Marketing a “California Ethos” Doesn’t Support a California Publicity Rights Lawsuit–Boyden v. Hyundai
…other skateboarding moves. There isn’t a clear notion of genericide in publicity rights law. Still, it made me wonder if a name becomes a generic descriptor in a field, can…
Should Police Wipe a Criminal’s Cellphone Before Returning It?–U.S. v. Stathas
“Stathas pleaded guilty in 2023 to enticing a minor to engage in unlawful sexual activity” (18 U.S.C. § 2422(b)). He was sentenced to 180 months in prison and 10 years…
Some New Data on Age Authentication Balk Rates
…Goldman’s Statement on the Supreme Court’s Demolition of the Internet in Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton Court Permanently Enjoins Ohio’s Segregate-and-Suppress/Parental Consent Law–NetChoice v. Yost Arkansas’ Social Media Safety Act…
Washington Supreme Court Dismisses Meta Pixels Case–Baker v. Seattle Children’s Hospital
This is a Meta Pixels case on appeal to the Washington Supreme Court. It fails on a highly technical interpretation of the statute. The applicable Washington state statute restricts the…
My Reddit AMA on the Law of Web Scraping
…have never fully written up my complicated thoughts about these topics, but this piece will give you a sense of my thinking. https://blog.ericgoldman.org/archives/2013/04/rethinking_onli.htm Here’s how I frame some policy considerations…
Judge Barker (E.D. Tex.) Disassembles Two SAD Scheme Cases
…why not: The reasons offered for proceeding without notice are generic. Plaintiff says only that defendants “can and likely will take immediate steps to permanently alter the status quo, including…
Sedlik v. Von Drachenberg: The Right Way to Evaluate Wrongfulness (Guest Blog Post)
by guest bloggers Bruce Boyden (Marquette Law) & Zahr Said (Santa Clara Law) As we mentioned in our previous post, the Ninth Circuit’s intrinsic-extrinsic framework for substantial similarity has a…
The Fifth Circuit Does Fifth Circuit Things in Copyright Embedding Case–Emmerich v. Particle
…that it could not meet the definition of “fixed,” meaning embodied for more than a transitory duration. Using the Goldman case as an example: the news outlets embedded the copyrighted…
Snap Wants to be a State Actor??–Kansas v. Snap
For decades, private Internet services have uniformly tried to avoid being legally characterized as government actors. If they become state actors, they must comply with Constitutional restrictions–meaning the Constitutionally required…
Op-Ed: Meta’s $5 Billion Deal with the State AGs to Take Down its Rivals
…the integrity of their enforcement decisions, the state AGs have discredited themselves as contributors to those conversations. Eric Goldman is a law professor and associate dean for research at Santa…