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California’s Senate approved a bill whose supporters claim would crack down on the digital-age problem of “revenge porn.”
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The content in this post was found at http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2013/08/16/cracks-in-californias-cyber-revenge-bill/?mod=WSJBlog&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+wsj%2Flaw%2Ffeed+%28WSJ.com%3A+Law+Blog%29 and was not authored by the moderators of freeforafee.com. Clicking the title link will take you to the source of the post.

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An Australian court has ruled that a Melbourne man was defamed by Google. Why? Because the search giant had posted images linked to his name on Google Images, implying that he was a criminal. Milorad “Michael” Trkulja was victorious in a similar case against Yahoo in March 2012, where he won A$250,000 ($233,000). The Victoria Supreme Court’s Justice David Beach is expected to rule on damages next week.

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Thanks in part to websites like Angie’s List and Yelp, the internet is chock full of “user reviews” for all types of goods and services, from restaurants to dentists to pet groomers.

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[Post by Venkat Balasubramani with comments from Eric]

Seldon v. Compass Restaurant, 2012 NY Slip Op 32673(U) (NY Sup Ct. Oct. 21, 2012)

Eric posted about Redmond v. Gawker Media, a California case where the court found that use of links by a Gawker author helped defeat a claim for defamation. This case reaches a similar result.

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By Eric Goldman

Gains v. Romkey, 2012 IL App (3d) 110594-U (Ill. App. Ct. July 3, 2012)

This is yet another case holding that 47 USC 230 immunizes newspapers from reader comments to their online stories, in this case even though the newspapers moderated the reader comments. This is an unsurprising finding; as I’ve documented before, to date (as far as I know), newspapers have always won cases over online reader posts. Still, this ruling is in Illinois state courts, where the hideous Lansing v. Southwest Airlines ruling butchered 47 USC 230 just one month before this opinion. So, it’s nice to see a sensible Section 230 ruling from an Illinois state court after the Lansing train wreck.

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Periodically, a new controversy springs up about a website that encourages users to post anti-social or distasteful content.  A few years ago it was sites like JuicyCampus or People’s Dirt that requested users to gossip about each other; followed by IsAnyoneUp? that linked user-submitted pornographic photos to the subject’s Facebook page.  The latest website to stir up a media frenzy is Texxxan.com, which encourages users to post “revenge porn,” i.e., pornographic depictions of former lovers, ostensibly to get revenge on them.

The Texxxan Lawsuit Will Fail

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UPDATE: Prof. Mary Anne Franks (University of Miami) offers numerous criticisms of this post, including explaining why “Prof. Goldman’s piece, and revenge porn defenses generally, goes beyond garden-variety victim-blaming.”

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Although we have confidence in the quality of our work, the headline above might be viewed by some as mere hyperbole or rhetorical exaggeration. And that is the case with most top ten lists, at least those that are based on consumer reviews, a court recently ruled. In Seaton v. TripAdvisor, LLC, 2012 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 118584 (E.D. Tenn. August 22, 2012), the district court concluded that 2011 Trip Advisor “Dirtiest Hotels” ranking constituted hyperbolic opinion and rhetorical exaggeration, and thus was not actionable under Tennessee defamation law.

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The content in this post was found at http://newmedialaw.proskauer.com/2012/09/17/this-is-one-of-the-top-ten-best-blog-posts-ever-written-about-online-defamation/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+NewMediaAndTechnologyLaw+%28New+Media+and+Technology+Law%29 and was not authored by the moderators of freeforafee.com. Clicking the title link will take you to the source of the post.

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 a third party. The plaintiff claimed that he had notified the employer that the employee was threatening and harassing him, but the employer failed to take action to stop the employee’s conduct. Lansing v. Southwest Airlines Co., 2012 IL App (1st) 101164 (Ill. Ct. App. June 8, 2012).

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The content in this post was found at http://newmedialaw.proskauer.com/2012/06/29/state-appeals-court-concludes-employer-not-protected-by-cda-section-230-in-employee-stalking-case-and-seems-to-shrink-the-statute-along-the-way/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+NewMediaAndTechnologyLaw+%28New+Media+and+Technology+Law%29 and was not authored by the moderators of freeforafee.com. Clicking the title link will take you to the source of the post.