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...
I’m pleased to announce my essay, The Complicated Story of FOSTA and Section 230. This essay tries to simplify a very complicated set of topics and summarize it in a fairly short and readable piece. I hope this essay provides one-stop-shopping for anyone, especially non-experts, who wants to...
Facebook’s announcement in late April that it had set aside $3 billion to $5 billion to settle claims that it mishandled users’ personal data suggested a strong consensus by federal regulators that the social media giant needed to be held accountable. From The New York Times.
Cecilia Kang recently had a good article in the NY Times about Mark Zuckerberg's bizarre call for governments to take over content moderation on internet platforms. Lots of people pointed out that this is obviously unconstitutional under the First Amendment, and wondered how any lawyer at Facebook...
In a span of less than two weeks, the Madras High Court has imposed and lifted a ban on the TikTok mobile application, an increasingly popular video and social platform. While rescinding the ban is welcome, the events tell a worrying tale of how the courts can arbitrarily censor online expression...
The Asia Internet Coalition has accused the Nepali draft IT Bill of vague phrasing in its restrictions, empowering authorities indiscriminately, and of failing to understand the services it seeks to regulate. The submission has also made use of Indian law, including the Supreme Court’s striking down...
A bill before the Texas Senate seeks to prevent social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter from censoring users based on their viewpoints. Supporters say it would protect the free exchange of ideas, but critics say the bill contradicts a federal law that allows social media platforms to...
The Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications’ recent guidance on its approach to intermediary liability under Canada’s anti-spam legislation is overreaching and onerous, according to lawyers working in the field. From Law Times.
Facebook is facing yet more legal trouble over the Cambridge Analytica scandal after Canada's privacy commissioner said it violated federal and provincial privacy laws. Daniel Therrien plans to take the company to federal court in the hopes of forcing Facebook to change its privacy policies. From En...
The Madras High Court on Wednesday lifted its ban on downloading the Chinese video-sharing app TikTok, subject to a condition that pornographic videos would not be uploaded on it, NDTV reported. The court had imposed the temporary ban on April 3, on the ground that the app was responsible for...
Following years of hot debates on whether to accentuate Personality Right as an independent provision in the Civil Code, China’s legislative body is now giving the draft a second reading in light of the controversies around human genome research, artificial intelligence technology, and exploitation...