The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) appears to be using its ongoing review of current rules and guides to revisit its approach to driving home the message that the relationship between a social media “influencer” and the brand he or she is endorsing must be disclosed. As we have described previously, the FTC has interpreted its Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising (the “Endorsement Guides”) to require that online advertisements —…

Socially Aware contributors Alex Lawrence and Kristina Ehle authored an article for the Computer Law Review International that discusses the impact of the hiQ Labs v. LinkedIn decision from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which holds that automated scraping of publicly accessible data does not violate the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. “While some may interpret the LinkedIn decision as greenlighting [unauthorized webscraping], this would be a mistake,” the authors wrote. “On close…

On December 19, 2019, the Staff of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s Division of Corporation Finance issued guidance outlining the Staff’s views about disclosure obligations that companies should consider with respect to technology, data and intellectual property risks that could arise when operations take place outside the United States. Companies should consider this guidance when preparing risk factor and other disclosures included in upcoming periodic reports and registration statements. Background The Staff notes that…

In a move that might be part of a settlement that YouTube has entered into with the Federal Trade Commission, the video-sharing site said it will ban “targeted” advertisements on videos likely to be watched by children. Because targeted ads rely on information collected about the platform’s users, displaying such ads to children younger than 13 without parental permission violates the Children’s Online Privacy Act (COPPA). Until now, YouTube has avoided banning targeted…

Here at Socially Aware we covered a wide range of issues in 2019. We reviewed an opinion reminding us that user-generated content posted on social media platforms is not necessarily freely available for use in other contexts, and a rare instance of a federal district court holding that a browsewrap agreement was enforceable. We also examined some aspects of Internet law in Europe, including the legality of using “cookie walls” in the European …