E-Commerce Law

E-Commerce Law Briefs: Week of April 20, 2009

The Wikipedia Foundation has demanded that the artists responsible for Wikipedia Art surrender the domain name wikipediaart.org.  "Last February, [the artists], working with several collaborators, created a Wikipedia article and invited the general public to add to it, following Wikipedia’s standards of credibility and verifiability. The work was intended to comment on the nature of art and Wikipedia. [However, Wikipedia editors shut down the project]  within fifteen hours for being insufficiently 'encyclopaedic.'"  The artists obtained the domain name wikipediaart.org and created a website to document the project which the Foundation seeks to shut down because it uses the "Wikipedia" trademark.

The United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas has applied traditional contract principles to find that Blockbuster Online's website Terms and Conditions are unenforceable.  "The crux of the Plaintiffs’ arguments were that since Blockbuster reserved the right to modify the Terms and Conditions at their “sole discretion” at “any time” to be effective immediately on their site, the contract was thus illusory.  The Court found the contract was illusory because Blockbuster had the power to unilaterally change the contract whenever they wanted to do so. The only 'limit' was the new terms would not be effective until posted online."

"Worldwide visitors to Twitter.com increased 95 percent in the month of March from 9.8 million to 19.1 million."

Google has upgraded a little-used feature that permits users to create profile pages with their name, photo, contact information, and other information.

"In February, a Texas jury awarded Orix Capital Markets, LLC $12.5 million in damages in a defamation case involving statements published on the . . . 'gripe site' Predatorix.com."

"Students have suffered another defeat in their legal fight against the company that runs a plagiarism-detection tool popular among professors.  A federal appeals court last week affirmed a lower court’s decision that the Turnitin service does not violate the copyright of students, even though it stores digital copies of their essays in the database that the company uses to check works for academic dishonesty."  The copyright infringment suit was brought by two Mclean, Virginia high school students after Turnitin was hired by their school to catch cheaters.

E-Commerce Law Briefs is a weekly feature appearing on E-Commerce Law. Each weekend, E-Commerce Law Briefs will provide a brief summary and commentary on recent legal news affecting e-commerce businesses.

Southern District of New York Holds that State Law Intellectual Property Claims are Not Barred by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act

In Atlantic Recording Corporation et al. v. Project Playlist, Inc. 2009 WL 766224 (S.D.N.Y.) six of the world's largest record companies sued the defendant, Project Playlist, Inc. (“Project Playlist”), for copyright infringement in the District Court for the Southern District  of New York.  (See Complaint for Damages and Injunctive Relief).  The  Plaintiffs' claims stemmed from Project Playlist's permitting users to create playlists through links to music featured on other websites without first obtaining the approval or licensing rights from the sites.  Project Playlist moved for dismissal of the Plaintiffs’ state law claims for common law copyright infringement and unfair competition on the grounds that such claims were barred by the 47 U.S.C. § 230 (the Communications Decency Act, hereinafter the “Act”).  The Court held that though Project Playlist was an Internet service provider under the Act, it was excluded from the statutory immunity afforded by Section 230(c)(2) because the Plaintiffs' claims arose from state intellectual property law and fell under the exception set forth in Section 230(e)(2).

E-Commerce Law Briefs: Week of April 13, 2009

"A Texas couple who say Internet posters made their lives "torture" after they were charged with rape are closer to stripping away their tormentors' anonymity.  A judge in California turned down a motion by Topix.com to quash a subpoena for identifying information on 178 anonymous posters, ABC News reported. The judge ordered the Web site to discuss with the plaintiff couple which documents are relevant to the case."

The Better Business Bureau has identified nearly 23,000 YouTube videos advertising Ponzi schemes.  The videos have been viewed nearly 60 million times.

Amazon says that it has fixed the error that removed the sales rankings for gay and lesbian themed books.

"Forensics investigators at Verizon Business, a firm hired by major companies to investigate breaches, responded to roughly 100 confirmed data breaches last year involving roughly 285 million consumer records. That staggering number -- nearly one breached record for every American -- exceeds the combined total breached from break-ins the company investigated from 2004 to 2007.  In all, breaches at financial institutions were responsible for 93 percent of all such records compromised last year, Verizon reported. . . . [M]ore than 90 percent of the records compromised in the breaches Verizon investigated in 2008 came from targeted attacks where the hackers carefully picked their targets first and then figured out a way to exploit them later."

Facebook crossed the 200 million member mark.

E-Commerce Law Briefs is a weekly feature appearing each Friday afternoon on E-Commerce Law. Each week, E-Commerce Law Briefs will provide a brief summary and commentary on recent legal news affecting e-commerce businesses.

E-Commerce Law Briefs: Week of April 6, 2009

Cyberbullying affects one in ten teachers.

More than 97% of all emails are spam.

E-Commerce Law Briefs is a weekly feature appearing each Friday afternoon on E-Commerce Law. Each week, E-Commerce Law Briefs will provide a brief summary and commentary on recent legal news affecting e-commerce businesses.

E-Commerce Law Briefs: Week of March 30, 2009

"The U.S. Supreme Court . . . declined to consider reinstating Virginia's tough anti-spam law, leaving in place a lower court ruling that threw out the measure as unconstitutional . . . [Virginia's Attorney General has] vowed to draft a new anti-spam law for the General Assembly to consider that 'addresses any potential constitutional concerns. We are dedicated to protecting all Virginians from unscrupulous spammers who fraudulently send millions of unsolicited garbage e-mail messages.'"

Reports of Internet crime increased 33% in 2008.

E-Commerce Law Briefs is a weekly feature appearing each Friday afternoon on E-Commerce Law. Each week, E-Commerce Law Briefs will provide a brief summary and commentary on recent legal news affecting e-commerce businesses.