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Recent Rulings Highlight Limits of CDA Immunity in Products Liability Cases against E-Commerce Platforms

By Jeffrey Neuburger on August 15, 2019

In early July, an appeals court ruled that Amazon should be considered a “seller” of goods under Pennsylvania products liability law and subject to strict liability for consumer injuries caused by the defective goods sold on its site by third-party vendors. (Oberdorf v. Amazon.com, No. 18-1041 (3rd Cir. July 3, 2019)). While the decision involved interpretation of Pennsylvania law – and Amazon has previously prevailed on the “seller” issue in various courts around…

New Media and Technology Law Blog

Personal Email Management Service Settles FTC Charges over Allegedly Deceptive Statements to Consumers over Its Access and Use of Subscribers’ Email Accounts

By Jeffrey Neuburger on August 9, 2019

This week, the FTC entered into a proposed settlement with Unrollme Inc. (“Unrollme”), a free personal email management service that offers to assist consumers in managing the flood of subscription emails in their inboxes. The FTC alleged that Unrollme made certain deceptive statements to consumers, who may have had privacy concerns, to persuade them to grant the company access to their email accounts. (In re Unrolllme Inc., File No 172 3139 (FTC proposed…

New Media and Technology Law Blog

Finding Article III Standing, Ninth Circuit Declines to Do an About-Face in Illinois Biometric Privacy Class Action against Facebook

By Jeffrey Neuburger on August 9, 2019

In an important opinion, the Ninth Circuit affirmed a lower court’s ruling that plaintiffs in the ongoing Facebook biometric privacy class action have alleged a concrete injury-in-fact to confer Article III standing and that the class was properly certified. (Patel v. Facebook, Inc., No. 18-15982 (9th Cir. Aug. 8, 2019)). Given the California district court’s prior rulings which denied Facebook’s numerous motions to dismiss on procedural and substantive grounds, and the Illinois…

New Media and Technology Law Blog

Facebook Shielded by CDA Immunity against Federal Claims for Allowing Use of Its Platform by Terrorists

By Jeffrey Neuburger on August 9, 2019

In recent years, there have been a number of suits filed in federal courts seeking to hold social media platforms responsible for providing material support to terrorists by allowing members of such groups to use social media accounts and failing to effectively block their content and terminate such accounts. As we’ve previously written about, such suits have generally not been successful at either the district court or circuit court level and have been dismissed…

New Media and Technology Law Blog

Ticketmaster Reaches Settlement with Ticket Broker over Unauthorized Use of Automated Bots

By Jeffrey Neuburger on July 24, 2019

In early July, Ticketmaster reached a favorable settlement in its action against a ticket broker that was alleged to have used automated bots to purchase tickets in bulk, thus ending a dispute that produced notable court decisions examining the potential liabilities for unwanted scraping and website access. (Ticketmaster L.L.C. v. Prestige Entertainment West Inc., No. 17-07232 (C.D. Cal. Final Judgment July 8, 2019)). In the litigation, Ticketmaster alleged that the defendant-ticket broker, Prestige,…

New Media and Technology Law Blog

New York Court Finds Warhol Series to be Fair Use of Prince Photograph

By Oludolapo Akinkugbe on July 22, 2019

Earlier this month, in The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. v. Goldsmith, No. 17-cv-2532 (S.D.N.Y. July 1, 2019), a New York district court granted the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts’ (“AWF”) motion for summary judgment that Warhol’s series of screen prints and silkscreen paintings (the “Prince Series”) did not infringe Lynn Goldsmith’s (“Goldsmith”) original 1981 photograph of the musician Prince, ruling that the Warhol works were transformative and qualified…

New Media and Technology Law Blog

Web Scraping Decisions Consider Contract Cause of Action

By Jeffrey Neuburger on July 9, 2019

Two recent web scraping disputes highlight some important issues regarding whether a website owner may successfully allege a breach of contract action against a commercial party that has scraped website content contrary to “clickwrap” and “browsewrap” website terms of use. In Southwest Airlines Co. v. Roundpipe, LLC, No. 18-0033 (N.D. Tex. Mar. 22, 2019), a Texas district court declined to dismiss Southwest Airlines Co.’s (“Southwest”) breach of contract claim against…

New Media and Technology Law Blog

New California Court Decisions Showcase Robust CDA Immunity

By Samantha M. Weiner on July 1, 2019

Three recent court decisions reaffirm the expansive immunity awarded to online providers that host third-party content under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (“CDA”), 47 U.S.C. § 230(c): California’s Superior Court decision in Murphy v. Twitter, Inc., No. CGC-19-573712 (Cal. Super. June 12, 2019), and the Northern District of California’s decisions Brittain v. Twitter, Inc., No. 19-00114 (N.D. Cal. June 10, 2019), and Fyk v. Facebook, Inc., No. 18-05159 (N.D. Cal.…

New Media and Technology Law Blog

Locksmiths Locked Out: Court Affirms Immunity for Use of Tools That Portray Third-Party Content Pictorially or as an Aggregate Metric

By Jeffrey Neuburger on June 21, 2019

In the past few months, there have been a number of notable decisions affirming broad immunity under the Communications Decency Act (CDA), 47 U.S.C. §230(c), for online providers that host third party content. The beat goes on, as in late May, a Utah district court ruled that the Tor Browser, which allows for anonymous communications and transactions on the internet, was protected by CDA Section 230 for a website’s sale of illegal substances to…

New Media and Technology Law Blog

Browsewrap Terms Enforced Due to Customer Knowledge of Existence of Terms

By Jeffrey Neuburger on June 19, 2019

Last month, a California district court granted a web-based service’s motion to compel arbitration of a putative class action brought by a user whose personal information was allegedly accessed in a massive 2016 data breach that involved 339 million user accounts. (Gutierrez v. FriendFinder Networks Inc., No. 18-05918 (N.D. Cal. May 3, 2019)). While the opinion noted that courts in the Ninth Circuit are traditionally “reluctant to enforce browsewrap agreements against individual consumers,”…

New Media and Technology Law Blog

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Recent Rulings Highlight Limits of CDA Immunity in Products Liability Cases against E-Commerce Platforms

Personal Email Management Service Settles FTC Charges over Allegedly Deceptive Statements to Consumers over Its Access and Use of Subscribers’ Email Accounts

Finding Article III Standing, Ninth Circuit Declines to Do an About-Face in Illinois Biometric Privacy Class Action against Facebook

Facebook Shielded by CDA Immunity against Federal Claims for Allowing Use of Its Platform by Terrorists

Ticketmaster Reaches Settlement with Ticket Broker over Unauthorized Use of Automated Bots

New York Court Finds Warhol Series to be Fair Use of Prince Photograph

Web Scraping Decisions Consider Contract Cause of Action

New California Court Decisions Showcase Robust CDA Immunity

Locksmiths Locked Out: Court Affirms Immunity for Use of Tools That Portray Third-Party Content Pictorially or as an Aggregate Metric

Browsewrap Terms Enforced Due to Customer Knowledge of Existence of Terms

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