Researchers’ Challenge to CFAA Moves Forward–Sandvig v. Sessions
…government raises a state action question and the court (with little discussion, and a cite to NY Times v. Sullivan and hiQ v. LinkedIn) disagrees. The court also rejects the…
YouTube Isn’t a Company Town (Duh)–Prager University v. Google
…a legal tool allowing virtual world participants to override the service’s editorial discretion (indeed, I wrote a counter-narrative to the state action argument back in 2005). Unfortunately for plaintiffs, the…
Yelp, Twitter and Facebook Aren’t State Actors–Quigley v. Yelp
…show state action because he has neither argued nor alleged that the government encouraged or coerced defendants to take the challenged actions — blocking him from their websites’ comments sections.”…
Does the Packingham Ruling Presage Greater Government Control Over Search Results? Or Less? (Guest Blog Post)
…all. Again, hard to know. But as interesting as that all is, Packingham’s implications for the state action doctrine seem even more so. As is well known by legal scholars…
Constitution Protects Publication of Politicians’ Home Address/Phone Number–Publius v. Boyer-Vine
…quotes Bartnicki v. Vopper: “state action to punish the publication of truthful information seldom can satisfy constitutional standards.” More specifically, “the First Amendment protects the right to publish highly personal…
Life May Be “Rad,” But This Trademark Lawsuit Isn’t–Williams v. CafePress.com
…Williams tried several of the typical legal arguments that customers trot out when vendors terminate them, such as due process violations (nope–no state action), unfair competition (no–CafePress just exercised its…
State of the Net Conference Recap
…make of this, as every court that has reviewed these state action arguments as applied to private online sites have rejected them squarely. But I’m sure virtual world exceptionalists will…
U.T. v. Longhornsingles.com Part 2 – state email filtering
…well as Congress. So the 1st Amendment applies to state actors and state actions. Question #2 – is the spam filtering policy at U.T. state action? U.T. did try to…