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| May 7, 2026 | Пиратство в эпоху VHS: как Universal судилась с Sony и почему последствия этого спора мы ощущаем и в наши дни | Реклама Betamax в 1970-ые
Когда вы загружаете видео на YouTube или нажимаете кнопку «запись» во время стрима, за этим стоит историческое решение Верховного суда США, принятое в 1984 году с минимальным перевесом голосов. Дело Sony Corp. of A... |
| Apr 13, 2026 | Section 230 Is Dying By A Thousand Workarounds, And Massachusetts Just Added Another One | We’ve been warning for a while now that Section 230 is dying by a thousand legal workarounds rather than a straightforward repeal, and the hits just keep coming. A few weeks ago, I wrote about how two jury verdicts against Meta in New Mexic... |
| Mar 26, 2026 | Everyone Cheering The Social Media Addiction Verdicts Against Meta Should Understand What They’re Actually Cheering For | First things first: Meta is a terrible company that has spent years making terrible decisions and being terrible at explaining the challenges of social media trust & safety, all while prioritizing growth metrics over user safety. If you... |
| Feb 9, 2026 | Reflections On Section 230’s Past, Present, And Future On Its 30th Anniversary | The Telecommunications Act of 1996 became law thirty years ago today, on February 8, 1996. Buried in a corner of that sprawling law was Section 230, a law that says websites aren’t liable for third-party content.
Section 230 didn’t receive ... |
| Dec 24, 2025 | Google Built Its Empire Scraping The Web. Now It’s Suing To Stop Others From Scraping Google | Last week, Google filed suit against SerpApi, a scraping company that helps businesses pull data from Google search results. The lawsuit claims SerpApi violated DMCA Section 1201 by circumventing Google’s “technological protection measures”... |
| Sep 15, 2025 | The FTC’s Settlement With Aylo: This Isn’t Really About Fighting CSAM And Revenge Porn | This is part two of a two-part series about the recent settlement between the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), the Utah Consumer Protection Division (CPD), and Aylo, the parent company of Pornhub. The order (which has now been approved by a ... |
| Aug 12, 2025 | Another Look At The STOP CSAM Act | Amidst the current batch of child safety bills in Congress, a familiar name appears: the STOP CSAM Act. It was previously introduced in 2023, when I wrote about the threat the bill posed to the availability of strong encryption and conseque... |
| Aug 11, 2025 | NY Appeals Court: Lol, No Of Course You Can’t Sue Social Media For The Buffalo Mass Shooting | When politicians immediately blamed social media for the horrific 2022 Buffalo mass shooting—despite zero evidence linking the platforms to the attack—it was obvious deflection from actual policy failures. The scapegoating worked: survivors... |
| Jul 3, 2025 | Supreme Court Rejects Jason ‘Pee King Of Facebook’ Fyk’s ‘But Muh Pee Videos’ Appeal | All hail Jason Fyk, one of the most aggrieved “failure to monetize piss videos” dudes ever. In fact, he might be the only person angered about his inability to turn pee into cash with third-party content featuring people urinating.
Anything... |
| Jul 2, 2025 | Bright Data beat Elon Musk and Meta in court — now its $100M AI platform is taking on Big Tech | Want smarter insights in your inbox? Sign up for our weekly newsletters to get only what matters to enterprise AI, data, and security leaders. Subscribe Now
Bright Data, the Israeli web scraping company that defeated both Meta and Elon Musk... |
| Jun 7, 2025 | The TAKE IT DOWN Act: A Double-Edged Sword in the Fight Against Non-Consensual Imagery | In the digital age, where images can be manipulated with a click, the line between consent and exploitation blurs. The TAKE IT DOWN Act, recently signed into law, aims to combat non-consensual intimate imagery (NCII). But is it a shield for... |
| Jun 5, 2025 | A Takedown Of The Take It Down Act | This is a cross post from Prof. Eric Goldman’s blog, mostly written by Prof. Jess Miers, with additional commentary at the end from Eric.
Two things can be true: Non-consensual intimate imagery (NCII) is a serious and gendered harm. And, th... |
| Dec 18, 2024 | The Pissing Contest: Jason Fyk's Legal Follies and Kash Patel's Irony | In the world of social media and politics, absurdity often reigns supreme. Two recent stories exemplify this truth: Jason Fyk's relentless legal battles over his "pee video" empire and Kash Patel's ironic rise within the FBI. Both... |
| Dec 16, 2024 | Self-Made Millionaire Fails Yet Again To Talk A Court Into Defending His Right To Post Videos Of People Peeing On Facebook | Quite famously, snarkier-than-thou music review site Pitchfork posted a brief, incisive review of Australian band Jet’s second album in 2006. The review contained nothing more than the 0.0 score and this embedded video:
This, my friends, ep... |
| Oct 28, 2024 | NY Times Gets 230 Wrong Again; Misrepresenting History, Law, And The First Amendment | The NY Times has real difficulty not misrepresenting Section 230. Over and over and over and over and over again it has misrepresented how Section 230 works, even having to once run this astounding correction (to an article that had a half-... |
| Oct 18, 2024 | Five Decisions Illustrate How Section 230 Is Fading Fast | Professor Eric Goldman continues to be the best at tracking any and all developments regarding internet regulations. He recently covered a series of cases in which the contours of Section 230’s liability immunity is getting chipped away in ... |
| Oct 2, 2024 | Paltry Damages Awarded In Take-Two’s Copyright Loss Over Randy Orton’s Tattoos Wiped Out On Appeal | Going all the way back to 2020, we have been discussing one of a series of copyright disputes centered on video games and their faithful depictions of real-life tattoos within them. While the first of these were related to depictions of NBA... |
| Sep 19, 2024 | SB 1047: California’s Recipe For AI Stagnation | As California edges closer to enacting SB 1047, the state risks throwing the entire AI industry into turmoil. The bill has already cleared the legislative process and now sits on Governor Newsom’s desk, leaving him with a critical decision:... |
| Sep 11, 2024 | Utah’s ‘Protect The Kids Online!’ Law Rejected By Court | Over the last few years, politicians in Utah have been itching to pass terrible internet legislation. Some of you may forget that in the earlier part of the century, Utah became somewhat famous for passing absolutely terrible internet laws ... |
| Sep 11, 2024 | More Of RFK Jr.’s ‘Don’t Moderate Me, Bro’ Cases Are Laughed Out Of Court | In the last month, I wrote about two of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s bullshit crazy lawsuits over him being very, very mad that social media companies keep moderating or limiting the spread of his dangerous bullshit anti-vax nonsense. In one, th... |
| Aug 29, 2024 | The Shifting Sands of Digital Responsibility: A Deep Dive into Recent Legal and Technological Changes | In the ever-evolving landscape of digital communication, two recent developments stand out: a pivotal Ninth Circuit ruling on Section 230 and Meta's decision to eliminate third-party augmented reality (AR) filters. Both events signal a shif... |
| Aug 27, 2024 | In YOLO Ruling, Ninth Circuit Cracks Open Pandora’s Box For Section 230 | The Ninth Circuit appeals court seems to have figured out the best way to “reform” Section 230: by pretending it doesn’t apply to some stuff that the judges there just randomly decide it doesn’t apply to anymore. At least that’s my reading ... |
| Jul 8, 2024 | Clarence Thomas Learned Nothing From The Mess He Helped Create Regarding Section 230, Blogs Ignorantly About 230 Yet Again | Have we considered giving Supreme Court justices their own blogs in which they can vent their ill-informed brain farts, rather than leaving them to use official Supreme Court order lists as a form of a blog?
Justice Clarence Thomas has been... |
| Jun 25, 2024 | Success Kid Says Transformative Use Lives | The recent publication of Griner v. King seems to have just about everything: an iconic meme (Success Kid!), a troll-ish politician, charges of political censorship, and an application of the latest big Supreme Court opinion on fair use, Wa... |
| Jun 12, 2024 | Ninth Circuit Dumps Lawsuit Against YouTube Brought By Anti-Vaxxer Whose Account Was Terminated | These lawsuits don’t work. They just don’t. And yet, they’re filed seemingly all the time.
When YouTube decides as a private company it would rather you take your stupid shit elsewhere, it’s allowed to do so. Its terms and conditions contai... |
| May 21, 2024 | Five Section 230 Cases That Made Online Communities Better | The House Energy and Commerce Committee is holding a hearing tomorrow on “sunsetting” Section 230.
Despite facing criticism, Section 230 has undeniably been a cornerstone in the architecture of the modern web, fostering a robust market for ... |
| May 15, 2024 | Musk’s ExTwitter Fumbles Copyright Law, Loses Data Scraping Lawsuit | Is there any law that Elon Musk actually understands?
The latest is that he’s lost yet another lawsuit, this time (in part) for not understanding copyright law.
There have been a variety of lawsuits regarding data scraping over the past dec... |
| May 14, 2024 | Techdirt Podcast Episode 391: Generative AI Is Doomed | There’s no shortage of prognostication about the future of generative AI, including plenty of predictions that it won’t actually be around forever for various reasons. A lot of these takes are a little too speculative or just not very inter... |
| May 2, 2024 | Was There A Trojan Horse Hidden In Section 230 All Along That Could Enable Adversarial Interoperability? | There’s a fascinating new lawsuit against Meta that includes a surprisingly novel interpretation of Section 230. If the court buys it, this interpretation could make the open web a lot more open, while chipping away at the centralized contr... |
| May 1, 2024 | Section 230, Which Donald Trump Wants Repealed, Protects Donald Trump For Retweeting | Donald Trump, who has demanded both that we “open up our libel laws” and that we “repeal Section 230,” was just protected from a defamation claim thanks to Section 230. How about that?
One thing that many people forget (or deliberately igno... |
| Apr 26, 2024 | Court Dismisses Mark Zuckerberg Personally From Massive ‘Social Media Addicts Children’ Lawsuit | Over the last few years, there have been a ton of lawsuits, pretty much all of them dubious, arguing that social media is inherently harmful to children (something the research does not show) and that therefore there is some sort of magic p... |
| Apr 3, 2024 | Judge Greenlights Legal Action Against Roblox Over Allegations of Child Predation via Illegal Gambling | Inno Flores, Tech Times 03 April 2024, 10:04 pm
Following allegations of child predation facilitated by illegal gambling activities on its platform, Roblox faced legal action. The case revolves around accusations that Roblox failed to prote... |
| Mar 22, 2024 | Confused NY Court Says That Section 230 Doesn’t Block Ridiculous Lawsuit Blaming Social Media For Buffalo Shooter | Can you imagine what kind of world we’d live in if you could blame random media companies for tangential relationships they had with anyone who ever did anything bad? What would happen if we could blame newspapers for inspiring crime? Or te... |
| Feb 27, 2024 | Sir, This Is A Supreme Court (Not A Wendy’s) | On Monday, the Supreme Court heard the oral arguments over both Florida and Texas’ social media content moderation laws.
Even though the issues were similar, and the parties challenging both laws (NetChoice and CCIA) were the same (and had ... |
| Jan 30, 2024 | WallStreetBets Creator Loses (Again) His Frivolous Lawsuit Against Reddit | You probably recall the subreddit WallStreetBets from the whole GameStonks! episode three years ago. Over the last year or so there’s been a different legal issue related to that subreddit, though. Jaime Rogozinski, who created the WSB subr... |
| Jan 29, 2024 | Court: No, You Can’t Sue Facebook Claiming It Takes Down More Pro-Palestinian Speech Than Pro-Israel Speech | The Supreme Court is about to review Texas’ HB20 law, that (among other unworkable things) says that websites cannot moderate based on “viewpoint.” Of course, websites don’t moderate based on viewpoint, but rather whether or not they think ... |
| Jan 24, 2024 | Copyright In Legal Documents Back On The Docket | Going back nearly 15 years, we had a story raising the question of whether or not legal filings were (or should be?) covered by copyright. As we noted at the time, it seems pretty clear that, under today’s somewhat absurd copyright, it is e... |
| Nov 30, 2023 | An Appeals Court Broke Media Advertising, So The Copia Institute Asked The California Supreme Court To Fix It | A few months ago a California court of appeals issued a really terrible decision in Liapes v. Facebook. Liapes, a Facebook user, was unhappy that the ads delivered to her correlated with some of her characteristics, like her age. As a resul... |
| Nov 29, 2023 | Let’s Not Flip Sides On IP Maximalism Because Of AI | Copyright policy is a sticky tricky thing, and there are battles that have been fought for decades among public and corporate interests. Typically, it’s the corporate interests that win — especially the content industry. We’ve seen power, a... |
| Oct 19, 2023 | Kiwi Farms’ Copyright Battle Could Spell Bad News for DMCA Transparency | Kiwi Farms is an online forum with a reputation for mocking and harassing people, actions that have been linked to several tragic deaths.
In response to the barrage of negative news, several third-party providers including DreamHost, DDoS-G... |
| Oct 13, 2023 | OK, Loomer: Yet Another Court Tosses Yet Another Dumbass Laura Loomer Lawsuit | Alt-right semi-personality Laura Loomer just can’t win. And she shouldn’t! She’s ridiculous. She’s perhaps most famous for treating her own unwillingness to perform routine car maintenance as an act of anti-Loomer terrorism. |
| Oct 10, 2023 | Three Guarantees In Life: Taxes, Death, And Politicians Trying To Destroy The Internet | Two years ago we wrote about Rep. Jerry Nadler’s SHOP SAFE Act, which we noted would basically cement into place Amazon’s position as a dominant online marketplace, because no one else would be able to afford the associated liability. The b... |
| Sep 29, 2023 | Let’s Go! Supreme Court Grants Cert To Hear Cases About Social Media Moderation Laws In Florida & Texas | This isn’t exactly a surprise. Everyone has expected this pretty much from about the time that Ron DeSantis insisted he had a plan to regulate social media, but it got delayed by a year, because it seemed that the Supreme Court just didn’t ... |
| Sep 13, 2023 | A Trio Of Failed Lawsuits Trying To Sue Websites For Moderating Content | Why do people still file these lawsuits? For years now, we see lawsuits filed against websites over their content moderation decisions, despite Section 230 barring them (and the 1st Amendment rights of the platform backing that up). These l... |
| Sep 8, 2023 | Elon Musk Files Really Strong 1st Amendment Challenge To California’s Terrible Social Media ‘Transparency’ Law | Hey, Techdirt haters: hold onto your hats, because I’m going to praise Elon Musk for doing the right thing, even though many of you insist that my complaints about him are motivated by personal dislike. But, as I’ve noted repeatedly, I’m ha... |
| Aug 21, 2023 | Suing Unhappy Patients For Defamation Is A Great Way To Put Yourself On The Hook For Their Legal Fees | Customer service matters. Suing patients unhappy with your work just ain’t it. |
| Jul 24, 2023 | Elon Musk’s ‘War’ On Possibly Imaginary Scrapers Now A Lawsuit, Which Might Actually Work | Elon Musk seems infatuated with bots and scrapers as the root of all his problems at Twitter. Given his propensity to fire engineers who tell him things he doesn’t want to hear, it’s not difficult to believe that engineers afraid to tell Mu... |
| Jun 26, 2023 | California’s Journalism Protection Act Is An Unconstitutional Clusterfuck Of Terrible Lawmaking | The California legislature is competing with states like Florida and Texas to see who can pass laws that will be more devastating to the Internet. California’s latest entry into this Internet death-spiral is the California Journalism Protec... |
| Jun 20, 2023 | Third Circuit Says First Amendment Protects Cops Who Want To Be Racist Assholes Online | The First Amendment protects speech, even the horrible stuff. It can’t protect the speaker from being criticized for being abhorrent, despite what many abhorrent people believe. It can, however, in certain cases, protect the speaker from be... |
| Jun 15, 2023 | Hawley, Blumenthal Team Up To Push Nonsensical AI/230 Bill | There are some questions about whether or not Section 230 protects AI companies from being liable for the output from their generative AI tools. Matt Perrault published a thought-provoking piece arguing that 230 probably does not protect ge... |
| May 18, 2023 | Two Common But Disingenuous Phrases About Section 230 | This blog post is about the following two phrases: |
| May 8, 2023 | Court Dumps Lawsuit Alleging The Government Forced Amazon To Stop Promoting An Anti-vaxxer’s Book | The internet has revolutionized communications, sales, and information distribution, and has enabled historic levels of porn consumption. These are all unequivocally good things. (Fight me.) What it has also done is revolutionize court prec... |
| Apr 24, 2023 | Avoiding Mandatory Transparency’s Pitfalls in Online Safety Legislation | On April 19, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) introduced a new bill, the STOP CSAM Act (an acronym for “child sex abuse material”). It’s the newest in a line of recent bills that attempt to promote greater safety online, in part by demanding more ... |
| Apr 12, 2023 | Recent Case Highlights How Age Verification Laws May Directly Conflict With Biometric Privacy Laws | California passed the California Age-Appropriate Design Code (AADC) nominally to protect children’s privacy, but at the same time, the AADC requires businesses to do an age “assurance” of all their users, children and adults alike. (Age “as... |
| Mar 20, 2023 | Antisemitic Conspiracy Theorist Who Sued YouTube For 1st Amendment Violations Now Owes YouTube Nearly $40,000 | The people who claim to be confused about social media services and the First Amendment are never truly confused. It’s always the people you expect to claim they’re “confused.” |
| Mar 20, 2023 | Reminder: Section 230 Protects You When You Forward An Email | Sometimes it feels like we need to keep pointing this out, but it’s (1) often forgotten and (2) really, really important. Section 230 doesn’t just protect “big tech.” It also doesn’t just protect “small tech.” It literally protects you and ... |
| Mar 17, 2023 | Yes, Section 230 Should Protect ChatGPT And Other Generative AI Tools | Question Presented: Does Section 230 Protect Generative AI Products Like ChatGPT? |
| Mar 14, 2023 | Американский суд в иске пользователя против Youtube принял сторону платформы и обязал истца оплатить издержек на $40 тыс | Американский суд в иске пользователя против Youtube принял сторону платформы, отказал в требованиях пользователя по разблокировке его аккаунта и возврата монетизации, а также постановил, чтобы пользователь выплатил компенсацию для возмещени... |
| Mar 1, 2023 | Taamneh Case Gave Us A Glimpse Of The Horror Websites Would Face In A Post-Section 230 World | Last week I wrote some initial thoughts on the Supreme Court hearing in Gonzalez v. Google. Of course, as lots of people mentioned, it was tied at the hip with another case, Taamneh v. Twitter, as both were granted cert together. The two ca... |
| Feb 23, 2023 | NY’s ‘Hateful Conduct’ Social Media Law Blocked As Unconstitutional | Last summer, we wrote about New York’s law to require websites to have “hateful conduct” policies, noting that it was “ridiculous” and “likely unconstitutional.” The law was passed in the wake of the horrific Buffalo super market shooting, ... |
| Jan 25, 2023 | Guy Who Boasted Of Hanging Out With The ‘First Guy To Storm The Capital’ Loses Libel Suit Against Person Who Pointed This Out | The truth remains the best defense against bogus defamation claims. And strong anti-SLAPP laws ensure the person being wrongfully accused of defamation gets to walk away with some of the anti-speech bully’s money. |
| Jan 13, 2023 | Appeals Court Judge Suggests Hate Speech Shouldn’t Be Protected In Decision Against Students Expelled For Bigoted Social Media Posts | Last year, the Supreme Court handed down a ruling in a school free speech case that came down squarely, if very narrowly, on the side of the student. The student suing over being kicked off the cheerleading squad for sending a snapchat mess... |
| Dec 27, 2022 | Appeals Court Tosses Stupid Lawsuit Filed By Anti-Vaxxer Claiming Federal Government Made Twitter Ban Her Account | Colleen Huber M.D. thinks she can cure cancer by altering patients’ sugar intake. She also believes baking soda is better than chemotherapy when it comes to fighting this disease. Rational people think she’s endangering people’s lives and h... |
| Dec 9, 2022 | Guy Who Sued YouTube Because Someone Else Copied A Bit Of His YouTube Video Loses (Again) | You may recall that, back in August, we wrote about the bizarre situation of a company called “Business Casual” and its CEO, Alex Edson. Business Casual makes highly produced videos. It made a few on historical topics, including taking some... |
| Nov 18, 2022 | My Testimony To The Colombian Constitutional Court Regarding Online Account Terminations And Content Removals | This week, I testified remotely before the Colombian Constitutional Court in the case of Esperanza Gómez Silva c. Meta Platforms, Inc. y Facebook Colombia S.A.S. Expediente T-8.764.298. In a procedure I don’t understand, the court organized... |
| Nov 7, 2022 | Fourth Circuit Goes On The Attack Against Section 230 In A Lawsuit Over Publication Of Third Party Data | Prior to the turn of the century, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals handed down a formative decision that helped craft the contours of Section 230 immunity. The case — Zeran v. America Online — dealt with a tricky question: whether or not... |
| Oct 19, 2022 | The Word ‘Emoji’ Is A Protectable Trademark? | Emoji Co. GmbH has registered trademarks in the dictionary word “Emoji.” They mostly are a licensing organization, and their registrations are in a wide range of classes: “from articles of clothing and snacks to ‘orthopaedic foot cushions’ ... |
| Oct 6, 2022 | There Are All Sorts Of Problems With Ruling That YouTube Ripping Tool May Violate Copyright Law | There are a number of different tools out there that let you download YouTube videos. These tools are incredibly useful for a number of reasons and should be seen as obviously legal in the same manner that home video recording devices were ... |
| Sep 23, 2022 | Did The 5th Circuit Just Make It So That Wikipedia Can No Longer Be Edited In Texas? | I wrote up an initial analysis of the 5th Circuit’s batshit crazy ruling re-instating Texas’s social media content moderation law last week. I have another analysis of it coming out shortly in another publication (I’ll then write about it h... |
| Sep 16, 2022 | A new California law aims to protect children's safety, privacy, and wellbeing online | A California bill that aims to protect children's safety and wellbeing online was signed Thursday.
The law prohibits companies from tracking children's location and forces websites to protect their privacy.
Advertisement
A law passed on Thu... |
| Sep 16, 2022 | California’s Age Appropriate Design Code Is Radical Anti-Internet Policy | When a proposed new law is sold as “protecting kids online,” regulators and commenters often accept the sponsors’ claims uncritically (because… kids). This is unfortunate because those bills can harbor ill-advised policy ideas. The Californ... |
| Sep 15, 2022 | Court To Public University: Yeah, It’s A 1st Amendment Problem When You Delete Comments You Don’t Like | Just a somewhat periodic reminder: publicly-funded colleges are government entities. Almost every public university is. Sometimes, they seem to forget what they are and act in ways governments can’t — not without violating rights. |
| Aug 24, 2022 | Dear California Law Makers: How The Hell Can I Comply With Your New Age-Appropriate Design Code? | I really don’t have time for this kind of thing, but I wanted to pass along that it appears that the California legislature is very, very close to passing AB 2273, “The California Age-Appropriate Design Code Act.” As far as I can tell, it h... |
| Aug 19, 2022 | Pro Tip: If You’re Suing YouTube And Asking For More Time Because The CEO Is Sick, Don’t Post A Highly Produced YouTube Video Attacking The Ruling & Lawyers | There are a bunch of moving parts involved in this case that I really wasn’t planning on covering — but something quite amusing happened and I can’t resist. The basics are fairly straightforward: there’s an outfit named “Business Casual” th... |
| Aug 10, 2022 | The ‘Institute For Free Speech’ Seems Confused About Free Speech Online | There’s a very strange opinion piece over at The Hill by the chair of something called The Institute for Free Speech, Bradley Smith, basically arguing that because courts are finding that websites are protected by Section 230 while moderati... |
| Aug 2, 2022 | Is the California Legislature Addicted to Performative Election-Year Stunts That Threaten the Internet? | It’s an election year, and like clockwork, legislators around the country want to show they care about protecting kids online. This pre-election frenzy leads performative bills that won’t actually help any kids. Today I’m blogging about one... |
| Jul 16, 2022 | Emojis In The World Of Work | mobile design concept: woman holding a 3d generated smartphone and sending emoticons. Graphics on ... [+] screen are made up. getty |
| Jun 29, 2022 | California Legislators Seek To Burn Down The Internet — For The Children | I’m continuing my coverage of dangerous Internet bills in the California legislature. This job is especially challenging during an election year, when legislators rally behind the “protect the kids” mantra to pursue bills that are likely to... |
| Jun 23, 2022 | California Seems To Be Taking The Exact Wrong Lessons From Texas And Florida’s Social Media Censorship Laws | This post analyzes California AB 587, self-described as “Content Moderation Requirements for Internet Terms of Service.” I believe the bill will get a legislative hearing later this month. |
| Jun 9, 2022 | US Copyright Small Claims Court Opens Its Doors Next Week. Two Questions Remain: Will Anyone Use It… And Is It Constitutional? | We’ve been talking about the problems of the US government setting up a copyright trolling small claims court for over a decade now. But, Congress finally passed a law to create one (with no debate and no hearings) by sneaking it into a “mu... |
| May 17, 2022 | New Hampshire’s Top Court Says Section 230 Shields Retweeters From Defamation Lawsuit | Section 230 isn’t just some unearned privilege enjoyed by tech companies to shield them from angry, incoherent lawsuits filed by banned white nationalists. It’s also for the little people, as Eric Goldman points out while bringing us this r... |
| May 4, 2022 | Musk, Twitter, Why The First Amendment Can’t Resolve Content Moderation (Part I) | “Twitter has become the de facto town square,” proclaims Elon Musk. “So, it’s really important that people have both the reality and the perception that they’re able to speak freely within the bounds of the law.” When pressed by TED’s Chris... |
| Apr 12, 2022 | And Now The Copia Institute Tells The Fifth Circuit That Texas Doesn’t Get To Regulate The Internet Either | As Mike noted the other day, state after state has been playing “fuck around and find out” with all sorts of bills that fundamentally interfere with the First Amendment and Section 230. So far Florida has already wasted over $700k in taxpay... |
| Apr 6, 2022 | Vosburg V. Putney, Leg Amputations, And The Overly-Censorial DMCA Notice | There was a case I remember reading in law school, about intentional torts, that stuck with me, for reasons that will probably be obvious once I tell you about it here. |
| Mar 31, 2022 | Policy Building Blocks: What Do We Mean When We Talk About Liability | In tech policy, as with any policy, we often talk about liability. Basically, should X liable to Y, why, and with what consequence? Figuring out good policy is often a matter of figuring out how those questions should be answered. Because s... |
| Mar 24, 2022 | Creative Commons Tells Senators To Stop Using Its Name To Justify Dangerous Copyright Filters Bill | We just wrote about Senators Leahy and Tillis and their “SMART Copyright Act” and its dangerously problematic setup, that would enable Hollywood to petition the Copyright Office to get what it has long desired: mandatory upload filters for ... |
| Mar 15, 2022 | What Happened the Last Time Congress Amended § 230 | Editor’s note: This piece is a modified excerpt from the author’s Brookings Institution paper, “The Politics of Section 230 Reform: Learning From FOSTA’s Mistakes.”
For most of its 26-year existence, Section 230 of the Communications Decenc... |
| Feb 7, 2022 | Court Grants Qualified Immunity To Officer Who Told Couple To Take Down Facebook Post About Off-Duty Cop Who Shot Their Dog | This case -- sent to us by Eric Goldman -- touches on a lot of subject matter covered frequently at Techdirt: dead dogs, police officers, the First Amendment, and qualified immunity. Yet the narrative isn't quite what's expected given the e... |
| Feb 7, 2022 | Court Grants Qualified Immunity To Officer Who Told Couple To Take Down Facebook Post About Off-Duty Cop Who Shot Their Dog | This case — sent to us by Eric Goldman — touches on a lot of subject matter covered frequently at Techdirt: dead dogs, police officers, the First Amendment, and qualified immunity. Yet the narrative isn’t quite what’s expected given the ele... |
| Feb 1, 2022 | Senate's New EARN IT Bill Will Make Child Exploitation Problem Worse, Not Better, And Still Attacks Encryption | You may recall the terrible and dangerous EARN IT Act from two years ago, which was a push by Senators Richard Blumenthal and Lindsey Graham to chip away more at Section 230 and to blame tech companies for child sexual abuse material (CSAM)... |
| Jan 31, 2022 | Court Gets An Easy One Right: Section 230 Says Omegle Isn't To Blame For Bad People On Omegle | Back in 2020, we had a post explaining that Section 230 isn't why Omegle has awful content, and getting rid of Section 230 wouldn't change that. Omegle, if you don't know, is a service that matches people, randomly, into video chats. It's b... |
| Jan 31, 2022 | Court Gets An Easy One Right: Section 230 Says Omegle Isn't To Blame For Bad People On Omegle | Back in 2020, we had a post explaining that Section 230 isn’t why Omegle has awful content, and getting rid of Section 230 wouldn’t change that. Omegle, if you don’t know, is a service that matches people, randomly, into video chats. It’s b... |
| Jan 31, 2022 | An app developer’s lawsuit over rejections and scammers is allowed to proceed, judge rules | A lawsuit over App Store abuses has been given the green light to proceed, at least on some fronts. The case, filed in California’s Superior Court in Santa Clara County last March, hails from app developer and former Pinterest engineer Kost... |
| Dec 1, 2021 | Even As Grifters Insist Otherwise, Courts Know That Social Media Are Not State Actors Because Of Section 230 | Over the last few years we’ve heard a lot of nonsense claiming that Section 230 somehow magically turns social media into state actors. This idea, pushed heavily by disgraced law professor Jed Rubenfeld has not fared well in court. As law p... |
| Dec 1, 2021 | Even As Grifters Insist Otherwise, Courts Know That Social Media Are Not State Actors Because Of Section 230 | Over the last few years we've heard a lot of nonsense claiming that Section 230 somehow magically turns social media into state actors. This idea, pushed heavily by disgraced law professor Jed Rubenfeld has not fared well in court. As law p... |
| Oct 27, 2021 | Court: Congressional Reps Making Noise About Social Media Moderation Doesn't Make Platforms Extensions Of The Government | Another set of plaintiffs insisting social media platforms have it in for “conservative” users have lost in court. The hook for this lawsuit is the (specious) claim that government officials’ statements saying social media services should d... |
| Oct 27, 2021 | Court: Congressional Reps Making Noise About Social Media Moderation Doesn't Make Platforms Extensions Of The Government | Another set of plaintiffs insisting social media platforms have it in for "conservative" users have lost in court. The hook for this lawsuit is the (specious) claim that government officials' statements saying social media service... |
| Oct 21, 2021 | Suing Social Media Sites Over Acts Of Terrorism Continues To Be A Losing Bet, As 11th Circuit Dumps Another Flawed Lawsuit | People suing Twitter and Facebook for acts of violence committed by terrorists have yet to talk a court into agreeing with their arguments. Utilizing federal anti-terrorism laws as a way to circumvent discussion of First Amendment and Secti... |
| Oct 7, 2021 | Trump Asks Court To Reinstate His Twitter Account ASAP | There were a bunch of headlines this weekend claiming that Donald Trump had just "sued" Twitter to get his account reinstated. This is untrue. There were also some articles suggesting that he was using Florida's new social media l... |