Free for a Fee

Technology & Marketing Law Blog
Eric Goldman
April 21, 2020

Whitepages compiles and generates “background reports” on people, remixing content from a database of public and private records that allegedly incorporates 2B+ records/month. In response to searches on people’s names, Whitepages provides free previews, such as this one included in the court opinion (this is a truncated view–it goes on for 3 pages):

Much of the free preview provides links indicating that more information about the person may be available behind Whitepages’ “premium” paywall. Thus, the plaintiffs assert that the free preview acts as advertising for the premium service.

Instant Checkmate runs a similar service to Whitepages. The interface is different, but the plaintiffs still characterize the free preview as advertising for the paywalled database.

The plaintiffs claim that the free preview violate Illinois’ publicity rights statute by displaying people’s personal data in the “ads.” The defendants moved to dismiss. This case reminded me a little of the uncited Facebook Sponsored Stories case (Fraley v. Facebook)….

Section 230. The court might have said that Section 230 doesn’t apply to publicity rights claims as IP claims (which is probably true everywhere except the 9th Circuit), and the court doesn’t address the closely analogous FTC v. Accusearch case denying Section 230 protection for the sale of telephone call records. Instead, citing the terrible 7th Circuit Huon decision, the court says “Whitepages did not act as a mere passive transmitter or publisher of information that was ‘provided by another information content provider.’ Rather, it is alleged to have actively compiled and collated, from several sources, information regarding Lukis. The CDA therefore does not shield Whitepages from liability.”

Case citation: Lukis v. Whitepages Inc., 2020 WL 1888916 (N.D. Ill. April 16, 2020)

Technology & Marketing Law Blog
Eric Goldman
April 16, 2020

… today’s pro se lawsuit, like numerous lawsuits preceding it, goes nowhere and gets a quick dismissal.

The plaintiff says that TheDirty hosts a service that it knows “libels” people. This sets up an easy Section 230 defense. The court’s analysis of Section 230:

federal law forbids defamation claims against host or platform website operators such as Dirty World, such as those alleged here, under the Communications Decency Act, 47 U.S.C. § 230 (the “CDA”). Dirty World cites multiple cases explaining the reasons underlying CDA’s prohibition. Conclusory and speculative allegations that the host or platform website operator must have created the speech is not sufficient to state a claim. [Kimzey v. Yelp!] Plaintiff has not plead facts here that “tend to demonstrate that the” post “was not, as is usual, authored by a user.” Further, the possibility that the posts were created by the website owner is not sufficient for a defamation claim to proceed against a host or platform website operator. [Nemet Chevrolet, Ltd. v. Consumeraffairs.com]

The First Amended Complaint’s allegation that “it is evident” that Dirty World “itself places comments on the webpages that are posted on their website www.thedirtyarmy.com” because the phrase “The Dirty Army” is present on Dirty World’s website and also its Facebook page is not sufficient to defeat CDA immunity

A parallel copyright claim fails because the complaint didn’t allege a copyright registration. ..

Case citation: Laake v. Dirty World LLC, 2020 WL 1866124 (D. Ariz. April 14, 2020). The complaint. See also the court’s refusal to add GoDaddy as a defendant (magistrate report; district judge’s approval).

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LexBlog
J. Alexander Lawrence
November 12, 2019

A recent decision from a federal court in New York highlights the limits social media users enjoy under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (CDA). The case involves Joy Reid, the popular host of MSNBC’s AM Joy who has more than two million Twitter and Instagram followers, and the interaction between a young Hispanic boy and a “Make America Great Again” (MAGA)–hat wearing woman named Roslyn La Liberte at a Simi Valley, California, City Council meeting.

The case centers on a single re-tweet by Reid and two of her Instagram posts.

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The content in this post was found at https://www.lexblog.com/2019/11/12/the-joys-and-dangers-of-tweeting-a-cda-immunity-update/ Clicking the title link will take you to the source of the post. and was not authored by the moderators of freeforafee.com

Technology & Marketing Law Blog
Eric Goldman
February 4, 2020

This is a prisoner pro se lawsuit. “The Complaint avers that beginning February 28, 2014, Google identified Chukwurah as a ‘a triple murderer serving 50 years in a Maryland,’” allegedly because of false court documentation. The court explains:

the Court, at best, may plausibly infer that Google amounted to the search engine which linked Chukwurah’s name to content created and published by the Circuit Court. Even Chukwurah concedes that Google “is a search engine who didn’t start this defamation.” Thus, the CDA precludes the common law defamation claims against Google as a third-party interactive computer service provider…

Chukwurah, in response, seems to argue that the CDA does not bar his claims because Google created the platform that “enabled the defamation of [his] name in a demonizing manner [g]lobally.” But this is precisely the service provider’s role that the CDA aims to protect. Where, as here, a lawsuit seeks to hold the provider liable for decisions about posting content created by a third party, the CDA precludes the claim against that provider.

The court deftly sidesteps the platform vs. publisher dichotomy, which makes sense because that dichotomy is asinine and incoherent. As the court succinctly says, Section 230 immunizes lawsuits that seek to “hold the provider liable for decisions about posting content created by a third party.” Call it a platform or a publisher; it doesn’t matter. The result is the same either way: Section 230 preempts the claim.

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The content in this post was found at https://blog.ericgoldman.org/archives/2020/02/google-search-qualifies-for-section-230-whether-or-not-its-a-platform-chukwurah-v-google.htm Clicking the title link will take you to the source of the post. and was not authored by the moderators of freeforafee.com

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Tech Dirt
Berin Szoka, Ashkhen Kazaryan, and Jess Miers
Feb, 21, 2020

The Department of Justice held a workshop Wednesday: Section 230 – Nurturing Innovation or Fostering Unaccountability? (archived video and agenda). This was perhaps the most official “Airing of Grievances” we’ve had yet about Section 230. It signals that the Trump administration has declared war on the law that made the Internet possible.

In a blistering speech, Trump’s embattled Attorney General, Bill Barr, blamed the 1996 law for a host of ills, especially the spread of child sexual abuse material (CSAM).

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The content in this post was found at https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200221/11290843961/why-section-230-matters-how-not-to-break-internet-doj-230-workshop-review-part-i.shtml Clicking the title link will take you to the source of the post. and was not authored by the moderators of freeforafee.com

Eric Goldman
Technology & Marketing Law Blog
September 6, 2019

The court summarizes the facts:

King alleges Facebook removed multiple posts by him, and temporarily suspended his Facebook access on several occasions in 2018, for posts that Facebook deemed a violation of its terms of service (“ToS”). The crux of his claim is that Facebook has violated its ToS in removing his posts and suspending his account, and that Facebook treats black activists and their posts differently than it does other groups, particularly white supremacists and certain “hate groups.”

This is an easy Section 230 dismissal:

• ICS Provider: King admitted.
• Publisher/Speaker claims: Yes, because each claim “is based on Facebook’s provision of the service for use by others or its moderator decisions on which posts to remove or not and which accounts to suspend or not” (cites to Brittain v. Twitter and Fields v. Twitter)
• Third-party content: “all of King’s allegations rest on treatment of speakers (who make posts or otherwise provide content) and differential treatment of specific posts made either by himself or by other Facebook users”

Case citation: King v. Facebook, Inc., 3:19-cv-01987-WHO (N.D. Cal. Sept. 5, 2019)

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The content in this post was found at https://blog.ericgoldman.org/archives/2019/09/section-230-applies-to-facebooks-post-removals-and-account-suspensions-king-v-facebook.htm Clicking the title link will take you to the source of the post. and was not authored by the moderators of freeforafee.com

Tim Cushing
Tech Dirt
June 13, 2019
Former revenge porn extortionist and current pro se litigant, Craig Brittain, is one severely-narrowed complaint away from having his lawsuit against Twitter tossed. Brittain sued Twitter over the deletion of several accounts, including those he had whipped up for his Senate run.

The court’s first pass at the lawsuit moved it to California, a venue shift Brittain explicitly agreed to each time he created another alt account. Terms of service say suing Twitter means suing in California, even if you’re an Arizonan Senate hopeful with a closet that contains nothing but skeletons.

Contrary to Brittain’s fervent and litigious belief, there’s nothing illegal about deleting Craig Brittain’s multiple Twitter accounts. Brittain’s lawsuit tried to make it possible by treating Twitter as both a provider and a publisher, depending of which description worked out better for his arguments. The court decides to let Brittain have it both ways — and lose both ways. (h/t Adam Steinbaugh)

As a service provider, Twitter cannot be held liable for third party content. It can also remove accounts without losing this immunity. Since this isn’t about the removal of content, but rather the removal of accounts, Brittain tried to argue Section 230 immunity can’t protect Twitter from this lawsuit because removing accounts (and their content) is an editorial activity. The court points out this has zero effect on Section 230 protections. From the decision [PDF]:

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The content in this post was found at https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20190612/19144342387/court-says-section-230-shields-twitter-revenge-porn-bros-stupid-lawsuit.shtml Clicking the title link will take you to the source of the post. and was not authored by the moderators of freeforafee.com

Eric Goldman
Technology & Marketing Law Blog
July 1, 2019

This case involves the heartbreaking suicide of 12 year old Mallory Grossman, driven by offline and online peer bullying that included mean Snapchat messages. (Note: the opinion refers to Mallory as “MG,” but poor redactions reveal her name in the opinion; and her story has been extensively covered by name in New Jersey papers and a newly passed NJ anti-bullying law is named after her). The parents sued the school district and Snapchat. The procedural facts aren’t clearly laid out, but it appears the school district piggybacked on the parents’ claims against Snapchat, essentially pointing at Snapchat as the real wrongdoer instead of itself.

This devolves into a fairly straightforward Section 230 defense win, aided by defense-friendly NJ-area precedents such as Donato v. Moldow, DiMeo v. Max, Obado v. Magedson, and Parker v. Google, Reviewing the applicable complaints, the court says:

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Case citation: Grossman v. Rockaway Twp., 2019 N.J. Super. Unpub. LEXIS 1496  (N.J. Superior Ct. June 10, 2019). The initial complaint.

The content in this post was found at https://blog.ericgoldman.org/archives/2019/07/section-230-protects-snapchat-from-liability-for-cyberbullying-driven-grossman-v-rockaway-township.htm Clicking the title link will take you to the source of the post. and was not authored by the moderators of freeforafee.com

Technology & Marketing Law Blog

Eric Goldman

Sept. 24, 2018

Tiffany Dehen is a 2016 alumna of University of San Diego’s law school. Her website declares that she is “a true American and Patriotic Trump Supporter,” and her photo album includes a photo of her smiling with Dinesh D’Souza. She claims that an unidentified person created a “parody” Twitter account that used her photo and posted objectionable content. She reported the account to Twitter and, after a few days, the account was disabled. You can read more about her motivations for filing this lawsuit in an Above the Law interview. Dehen sued several defendants; I’ll focus on Twitter’s liability.

Case citation: Dehen v. Doe, 2018 WL 4502336 (S.D. Cal. Sept. 18, 2018). Dehen’s website has an archive of case filings.

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Proskaur

Jeffrey Neuburger
July 31, 2018

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 reviews posted on its site. (Hassell v. Bird, No. S235968, 2018 WL 3213933 (Cal. July 2, 2018)).  If the plaintiffs had included Yelp as a defendant in the original suit, such a suit would have likely been barred by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (“CDA” or “CDA Section 230”); instead, the plaintiffs adopted a litigation strategy to bypass such legal immunities.  In refusing to allow plaintiff’s “creative pleading” to avoid the CDA, the outcome was a win for online companies and platforms that host user-generated content (“A Case for the Internet,” declared Yelp).

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The content in this post was found at https://newmedialaw.proskauer.com/2018/07/31/in-a-divided-opinion-california-supreme-court-squashes-end-run-around-cda-immunity-that-sought-to-compel-a-non-party-online-platform-to-remove-defamatory-content/ Clicking the title link will take you to the source of the post. and was not authored by the moderators of freeforafee.com.