The DMCA was enacted in 1998 to preserve “strong incentives for service providers and copyright owners to cooperate to detect and deal with copyright infringements that take place in a digital networked environment.” As part of this implicit bargain, Title II of the DMCA offers safe harbors for qualifying service providers to limit their liability … Continue Reading
The big fight may be over, but the implications of Mayweather vs. Pacquiao with respect to real-time, one-to-many streaming of video through apps like Meerkat and Periscope are still rippling through the media industry. In short, livestreaming apps allow anyone with a smartphone to effortlessly broadcast live video to social media followers and the wider … Continue Reading
On November 12, 2014, the California Supreme Court denied review of the California Court of Appeals decision in Demetriades v. Yelp, Inc., 2014 WL 3661491 (Cal. App. July 24, 2014), which allowed a restaurant owner to proceed with false advertising and other claims against the consumer review site Yelp based upon Yelp’s marketing claims regarding … Continue Reading
It’s no secret that local directory/consumer review websites are popular among consumers looking for recommendations before dining out, hiring a contractor, or even picking a dentist or day spa. Yelp reported around 138 million monthly unique visitors in the second quarter of 2014, searching among over 61 million local reviews. The bottom line is that … Continue Reading
On June 16th, 2014, the Sixth Circuit reversed the lower court’s holding that the gossip site, TheDirty.com, was responsible for its users’ defamatory posts and could not rely on immunity under CDA Section 230. The appeals court ruled that even though the gossip site selected and edited user-generated posts for posting and added non-defamatory, albeit … Continue Reading
It’s a problem that has vexed website owners since the days of the dot-com boom – how to make certain user-generated content available to users or subscribers, but also prevent competitors and other unauthorized parties from scraping, linking to or otherwise accessing that content for their own commercial purposes. The law on scraping and linking … Continue Reading
Somewhere between a well-recognized website design like Google’s home page and a fledgling e-commerce venture built with free web building software lives most other websites. Depending on the investment in the development and the operator’s design ethic, some websites may display unique, distinctive portals that are key to attracting and retaining customers. For those with … Continue Reading
With around 1.15 billion members, Facebook is a massive, global forum for communicating with friends and the world. For many users, it often feels as if their news feeds are clogged with vapid comments about the weather, meal choices or the ever-present need for coffee. But under other circumstances, such as the Arab Spring or … Continue Reading
Law Targets Sites and Mobile Apps Directed to Minors, Offers “Online Eraser” Likely to Have Nationwide Effect On July 1st of this year, new amendments to the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act Rule (COPPA Rule) came into effect, with perhaps the most pronounced changes being the expansion of COPPA to apply to geolocation … Continue Reading
We previously wrote about a Tennessee district court’s decision holding that a hotel’s inclusion at the top of the 2011 TripAdvisor “Dirtiest Hotels” list constituted hyperbolic opinion and rhetorical exaggeration, and thus was not actionable under Tennessee defamation law. This past month, a circuit court upheld the ruling. On appeal, the Sixth Circuit affirmed the … Continue Reading
How can a website operator lose the broad immunity for liability associated with user-generated content conferred by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (CDA)? Section 230 has been consistently interpreted by most courts to protect website operators against claims arising out of third-party content, despite some less than honorable conduct by operators. See, for … Continue Reading
It is a common practice for Web site providers who accept submissions of user-generated content to include a license provision in their “Terms of Use” to obtain rights to use the content. Rather than relying on the uncertain scope of an implied license, the provider can clarify, and hopefully avoid disputes over, the scope of … Continue Reading
UPDATE: On appeal, the Sixth Circuit affirmed the lower court’s grant of TripAdvisor’s motion to dismiss, ruling that the plaintiff could not prove falsity on its defamation claim because the placement of hotels on TripAdvisor’s list constituted protected opinion. The opinion is discussed in a follow-up post. Although we have confidence in the quality of … Continue Reading
An Illinois state appeals court recently held that although an employer that provided network connectivity to its employees is an “interactive service provider” under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, the statute does not protect the employer from negligent supervision claims based upon the employee’s alleged use of the network to communicate threats to … Continue Reading
A lawsuit against consumer review site Yelp! has yielded an opinion that demonstrates the breadth of the protection afforded interactive service providers under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. In Levitt v. Yelp! Inc., 2011 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 124082 (N.D. Cal. Oct. 26, 2011), a group of putative class action plaintiffs filed an action … Continue Reading
A divided New York Court of Appeals ruled on June 14, 2011, that an online forum administrator’s additions to an allegedly defamatory post by a user are protected by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. Shiamili v. The Real Estate Group of New York, Inc., No. 105, (N.Y. June 14, 2011). This is the … Continue Reading
Electronic technologies have greatly reduced the costs of distributing information, but for content owners, that’s been a mixed blessing. Just as their costs of content distribution have shrunk and their ease of distribution has increased, the same is true for parties who obtain and redistribute that content unlawfully, to the competitive disadvantage of the content … Continue Reading
A hard-fought battle between two sandwich franchises has yielded an opinion dealing with the application of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act to videos submitted as part of an online contest. The result is an unusual ruling that sends to a jury the issue of whether the advertiser that sponsored the contest was an … Continue Reading
Apple probably could not have satisfied all the wild and hopeful imaginings of everyone who weighed in on what its new iPad device would look like, and what its functionality would be. Whether or not the iPad will be the content distribution game-changer that so many are looking for is another matter, but it’s still … Continue Reading
We have previously described as "robust," the protection afforded interactive service providers from liability for defamatory contents posted by third parties by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. But in Blockowitz v. Williams, 1:09-cv-03955 (N.D. Ill. Dec. 21, 2009), involving post-judgment efforts to have defamatory postings removed from a consumer complaint Web site , … Continue Reading
To the great frustration of plaintiffs and their attorneys, and even some judges, courts have construed Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act in such a way as to make it virtually impossible to hold a Web site operator liable for defamatory material that is posted on the site by a third party, even if … Continue Reading
If you refer to a professional model a "skank" and a "ho," that’s defamation, not mere opinion or hyperbole, and it is no less defamatory for having been said on a blog, a Supreme Court judge in New York ruled in In re Application of Cohen (N.Y. Sup. Ct. N.Y. Cty Aug. 17, 2009). The … Continue Reading
Deleting information in the digital world can be a problematic issue. A Web site that appears to a viewer to present unitary pages of text and images actually consists of text and graphic elements that can be drawn from a variety of sources. For a variety of technical reasons, it is not unusual for text … Continue Reading
UPDATE: The Ninth Circuit issued an amended opinion on June 22, 2009, see discussion below. The amended opinion included an order denying the parties’ petitions for rehearing and rehearing en banc. Many attempts have been made to plead around the immunity provided to interactive computer services under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, and … Continue Reading
