Title V of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, also known as the “Communications Decency Act of 1996” or “CDA” was signed into law in Feburary 1996. The goal of the CDA was to control the exposure of minors to indecent...more
9/9/2016
/ Communications Decency Act ,
Corporate Counsel ,
Minors ,
Online Platforms ,
Online Safety for Children ,
Putative Class Actions ,
Snapchat ,
Social Media ,
Social Networks ,
Telecommunications ,
Telecommunications Act ,
Terms of Service ,
Websites
In Yershov v. Gannett Satellite Information Network, Inc., a user of the free USA Today app alleged that each time he viewed a video clip, the app transmitted his mobile Android ID, GPS coordinates and identification of the...more
9/8/2016
/ Article III ,
Corporate Counsel ,
Data Collection ,
Injury-in-Fact ,
Mobile Apps ,
Motion to Dismiss ,
Personally Identifiable Information ,
Spokeo v Robins ,
Standing ,
Subject Matter Jurisdiction ,
Third-Party ,
VPPA
With the session ending on August 31st, the California legislature is debating a bill (AB 83) that would expand data security requirements for businesses that maintain personal information of California residents to include,...more
In Nghiem v Dick’s Sporting Goods, Inc., No. 16-00097 (C.D. Cal. July 5, 2016), the Central District of California held browsewrap terms to be unenforceable because the hyperlink to the terms was “sandwiched” between two...more
7/29/2016
/ Arbitration Agreements ,
Browsewrap Agreement ,
Class Action ,
Clickwrap Agreements ,
Consumer Contracts ,
Corporate Counsel ,
Motion to Compel ,
TCPA ,
Terms of Use ,
Unenforceable Contract Terms ,
Website Design ,
Websites ,
Young Lawyers
This past week, the Ninth Circuit released two important decisions that clarify the scope of liability under the federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA), 18 U.S.C. § 1030. The Act was originally designed to target...more
7/15/2016
/ Cease and Desist ,
Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) ,
Corporate Counsel ,
Criminal Prosecution ,
Economic Espionage Act ,
Facebook ,
Former Employee ,
Passwords ,
Popular ,
Summary Judgment ,
Terms of Use ,
Trade Secrets ,
Unauthorized Access ,
US v Nosal ,
Web Scraping ,
Young Lawyers
Another court has contributed to the ongoing debate over the scope of the term “personally identifiable information” under the Video Privacy Protection Act – a statute enacted in 1988 to protect the privacy of consumers’...more
7/1/2016
/ Cookies ,
COPPA ,
Corporate Counsel ,
Data-Sharing ,
Google ,
Invasion of Privacy ,
IP Addresses ,
Nickelodeon ,
Personally Identifiable Information ,
Third-Party ,
Unique Device Identifiers ,
Viacom ,
VPPA ,
Young Lawyers
We’ve previously blogged about the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) privacy multistakeholder process to address concerns associated with the emerging commercial use of facial recognition...more
6/24/2016
/ Best Practices ,
Biometric Information ,
Biometric Information Privacy Act ,
Consent ,
Data Security ,
Data-Sharing ,
Facebook ,
Facial Recognition Technology ,
Google ,
NTIA ,
Privacy Concerns ,
Shutterfly ,
Snapchat ,
Transparency
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...more
6/2/2016
/ APIs ,
Breach of Contract ,
CAN-SPAM Act ,
Cease and Desist ,
Compensatory Damages ,
Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) ,
Content Aggregators ,
Copyright Infringement ,
Craigslist ,
Injunctive Relief ,
Unfair Competition
Late last week, the Illinois state senate considered an amendment tacked onto to an unrelated bill that would have revised the Illinois’ Biometric Information Privacy Act, a law that has been the subject of much debate and...more
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...more
The District Court for the Northern District of California recently issued what could be a very significant decision on a number of important digital law issues. These include: the enforceability of “clickwrap” as compared...more
5/10/2016
/ Biometric Information ,
Biometric Information Privacy Act ,
Choice-of-Law ,
Clickwrap Agreements ,
Corporate Counsel ,
Data Collection ,
Enforceability ,
Facebook ,
Facial Recognition Technology ,
Shutterfly ,
Terms of Use
This past week, the First Circuit issued a notable opinion concerning the contours of liability under the Video Privacy Protection Act (VPPA) – a decision that stirs up further uncertainty as to where to draw the line...more
We live in a world that has rapidly redefined and blurred the roles of the “creator” of content, as compared to the roles of the “publisher” and “distributor” of such content. A recent case touches on some of the important...more
4/4/2016
/ Amazon ,
Barnes and Noble ,
Distributors ,
e-Books ,
Intellectual Property Protection ,
Invasion of Privacy ,
Online Platforms ,
Publishers ,
Right of Publicity ,
Right to Privacy ,
Terms and Conditions ,
User Agreements ,
User-Generated Content
As we have previously written about, there are several ongoing biometric privacy-related lawsuits alleging that facial recognition-based systems of photo tagging violate the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA). ...more
In a notable ruling last month, a California district court ruled that the HTML underlying a custom search results page of an online advertising creation platform is copyrightable.
In Media.net Advertising FZ-LLC v....more
The big data revolution is quietly chugging along: devices, sensors, websites and networks are collecting and producing significant amounts of data, the cost of data storage continues to plummet, public and private sector...more
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...more
As we have previously noted, there are several ongoing privacy-related lawsuits alleging that facial recognition-based systems of photo tagging violate the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA). The photo storage...more
As we have previously noted, Facebook has been named as a defendant in a number of lawsuits claiming that its facial recognition-based system of photo tagging violates the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA). ...more
In an important ruling for digital currency service providers, EU’s top court, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), ruled that transactions to exchange a traditional currency for bitcoin virtual currency, or...more
A New York district court opinion is the latest addition to our watch of ongoing VPPA-related disputes, a notable decision on the issue of what exactly is a disclosure of “personally identifiable information” (PII) under the...more
10/28/2015
/ Analytics ,
Anonymization ,
Corporate Counsel ,
Data Privacy ,
Data Protection ,
Data Security ,
Disclosure ,
Disney ,
Internet Streaming ,
Mobile Devices ,
Personally Identifiable Information ,
Popular ,
Roku ,
Third-Party ,
Video Privacy ,
VPPA ,
Young Lawyers
As discussed in a previous post on facial recognition technology, a putative class action has been filed against Facebook over the collection of “faceprints” for its online photo tagging function, Tag Suggestions. (See e.g.,...more
10/16/2015
/ Biometric Information ,
Biometric Information Privacy Act ,
Consent ,
Data Collection ,
Data Privacy ,
Data Protection ,
Data Security ,
Databases ,
Facebook ,
Facial Recognition Technology ,
Injunctions ,
Motion to Dismiss ,
Personal Data ,
Photographs ,
Popular ,
Putative Class Actions ,
Shutterfly ,
Statutory Damages
The Eleventh Circuit issued a notable ruling this week limiting a mobile app’s liability under the Video Privacy Protection Act (VPPA), 18 U.S.C. § 2710, a law enacted in 1988 to preserve “consumer” personal privacy with...more
10/15/2015
/ Advertising ,
Android ,
App Developers ,
Cartoon Network ,
Data Privacy ,
Data Protection ,
Data Security ,
Digital Downloads ,
Internet Streaming ,
Mobile Apps ,
Nonsubscribers ,
Online Videos ,
Personally Identifiable Information ,
Third-Party ,
VPPA ,
Web Tracking
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...more
Last week, the Southern District of New York followed a long line of precedent under New York law and upheld the enforceability of a website clickwrap agreement, granting a website operator’s motion to compel arbitration...more