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…
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…
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 …
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…
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,…
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…
A simple copyright notice (e.g., “© [Year of First Publication] [Owner]”) on a website can imply an assertion of ownership in individual elements of the website and constitute “copyright management information” under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), a Texas district court held. A Texas investment company learned this lesson…
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission gave disclosures made through social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter a conditional “thumbs up” in a Report of Investigation it released on April 2, 2013. Issuers of securities, the SEC stated, can use social media to disseminate material, nonpublic information without having…
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…
As the eastern part of the United States picks up the pieces from the devastating Hurricane Sandy, many companies are experiencing a classic “force majeure” event. The circumstances remind us of a blog post we wrote shortly after Irene blew our way last year, and we thought it might be…
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