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Eric Goldman
April 1, 2020
Pellegrino is a saxophone player with “externally rotatable feet,” which has helped him develop a nifty “signature” dance move while playing. The videogame Fortnite sells “emotes,” optional customizations for players’ digital avatars. Pellegrino alleges that the “Phone It In” emote depicts his signature dance move. Pellegrino sued Fortnite for a variety of claims. The court dismisses all of them, with prejudice, except for the false endorsement claim (which will fail later).

Case citation: Pellegrino v. Epic Games, Inc., 2:19-cv-01806-JP (E.D. Pa. March 31, 2020). The complaint.

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The content in this post was found at https://blog.ericgoldman.org/archives/2020/04/videogame-can-replicate-musicians-signature-move-unless-its-a-false-endorsement-which-it-isnt-pellegrino-v-epic-games.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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The content in this post was found at https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/03/court-violating-a-sites-terms-of-service-isnt-criminal-hacking/ 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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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

Mike Masnick
Tech Dirt
Wed, Feb 6th 2019

If you’ve been following copyright issues for more than a few years, you surely remember Aereo, a company that attempted to set up a bunch of micro-TV antennas which it could then use to stream broadcast TV to paying subscribers. . . .

And then, even more bizarre, the Supreme Court ruled against Aereo using no actually defined standard, but basically just saying that it looked too much like a cable service, so they’ll call it a cable service (something I’ve referred to as the Supreme Court’s “looks like a duck” doctrine). . . .

However, it appears that at least one operation is trying again with an Aereo-like approach. And once again, it’s taken a very legally-focused approach. Perhaps that’s because it’s been set up by a lawyer, David Goodfriend, who formerly worked for the FCC (and in the media industry). The NY Times has a big article about his Locast operation, and how he’s hoping to get sued to prove that his approach is legal, where Aereo’s failed.

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The content in this post was found at https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20190204/10274241525/former-fcc-official-attempts-to-create-aereo-that-supreme-court-wont-kill.shtml Clicking the title link will take you to the source of the post. and was not authored by the moderators of freeforafee.com

Tech Dirt

Mike Masnick

Fri, Aug 31st 2018

[ed’s note: we need no more evidence than this case to substantiate our claim that judges in the US court system have lost their collective memories from the contracts classes they took in law school. Apparently, not a one of them is willing to use common sense and legal judgment to mark terms of service and other wrap contracts as the crap that they usually are. Here, we have yet another stunning example of a judge sticking with bad precedent rather than pointing out the obvious and thereby bringing some wisdom into the void].

Tech Dirt

Mike Masnick

Fri, Aug 31st 2018

Earlier this year we wrote about Disney’s silly lawsuit against Redbox. If you don’t recall, Redbox, whose main business was renting DVDs out of kiosks started also offering digital download codes that could be purchased at their kiosks. What Redbox did, was it would buy Disney “combo packs” (that came with both a DVD and a download code) and would offer up just the slip of paper with the code out of its kiosks. This seems like perfectly reasonable first sale rights. A legitimate code was purchased, and then resold.

When we wrote about the case back in February, it involved the court smacking down Disney, and even saying that the company was engaged in “copyright misuse” in overclaiming what copyright allowed the company to do. . . .

So my prediction following that was: “this almost certainly means that Disney is quickly reprinting the packaging on all its Combo Pack DVDs to make this language more legalistic to match the Lexmark standard.”

And… bingo. That’s exactly what happened. In a new ruling, the court has now granted a preliminary injunction against Redbox all because of the new “contract” language Disney has put on its DVDs (though amusingly, in a footnote, the court notes “Disney does not concede that the changes were necessary.”)

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The content in this post was found at https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20180831/00545440550/disney-fixes-sketchy-dvd-rental-license-wins-injunction-against-redbox-over-digital-downloads.shtml Clicking the title link will take you to the source of the post. and was not authored by the moderators of freeforafee.com

David Oxenford
August 3, 2018
Broadcast Law Blog

Last week, I spoke at Podcast Movement 2018 – a large conference of podcasters held in Philadelphia. My presentation, Legal Issues In Podcasting – What Broadcasters Need to Know, was part of the Broadcasters Meet Podcasters Track. The slides from my presentation are available here. In the presentation, I discussed copyright issues, including some of the music rights issues discussed in my articles here and here, making clear that broadcaster’s current music licenses from ASCAP, BMI, SESAC and even SoundExchange don’t provide them the rights to use music in podcasts. Instead, those rights need to be cleared directly with the holders of the copyrights in both the underlying musical compositions as well as in any sound recording of the song used in the podcast.

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The content in this post was found at https://www.broadcastlawblog.com/2018/08/articles/a-presentation-on-legal-issues-for-podcasters-who-owns-what/ Clicking the title link will take you to the source of the post. and was not authored by the moderators of freeforafee.com.

[ed: not an IP case as such. But important]

Pay or Play

Conrad B. Wilton on March 7, 2018

California’s Actor-Age Censorship Law (AB 1687), which would have required IMDb.com to remove age-related information from its web pages, was declared unconstitutional by a district court last month on free speech grounds.

SAG-AFTRA vigorously campaigned for the law, which it claimed would mitigate age discrimination in Hollywood.  Within two months of the law taking effect in 2017, IMDb obtained a preliminary injunction and later filed for summary judgment claiming the legislation impermissibly restricted its First Amendment rights.  Judge Vince Chhabria of the Northern District of California agreed.

Although Chhabria acknowledged the law may be well-intentioned, he applied strict scrutiny and found the law is not narrowly tailored to eliminate age discrimination in the industry.

The law is under-inclusive, Chhabria determined, because it targets solely IMDb rather than other online sources which would remain free to broadcast an actor’s age.

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Lime Green IP news

MARCH 12TH, 2018 BY DAVID TAYLOR AND SEAN KELLY

DNS Belgium, the Registry operating the .BE country code Top Level Domain (ccTLD), recently published an article warning domain name owners of the risks inherent in the practice of “snapping”.  Although anyone can legitimately snap up an expired domain name, problems can arise when cybercriminals grab expired domain names and then use them in damaging ways, such as pointing them to fake retail websites or re-creating email addresses based on them.

The practice of “snapping” (also known as backorders or snapbacks) has been around for some time and domain name owners should carefully consider the potential risks before allowing their domain names to expire.  The cost of renewing a domain name is, after all, small in comparison with the cost of legal action to recover one that has been registered by a third party who is using the domain name in a way that is damaging.

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The content in this post was found at https://www.limegreenipnews.com/2018/03/domain-names-the-dangers-of-snapping/ 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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For the past year, I’ve been covering Congress’ efforts to create a sex trafficking exception to Section 230’s immunity. From the beginning, it was clear that the proponents did not understand Section 230’s powerful but counter-intuitive doctrinal mechanisms, yet their initiative to gut Section 230 had momentum. Two bills were introduced: SESTA in the Senate and FOSTA in the House. Both bills as introduced were terrible.

After a Senate Commerce Committee hearing, SESTA was amended to fix some of its roughest edges, but the amendments didn’t resolve SESTA’s structural flaw (I’ll discuss that below). As part of a House Judiciary Committee hearing, FOSTA as introduced was replaced by substitute FOSTA, which still had problems but represented a more productive approach to address sex trafficking. Amended SESTA and substitute FOSTA passed the Senate Commerce Committee and House Judiciary Committee, respectively, queuing both up for passage by their respective chambers. However, amended SESTA has been slowed by Sen. Wyden’s hold; and for reasons that aren’t clear to me, the House Judiciary Committee didn’t report substitute FOSTA until last week. Ten days ago, the House Energy & Commerce Committee waived jurisdiction over FOSTA to help get the bill on the House floor.

Ever since substitute FOSTA emerged, one of the key questions has been how Senate and House might reconcile the different policy approaches in SESTA and FOSTA if both advanced. No one I spoke to, not even the inside-Congress experts, were confident in their predictions. Last week, a backroom deal was announced that apparently answers that question, but in substantively and procedurally deficient ways. This is BAD NEWS.

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The content in this post was found at https://blog.ericgoldman.org/archives/2018/02/congress-probably-will-ruin-section-230-this-week-sestafosta-updates.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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