On May 11, 2022, the Fifth Circuit reinstated Texas state law HB 20 which allows private parties to sue tech platforms with 50M+ MAUs for their censorship of user-generated content based on “the viewpoint of a user or another person”. On May 13, technology lobbying groups NetChoice and the Computer...
In recent months, some copyright holders, pharmaceutical companies, and state attorneys general have made allegations against Internet companies that help users find and share information. In short, they claim that because some users engage in copyright infringement...
Once again, political campaign videos are being censored by copyright law. This time, Mitt Romney is the victim. After President Obama created an ad mocking Romney’s tuneless performance of America the Beautiful, Romney responded with an ad featuring a few seconds of Obama singing Al Green’s Let’s...
Next Friday, February 10, the Stanford Technology Law Review is holding its annual symposium, and this year's topic is an important one: First Amendment Challenges in the Digital Age. Of the three panels, one is devoted to privacy and another to copyright. The third is devoted to a long, ambitious...
The recent Department of Justice decision to indict Megaupload for copyright infringement and related offenses raises some very thorny questions from a criminal law perspective. A few preliminaries: I’m responsible for the musings below, but I thank Robert Weisberg of Stanford Law School for taking...
A wave of opposition has crashed over the House's Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Senate's Protect I.P. Act (PIPA) based on the tremendous threat they pose to free speech and innovation online. It appears the House may be poised to abandon SOPA after the White House issued a statement making...
The tech and civil liberties communities have been fighting proposed copyright legislation. Critics have argued that the proposed legislation would break the Internet, create the Great Firewall of America, and lead to censorship while doing little to stop piracy itself...
Cross posted from Marvin Ammori's Blog Ammori.org.
Today, both Professor Laurence Tribe and I submitted letters and legal memoranda to Congress explaining that proposed copyright legislation would violate the First Amendment and be struck down in court. (His letter is available here, and mine is...
Today Congress held hearings on the latest IP legislation, the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). We are taking part in American Censorship Day to help spread the word and stop this bill. We’ve outlined five of the most important problems with SOPA.
1. SOPA violates due process. Under SOPA, any private...
Representatives Anna Eshoo and Zoe Lofgren joined eight other members of Congress in urging the House Judiciary Committee to reject SOPA because it would cause "serious and long term damage to the technology industry" -- "one of the few bright spots in our economy."
Nine of the leading internet...
Last July, I signed on to a letter from more than 100 law professors urging Congress to reject the PROTECT-IP Act. A new version of that bill -- referred to as both the E-PARASITE Act and SOPA -- was introduced in the House last week, and it is even more dangerous than its predecessors. See David...