On July 19, 2018, in May, et al. v. Expedia Inc., U.S. Magistrate Judge Mark Lane issued a Report and Recommendation recommending that U.S. District Judge Robert Pitman for the Western District of Texas grant a motion to compel arbitration and dismiss a putative class action on the grounds that the plaintiff agreed to the defendants’ website’s Terms and Conditions, which contained a mandatory arbitration clause. HomeAway User Files Putative Class Action  HomeAway is…

An advertising executive who lost his job after being named on an anonymous Instagram account is suing the now-defunct account for defamation. The suit names as defendants not only the account—Diet Madison Avenue, which was intended to root out harassment and discrimination at ad agencies—but also (as “Jane Doe 1,” “Jane Doe 2,” et cetera) several of the anonymous people who ran it. Whether Instagram will ultimately have to turn over the identities of the…

If a web server located outside the United States hosts video content that can be viewed by Internet users located in the United States, does a public performance result under U.S. copyright law? This has been a topic of hot debate for a surprisingly long time, with little or no direct guidance from the courts—until now. A recent decision from the D.C. Circuit, Spanski Enterprises v. Telewizja Polska, addresses this issue head-on, with the…

As close observers of the implications of privacy law on companies’ data collection, usage and disclosure practices, we at Socially Aware were among the many tech-law enthusiasts anticipating the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decision in Carpenter v. United States, in which the Court held that the government must obtain a warrant to acquire customer location information maintained by cellular service providers, at least where that information covers a period of a week or…

Most companies are familiar with the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) and its requirement to obtain parental consent before collecting personal information online from children under 13.  Yet COPPA also includes an information deletion requirement of which companies may be unaware.  On May 31, 2018, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) published a blog post addressing this requirement, clarifying (i) when children’s personal information must be deleted and (ii) how the requirement applies, as well…

Finding that President Trump’s Twitter feed constitutes a public forum, a federal judge in New York City held that it’s a First Amendment violation when the President or one of his assistants blocks a Twitter user from viewing or responding to one of the President’s tweets. As the New York Times points out, the decision “is likely to have implications far beyond Mr. Trump’s feed and its 52 million followers.” A blog post on the…