- HBO back with “Confirmation” docudrama on the Clarence Thomas-Anita Hill episode and Stuart Taylor, Jr. not greatly impressed [Mollie Hemingway, The Federalist]
- Another rogue Eastern District of Texas patent outcome falls, this time it’s Google for $85 million [Joe Mullin, ArsTechnica] “New Bill Designed To Stop Egregious Venue Shopping By Patent Trolls” [Nathan Leamer and Zach Graves, TechDirt]
- “Life in California — A Tax on a Tax” [Coyote]
- Washington Post looks at jury nullification in multi-part series;
- Michael Greve recommends this article on unorthodox methods of lawmaking and administrative law, and his recommendation is good enough for me [Abbe Gluck, Anne Joseph O’Connell, and Rosa Po, SSRN]
- Are public bureaucracies really a fount of innovation? Not really, despite vogue for new Marianna Mazzucato book The Entrepreneurial State [Alberto Mingardi, EconLog]
Posts Tagged ‘Google’
From the unsealed Mississippi allegations on AG-cozy law firms
We took note last month that a court was unsealing the allegations of a since-settled lawsuit alleging quid pro quo payments at a prominent class-action firm that has represented the state of Mississippi. Now Alan Lange at YallPolitics has more details. “I still maintain that if this case involved any other state officeholder other than Jim Hood that there would be above the fold headlines for days on end.”
Meanwhile, the Fifth Circuit has overturned a procedural win by Google that had halted an investigation by Mississippi AG Jim Hood into Google business practices in which Hood has more or less openly acted as the cat’s paw of Hollywood studios: “in some cases demand letters that came from Hood’s office were actually written by MPAA lawyers.” Google will still have the right to challenge the investigation at a later stage. [Joe Mullin/ArsTechnica, earlier]
A convenient court for reputation repair
Tim Cushing at TechDirt examines curious patterns in how the courts of Contra Costa County, California, in the Bay Area, have repeatedly been used to generate search engine takedowns affecting so-called gripe (consumer complaint) websites. More: Paul Alan Levy, CL&P.
Suit seeks to make tech firms pay for campaign against distracted driving
“In the lawsuit, the Coalition Against Distracted Driving and Stephen L. Joseph, as an individual, seek an injunction against Apple, Samsung, Google, and Microsoft, requiring those companies to pay $1 billion annually to fund an ‘effective and ongoing national public education campaign’ to educate drivers on the dangers of using smart phones and smart watches while driving.” The suit seeks to define the behavior at issue as a nuisance under California law. [Jared McClain, Washington Legal Foundation]
You profited when I solved your CAPTCHA and I want money for that
A California court has dismissed an intended class action suit against Google claiming that it reaped undeserved profit when users solved CAPTCHA letter-recognition problems that assisted in solving passages that had gone undeciphered in Google’s own OCR scanning. The ruling “reinforces [the principle] that not every asymmetrical economic benefit exchanged online must be compensated. Parties in a mutual exchange rarely get the exact same amount of value from the exchange, but the fact that one party derives more value from the exchange than the other shouldn’t create a federal case.” [Eric Goldman]
Online speech roundup
- Allowing suits against Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, YouTube, et al., for comments made by users of those platforms? A perfectly horrible idea [Ken at Popehat, Robby Soave/Reason, a more judicious view of Section 230]
- Wipe that true thing: “France says Google must take ‘Right to Be Forgotten’ worldwide” [WSJ/MarketWatch, earlier]
- MedExpress vs. attorney Paul Alan Levy: “eBay seller who sued over negative feedback dinged $19k in legal fees” [ArsTechnica]
- Copyright takedown order over random ink blotches [2600]
- Weight-loss firm Roca Labs, which took aggressive legal approach toward limiting negative commentary about its products, runs into FTC trouble [Adam Steinbaugh, Ken White at Popehat]
- “California libel retraction statute extended to cover online publications” [Eugene Volokh]
- “Florida Moving Company Attempting To Sue Its Way Back To Yelp Respectability” [Tim Cushing, TechDirt]
The liability limit that created the modern online economy
A tribute to Section 230: “No other sentence in the U.S. Code, I would assert, has been responsible for the creation of more value than that one; if you have other candidates for that honor you think more worthy, please do share them.” — David Post on the fateful, intermediary-immunizing “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.” This bar to liability, Post writes, helped make possible “virtually every successful online venture that emerged after 1996 — including all the usual suspects, viz. Google, Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, Reddit, Craigslist, YouTube, Instagram, eBay, Amazon.”
July 29 roundup
- Former NYT Peking correspondent Richard Bernstein, who now co-owns two nail salons, challenges Times blockbuster on prevalence of labor exploitation at NYC salons [New York Review of Books, Elizabeth Nolan Brown and followup, Times rebuttal. More: Bernstein rejoinder]
- More details on how studios used Mississippi attorney general’s office as cut-out against Google [Mike Masnick, TechDirt, earlier here and here, more on AG Jim Hood]
- Of course licensing laws “are only there to protect consumers and are enforced in a totally neutral way that has nothing to do with viewpoints or political pull (lol).” [Coyote on Boston mayor’s “not welcome in our town” message to Donald Trump]
- Speaking of Donald Trump, would his lawyer threaten litigation to intimidate reporter Tim Mak? Only in a totally classy way [Daily Beast, S.E. Cupp/New York Daily News (Cohen, 2011: “I’m going to come at you, grab you by the neck and I’m not going to let you go until I’m finished”), earlier from the vaults on Trump’s use of litigation]
- Things class-action lawyers sue over: “Beggin’ Strips Don’t Have Enough Bacon” [Reuters, New York Post]
- As Lois Lerner targeting scandal drags on, time for Congress to impeach IRS officials? [Mike Rappaport, Liberty and Law]
- Welcome to AFFH-land: Bharara, on behalf of feds, says Westchester County should pay for not squeezing Chappaqua hard enough to approve housing project [Journal-News, earlier here and here]
How Jim Hood acted a Hollywood role against Google
We’ve covered this topic before, but Mike Masnick at Techdirt has a slew of revealing new details on how Mississippi attorney general Jim Hood acted as cat’s paw for Hollywood studios in his legal battles against Google. Former Mississippi attorney general Michael Moore, another longtime Overlawyered favorite, plays a key role in the story as well. Our coverage of Hood’s work over many years is here.
Free speech roundup
- March of “cyberbullying” law continues: “New Zealand passes law making it punishable by fine or jail time for “causing emotional distress” on the Internet [The Register]
- Wisconsin John Doe prosecutors tapped email and text communications of conservative activists, also got bank records [M.D. Kittle, Wisconsin Watchdog]
- Rare instance where pro-speech, anti-harass groups agree: ICANN shouldn’t zap site-owner privacy [Online Abuse Prevention Initiative via @sarahjeong] More: Cathy Gellis, Popehat;
- “Researcher Headed To Australian Supreme Court In Attempt To Hold Google Responsible For Posts At Ripoff Reports” [Tim Cushing, TechDirt]
- When you vigorously deny an accusation, do you defame the accuser as a liar? [Popehat on Bill Cosby litigation]
- “They do this because they can.” [Mark Steyn on Preet Bharara’s “prosecutocracy” and the Reason subpoena, earlier here, here, etc.]
- Remember, badspeak can be evidence of wrongthink: “[London Mayor] Boris Johnson ‘could be breaching sex discrimination laws’ for defending Sir Tim Hunt over sexism row” [Independent]