PODCAST: Williams Mullen's Trending Now: An IP Podcast - Advertising & Customer Engagement in the Digital Age - Customer Reviews and Response
New Developments in the World of Section 230
PATIENT PRIVACY IN AN ERA OF SOCIAL MEDIA
Are websites legally responsible for content posted by their users?
Stealth Lawyer: Zach Abramowitz, 'Blogcaster'
Keypoint: Last week, several privacy and AI bills passed out of committee (with some receiving amendments) while two bills died in committee. We are currently tracking thirteen privacy and AI-related bills that previously...more
A February 21, 2023, decision by the U.S. Copyright Office has given all creators and companies reason to think twice before jumping on the generative AI bandwagon. Over the past six months, the world has been fascinated by...more
Since the emergence of the Internet, under current European Union rules, services that host user-generated or user-contributed content have enjoyed legal immunity from liability, provided they take down unlawful content once...more
In the past month, there have been some notable developments surrounding Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (“CDA” or “Section 230”) beyond the ongoing debate in Congress over the potential for legislative reform....more
The UK government recently published an interim update on its consultation on proposed legislation to tackle online harms. The legislation will impose a new duty of care on companies that facilitate the sharing of...more
A recent Second Circuit decision makes clear that the safe harbor that social media and other Internet companies enjoy under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act broadly applies to a wide variety of claims. ...more
Often hailed as the law that gave us the modern Internet, Section 230 of the Communication Decency Act generally protects online platforms from liability for content posted by third parties. Many commentators, including us...more
In a long-awaited decision, the California Supreme Court ruled this week that Yelp cannot be forced to remove a review posted on its website. Hassell v. Bird, 2018 WL 3213933 (Cal. Sup. Ct. July 2, 2018). Both the superior...more
The controversial consumer gripe site, RipoffReport.com, is at it again. The First Circuit recently affirmed a lower court’s ruling that RipoffReport.com was entitled to immunity under Section 230 of the Communications...more
The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals recently kept alive one of the multitude of legal entanglements ensnaring Gawker Media LLC, as the Court reversed and remanded a lower court’s decision to dismiss a plaintiff’s defamation...more
Hospitality industry stakeholders who host sites for online reviews or rely on review sites such as Yelp, Trip Advisor, Urban Spoon, or Oyster, may take comfort in the recent Ninth Circuit decision regarding the liability of...more
We have written before about website operators’ use of the federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) to combat data scraping. We have also noted a number of recent cases in which courts held that social media platforms,...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 U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit this week delivered a resounding victory for websites dependent on a federal immunity from claims based on content posted by third parties. Broadly interpreting Section 230 of...more
As user-generated content explodes over the Internet, intellectual property disputes over posting or uploading such content without the owner’s consent continue to escalate. As we touched on in a recent post, social media...more
On June 17, 2014, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) released two additional draft guidance documents relating to the pharmaceutical industry's use of social media. One of the guidance documents addresses how...more