I think it would be difficult for Disney to show that this tweet would be sufficient to bind a user that used the hashtag #Maythe4th. In order to be enforceable, the courts in Meyer v. Uber Technologies, Inc. 868 F.3d 66 (2nd Cir. 2017) gave a two prong test (1) reasonable conspicuous notice and (2)… Read more »

The Smurfberry Problem Stewart Griffin is 8 years old and loves the game Smurfs Village (made by Cap-com) which he plays on his mother Lois’s iPad (made by Apple). He asked his mother if he could buy some Smurfberries so he could expand his village. Thinking that this would be a $2 or $5 in-game… Read more »

You are associate general counsel for the FixPoint Corporation, which makes consumer and enterprise networking equipment. You have recently become aware of an issue with your company’s WX11N series of home wireless routers. Once daily, each router connects to a “time server” to reset its internal clock. Each router ships with a list of roughly… Read more »

National sent a cease-and-desist letter to LineJump stating that National’s terms and conditions prohibited the use of nationalair.com for commercial purposes and that LineJump’s activities breached the Terms. When LineJump’s use did not stop, National filed suit. Its complaint includes claims for breach of contract, trespass to chattels, and violation of the Computer Fraud and… Read more »

Leaving aside other possible investigative avenues, how should you attempt to turn “eatmyjukt” into an actual name and address? What can you do on your own? What can the FBI do? How likely is this process to succeed? What could go wrong? Your strategy should consider both the technical and legal aspects of the problem…. Read more »

You are on the legal staff of SETEC, a non-profit advocacy group whose mission is to “keep the Internet open, free, and safe.” You have just learned about Senator Abbott’s proposal. You are flying to Washington for a meeting with the Senator’s staff tomorrow. Is the bill a good idea? Should you support it, oppose… Read more »

“The police arrest Bill Maplewood for possession of CSAM. Having read Riley, they plan to obtain a warrant to seize his laptop computer and search it for evidence. The laptop’s hard drive also contains his tax records, his emails, and patient records from his psychiatric practice. Which of these can the police examine? How should… Read more »

“2 Fast 2 Warrantless: Dom Toretto was involved in an automobile collision and his badly-damaged car was impounded while he was in the hospital receiving treatment for his injuries. The police suspect that the crash occurred during an illegal high-speed drift-racing competition. They would like to inspect the car’s electronic data recorder, a/k/a “black box,”… Read more »

I think Section 230 bars Mandy Cohen’s suit against Brightside. Section 230 was implemented to provide protections to online platforms for third party content posted. It states “No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.” Here, Brightside… Read more »

As a public policy matter, where do you think the line should be drawn with respect to liability for online content? Should Alphabet Inc. (the parent company of Google, YouTube, etc.) be held to a higher standard than, say, the publisher of a newspaper in a small town? Is it appropriate to import standards of… Read more »