COMO: Content Moderation at Scale Conference Recap

The COMO: Content Moderation at Scale conference was held in Washington DC in early May. It was a follow-up to the Content Moderation and Removal at Scale conference held at Santa Clara University in early February. See my recap of…

Trolling the Internet for Photos Creates Copyright Headaches for Ad Agency (and the Advertiser)--Laspata v. Rimowa

Laspata is “a boutique creative marketing agency” that charges a lot of money. For its client, Laspata created a 1920s-themed “lookbook” called “Speechless” that riffed on the Academy Award-winning movie The Artist. Rimowa makes luggage priced above my budget. Meire…

My email inbox has gotten out of control, and I had to declare partial email bankruptcy. In this post, I’m largely quoting highlights from 18 cases I had flagged for closer review or possible posting over the past 18 months…

Indianapolis Police Have Been "Blinded Lately Because They Shut Backpage Down"

In the policy discussions about FOSTA, the #1 question always was: if the law works as the organizers predict, will it actually help the victims of sex trafficking? There has always been good reason to believe the answer is no;…

Ten Reasons Why California’s New Data Protection Law is Unworkable, Burdensome, and Possibly Unconstitutional (Guest Blog Post)

By guest blogger Jeff Kosseff [Jeff Kosseff is an assistant professor of cybersecurity law at the U.S. Naval Academy. The views in this post are only his, and do not represent the Naval Academy, Department of Navy, or Department of…

Social Media * NY Times: They Tried to Boycott Facebook, Apple and Google. They Failed * Reuters: Philippines complains Facebook fact-checkers are biased * D.R. v. D.A., 17-P-339 (Mass. App. Ct. May 8, 2018). A judge can interpret a Facebook “like”…

Q2 2018 Quick Links, Part 3 (Privacy, Advertising, E-Commerce)

Privacy * Financial Times: How the wealthy use privacy laws to keep out of the news. GDPR as a pro-censorship tool * Techdirt: Companies Respond to the GDPR By Blocking All EU Users  * Financial Times: Data protectionism: the growing menace to global business…

Amazon Again Avoids Liability for Defective Marketplace Item--Fox v. Amazon

This is a product liability lawsuit against Amazon due to a hoverboard purchased via Amazon that caught on fire. Plaintiffs bought the hoverboard from the Amazon site in November 2015 as a Christmas gift for their son. The son used…

The court tries to summarize the complaint: On November 17, 2017, Plaintiff Curtis Jefferson filed a Complaint seeking $700 million dollars for character defamation in connection with events that transpired during his arrest in Baltimore, Maryland on September 16, 2015….

Constitutional Challenge Against FOSTA Filed--Woodhull v. US (Guest Blog Post)

by guest blogger Alex F. Levy Pres. Trump signed the “Allow Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act” (FOSTA) into law on April 11, 2018. As many critics predicted, the law had an immediate chilling effect on a significant amount…