On May 11, 2022, the Fifth Circuit reinstated Texas state law HB 20 which allows private parties to sue tech platforms with 50M+ MAUs for their censorship of user-generated content based on “the viewpoint of a user or another person”. On May 13, technology lobbying groups NetChoice and the Computer...
On October 2, 2013, Judge Bonvicino of the Civil Court of São Paulo granted an injunction to shut down Facebook in Brazil if a discussion is not removed. The allegedly defamatory post regarded some trivial quarrel between a well-known TV presenter and her neighbor, apparently over the TV presenter’s...
A recent UK case shows how court orders mandating ISPs to block access to IP numbers hosting allegedly infringing websites can go wrong. The London High Court, Chancery Division, upon a claim from the Football Association Premier League (“FAPL”) and related organizations, issued an injunction agains...
The ongoing claims against the Rojadirecta website for linking to streams of sporting events are novel and quite important in defining the rights and responsibilities of intermediaries that host links to possibly infringing content stored elsewhere. While the U.S. case against Rojadirecta was...
In recent months, some copyright holders, pharmaceutical companies, and state attorneys general have made allegations against Internet companies that help users find and share information. In short, they claim that because some users engage in copyright infringement...
Once again, political campaign videos are being censored by copyright law. This time, Mitt Romney is the victim. After President Obama created an ad mocking Romney’s tuneless performance of America the Beautiful, Romney responded with an ad featuring a few seconds of Obama singing Al Green’s Let’s...
Next Friday, February 10, the Stanford Technology Law Review is holding its annual symposium, and this year's topic is an important one: First Amendment Challenges in the Digital Age. Of the three panels, one is devoted to privacy and another to copyright. The third is devoted to a long, ambitious...
The recent Department of Justice decision to indict Megaupload for copyright infringement and related offenses raises some very thorny questions from a criminal law perspective. A few preliminaries: I’m responsible for the musings below, but I thank Robert Weisberg of Stanford Law School for taking...
A wave of opposition has crashed over the House's Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Senate's Protect I.P. Act (PIPA) based on the tremendous threat they pose to free speech and innovation online. It appears the House may be poised to abandon SOPA after the White House issued a statement making...
The tech and civil liberties communities have been fighting proposed copyright legislation. Critics have argued that the proposed legislation would break the Internet, create the Great Firewall of America, and lead to censorship while doing little to stop piracy itself...
Cross posted from Marvin Ammori's Blog Ammori.org.
Today, both Professor Laurence Tribe and I submitted letters and legal memoranda to Congress explaining that proposed copyright legislation would violate the First Amendment and be struck down in court. (His letter is available here, and mine is...