In what is one of the most recent attempts to circumvent the immunity provided in Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (“CDA” or “CDA Section 230”), the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts made it clear that claims brought under the Defend Trade Secrets Act (18 U.S.C. §§ 1836, et seq.) … Continue Reading
UPDATE: On January 22, 2019, the Supreme Court denied review of the California Supreme Court decision. In a closely-followed dispute, the California Supreme Court vacated a lower court order, based upon a default judgment in a defamation action, which had directed Yelp, Inc. (“Yelp”), a non-party to the original suit, to take down certain consumer … Continue Reading
This past week, an Illinois district court dismissed, with leave to amend, claims relating to a competitor’s alleged scraping of sales listings from a company’s website for use on its own site. (Alan Ross Machinery Corp. v. Machinio Corp., No. 17-3569 (N.D. Ill. July 9, 2018)). The court dismissed a federal Computer Fraud and Abuse … Continue Reading
Such Scraping “Plausibly Falls within the Ambit of the First Amendment” The Ninth Circuit is currently considering the appeal of the landmark hiQ decision, where a lower court had granted an injunction that limited the applicability of the federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) to the blocking of an entity engaging in commercial data … Continue Reading
Today, the President signed H.R. 1865, the “Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act of 2017” (commonly known as “FOSTA”). The law is intended to limit the immunity provided under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (“CDA Section 230”) for online services that knowingly host third-party content that promotes or facilitates … Continue Reading
UPDATE: On March 19, 2018, the district court granted the defendant’s motion for certification of the court’s February 15th partial summary judgment decision for interlocutory appeal to the Second Circuit. In allowing immediate appeal, the court agreed that its prior order “has created tremendous uncertainty for online publishers” and “given the frequency with which embedded … Continue Reading
UPDATE: On February 22, 2018, the district court granted 3taps’s motion to relate its action to the ongoing hiQ v. LinkedIn litigation. This motion was based upon a local Northern District of California rule that holds that cases should be related when the actions concern substantially the same parties, transaction or event, and there would … Continue Reading
Facebook recently announced that it would make changes to its news feed to prioritize content that users share and discuss and material from “reputable publishers.” These changes are part of what Mark Zuckerberg says is a refocusing of Facebook from “helping [users] find relevant content to helping [users] have more meaningful social interactions.” This refocus … Continue Reading
In a blog post last month, Google announced that it would extend certain commitments it made to the FTC in 2012 that were set to expire relating to, among other things, the scraping of third-party content for use on certain Google “vertical search” properties such as Google Shopping. The announcement came days before the commitments … Continue Reading
Following the reasoning of several past decisions, a California district court dismissed claims against Google under the Anti-Terrorism Act (ATA), 18 U.S.C. § 2333, for allegedly providing “material support” to ISIS by allowing terrorists to use YouTube (temporarily, before known accounts are terminated) as a tool to facilitate recruitment and commit terrorism. (Gonzalez v. Google, … Continue Reading
The controversial consumer gripe site, RipoffReport.com, is at it again. The First Circuit recently affirmed a lower court’s ruling that RipoffReport.com was entitled to immunity under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, 47 U.S.C. §230(c)(1) (the “CDA” or “Section 230”) for defamation-related claims based on certain user posts on its site. (Small Justice LLC … Continue Reading
In a new development in an important scraping dispute, LinkedIn appealed the lower court’s decision to grant a preliminary injunction compelling LinkedIn to disable any technical measures it had employed to block the defendant’s data scraping activities. LinkedIn’s brief was filed on October 3, 2017. In it, LinkedIn asserts that the relevant issue is whether the lower … Continue Reading
Craigslist has used a variety of technological and legal methods to prevent unauthorized parties from violating its terms of use by scraping, linking to, or accessing user postings for their own commercial purposes. For example, in April, craigslist obtained a $60.5 million judgment against a real estate listings site that had allegedly received scraped craigslist … Continue Reading
A Green Light for Screen Scraping? Proceed With Caution… UPDATE: As expected, LinkedIn appealed the lower court’s decision to grant a preliminary injunction compelling LinkedIn to disable any technical measures it had employed to block the defendant’s data scraping activities. LinkedIn’s brief was filed on October 3, 2017. In it, LinkedIn asserts that the relevant … Continue Reading
UPDATE: In late October 2016, the parties notified the court that they were in discussions to settle the matter and would jointly stipulate to a dismissal of the action without prejudice. On November 2nd, the court dismissed the action. Title V of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, also known as the “Communications Decency Act of … Continue Reading
For years, craigslist has aggressively used technological and legal methods to prevent unauthorized parties from scraping, linking to or accessing user postings for their own commercial purposes. In a prior post, we briefly discussed craigslist’s action against a certain aggregator that was scraping content from the craigslist site (despite having received a cease and desist … Continue Reading
Title II of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) offers safe harbors for qualifying service providers to limit their liability for claims of copyright infringement. To benefit from the Section 512(c) safe harbor, a storage provider must establish that the infringing content was stored “at the direction of the user.” 17 U.S.C. § 512(c)(1). The … Continue Reading
Digital media marketers are aggressively increasing the use of so-called sponsored content, or native advertising to reach new customers. Particularly with the growing use of ad blockers on web and mobile browsers, marketers have sought to present advertising in a new form that can circumvent automated blocking and somehow capture the attention of users who … Continue Reading
Courts continue to struggle with the application of CDA immunity to shield service provider defendants from liability in extreme cases. In this case, the Washington Supreme Court, in a 6-3 decision, affirmed the lower court’s decision to allow a suit to proceed against classified service Backpage.com surrounding the sexual assault of several minors by adult customers … Continue Reading
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
