Often lauded as the most important law for online speech, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (CDA) does not just protect popular websites like Facebook, YouTube and Google from defamation and other claims based on third-party content. It
Socially Aware Blog
The Law and Business of Social Media
The Socially Aware Blog, published by Morrison & Foerster LLP, focuses on legal developments at the intersection of social media, technology, and consumer protection. It covers topics such as evolving auto-renewal laws for subscription services, social media platform policies and rebranding, intellectual property issues related to online content embedding, legislative challenges to Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, and emerging consumer contract regulations in digital services. The blog analyzes regulatory changes, court decisions, and policy debates affecting social media companies, digital platforms, and consumers, with attention to privacy, content moderation, copyright, and technology-driven legal challenges.
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Social Links: Biden’s stance on CDA §230; liability for user-generated content; Twitter’s process for reviewing Trump’s tweets
A federal district court in Illinois allowed claims for vicarious and direct copyright infringement to proceed against an employee of the Chicago Cubs Baseball Club for retweeting a third-party tweet containing the plaintiff’s copyrighted material. Read the opinion.
Thinking of…
Fake News & Paid Reviews: FTC Seeks Comments on its Endorsement Guides
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…
Are Facebook Posts Discoverable? Application of the Forman Test in N.Y.
New York courts are increasingly ordering the production of social media posts in discovery, including personal messages and pictures, if they shed light on pending litigation. Nonetheless, courts remain cognizant of privacy concerns, requiring parties seeking social media discovery to…
Clearview AI and the Legal Challenges Facing Facial Recognition Databases
Every day, social media users upload millions of images to their accounts; each day 350 million photos are uploaded to Facebook alone. Many social media websites make users’ information and images available to anyone with a web browser. The wealth…
Combatting Unauthorized Webscraping
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…
SEC Staff Issues Guidance on Technology, Data & IP Risks in International Operations
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…
Social Links: YouTube bans some targeted ads; big changes afoot on Twitter; Facebook plans to remove ‘deep fakes’
By Aaron Rubin
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…
2019: Our Greatest Hits
By Janine Sagar
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…
Foreign Companies Can Use 28 U.S.C. § 1782 to Unmask Anonymous Internet Posters
A random Twitter account tags a Japanese company and badmouths it in a series of tweets. Because the tweets are tagged, a search of the company’s name on Twitter will display the tweets with the negative comments among the search…