oster, a salesperson at a local distributor, Basement Technologies. (I’m not sure about that brand!). MacFarland was skeptical…

by guest blogger Jeff Kosseff The views expressed in this post are only those of the author, and do not represent the Naval Academy, Department of Navy, or Department of Defense. The playbook is familiar: the federal government fails to…

California Amends the Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA); Fixes About 0.01% of its Problems

Recently, Gov. Brown signed SB 1121, the first of possibly several amendments designed to fix and rehabilitate the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA). Here is the complete statute as revised. I prepared a redline showing the amendments. The amendments make…

There’s a lot to digest in the USMCA, the NAFTA 2.0 replacement that shall not be called NAFTA. This post focuses on one piece: USMCA Article 19.17 requires its signatories to adopt Internet immunity provisions similar to Section 230. (I…