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Court: Mark Zuckerberg lives in California

Posted on March 30, 2011
Ceglia v. Zuckerberg, — F.Supp.2d —, 2011 WL 1108607 (W.D.N.Y. March 28, 2011) Well, maybe that title is a bit of an oversimplification. Technically the court said that Facebook’s founder is domiciled in California. The issue came up in a breach of contract case against Zuckerberg and Facebook in federal court in New York...

Court leaves thousands of BitTorrent copyright infringement defendants joined in single action

Posted on March 28, 2011
Call of the Wild Movie v. Does 1 – 1,062 — F.Supp.2d —, 2011 WL 996786 (D.D.C. March 22, 2011) One of the craziest things about the copyright infringement lawsuits that have been brought against BitTorrent users accused of trading movies over the internet is the vast number of John Doe defendants that are usually [...

Yahoo not liable for blocking marketing email

Posted on March 24, 2011
Section 230 of Communications Decency Act (47 U.S.C. 230) shields Yahoo’s spam filtering efforts Holomaxx v. Yahoo, 2011 WL 865794 (N.D.Cal. March 11, 2011) Plaintiff provides email marketing services for its clients. It sends out millions of emails a day, many of those to recipients having Yahoo email addresses...

Court rules against woman accused of fraudulent misrepresentation for creating fake internet boyfriend

Posted on March 19, 2011
Bonhomme v. St. James, — N.E.2d —, (Ill.App. 2 Dist March 10, 2011.) Perhaps the most famous legal case about someone creating a false persona online and using that to dupe someone is the sad case of Megan Meier, which resulted in the (unsuccessful) prosecution of Lori Drew...

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School didn?t violate eighth grade hacker?s due process rights by suspending him over denial of service attack

Posted on March 16, 2011
Harris ex rel. Harris v. Pontotoc County School Dist., — F.3d —, 2011 WL 814972 (5th Cir., March 10, 2011) Back in 2008, when Derek Harris was in eighth grade, he got suspended and had to attend “alternative school” for violating the school district’s technology use policy...

Woman mistaken for Spitzer prostitute in Girls Gone Wild internet video awarded $3 million

Posted on March 13, 2011
Arpaio v. Dupre, 2011 WL 831964 (D.N.J., Mar 3, 2011) It has been three years since Eliot Spitzer resigned as governor of New York for getting busted for hooking up with a prostitute (time files!). Shortly after he resigned, Girls Gone Wild offered Ashley Dupre, the high-priced prostitute Spitzer was accused of patronizing, a million [...

Court says you don?t need a person?s permission to tag them in a Facebook photo

Posted on March 12, 2011
Lalonde v. Lalonde, — S.W.3d —, 2011 WL 832465 (Ky. App., February 25, 2011) Mother sought appellate review of the lower court’s order that awarded primary physical custody of her daughter to the child’s father. The mother argued, among other things, that the court improperly considered Facebook photos showing her drinking...

Drunk reality show participant?s invasion of privacy claim stays in court, for now

Posted on March 10, 2011
Amirmotazedi v. Viacom, Inc., — F.Supp.2d —, 2011 WL 802134 (D.D.C. March 9, 2011) Plaintiff sued the producers of The Real World (MTV, Viacom and Bunim-Murray Productions) for, among other things, invasion of privacy and intentional infliction of emotional distress over the way that the show portrayed her in an episode and in outtakes posted [...

Judges use Facebook to research litigants

Posted on March 09, 2011
We’ve all heard the stories about lawyers using social media to research jurors and to gather evidence about opponents. But here’s a new twist: even judges look to Facebook to find information about the parties appearing before them. In Purvis v...

Mom violated wiretap law by bugging daughter?s teddy bear to eavesdrop on dad

Posted on March 04, 2011
Lewton v. Divingnzzo, 2011 WL 692292 (D.Neb. Feb. 18, 2011) Defendant thought her ex-husband was abusing their daughter during visitations. To prove these allegations in the custody case, defendant sewed an electronic recording device into the little girl’s favorite teddy bear...

What is a reasonable cost that should count as loss under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act?

Posted on March 03, 2011
1st Rate Mortg. Corp. v. Vision Mortgage Services Corp., 2011 WL 666088 (E.D.Wis. Feb. 14, 2011) The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) is a popular weapon that employers use against former employees who steal information on the job. But since the employees just use their credentials to get information off the server, there really [...

Decision suggests that sexting by minors would violate federal child porn laws

Posted on March 01, 2011
Clark v. Roccanova, 2011 WL 665621 (E.D. Ky. February 14, 2011) Is there a violation of the federal laws against child pornography when the accused himself is a minor? A Kentucky federal court says yes. Three 14-year-old boys allegedly “coerced, enticed and persuaded” a 14-year-old girl to make a sexually explicit video...

Facebook user had standing to challenge subpoena seeking his profile information

Posted on February 08, 2011
Mancuso v. Florida Metropolitan University, Inc., 2011 WL 310726 (S.D. Fla. January 28, 2011 ) Plaintiff sued his former employer seeking back overtime wages. In preparing its defense of the case, the employer sent supboenas to Facebook and Myspace seeking information about plaintiff’s use of those platforms...

Federal court applies Seescandy.com test to unmask anonymous defendants in copyright and privacy case

Posted on February 03, 2011
Liberty Media Holdings, LLC. v. Does 1-59, 2011 WL 292128 (S.D. Cal., January 25, 2011) Plaintiff porn company sued 59 anonymous defendants it knew only by IP address for violation of the Stored Communications Act (SCA), the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) and for copyright infringement...

College must reinstate nursing student who posted placenta picture on Facebook

Posted on January 22, 2011
Byrnes v. Johnson County Community College, 2011 WL 166715 (D. Kan., January 19, 2011) Plaintiff nursing student and some of her classmates attended a clinical OB/GYN course at the local hospital in Olathe, Kansas last November. They got permission from their instructor to photograph themselves with a placenta...

Tweet by friend of husband of jury foreperson did not taint jury trial

Posted on January 13, 2011
U.S. v. Forde, 2011 WL 63831 (4th Cir. January 10, 2011) Defendant was convicted of bankruptcy fraud and some other similar crimes. One of his arguments on appeal was that the trial court judge erred by not holding a hearing to investigate alleged juror impropriety...

Seventh Circuit: Website operator does not have to obey injunction in defamation case

Posted on December 28, 2010
Blockowicz v. Williams, No. 10-1167, (7th Cir. December 27, 2010) Plaintiffs got an injunction that ordered defendants to remove defamatory content from the web that defendants had posted. When the defendants did not comply with the injunction, plaintiffs asked the court to enforce the injunction against Ripoffreport...

Publishing child sex abuse victim?s name on the web was not a privacy violation

Posted on December 15, 2010
Doe v. Fankhauser, 2010 WL 4702295 (N.D. Ohio, November 30, 2010) County clerk immune from law suit over posting court document on government website. Plaintiff Jane Doe was the victim of physical and sexual abuse when she was a minor. In the criminal case against the perpetrator, Doe’s name was redacted, and she and her [...

Court enters injunction against use of Twitter accounts in trademark case

Posted on December 12, 2010
Black Sheep Television, Ltd. v. Town of Islip, 2010 WL 4961669 (E.D.N.Y., December 6, 2010) The Long Island Macarthur Airport is in a dispute with a company over that company’s alleged cybersquatting and the creation of websites that apparently a number of people have confused with the airport’s official marketing efforts...

Wikileaks, decentralized distribution, and the lack of meaningful remedies for unauthorized disclosure

Posted on December 10, 2010
Apart from the difficult question of liability — that is, whether Julian Assange should hang for his actions — the decentralized nature of the distribution methods of Wikileaks content gives us a meaningful opportunity to consider the remedies that should be imposed upon an actor like Wikileaks in those cases in which liability should attach...

Court allows early discovery to reveal identity of anonymous libel defendant

Posted on December 09, 2010
[This is a guest post by attorney Caroline Belich. Caroline is a Chicago native, former Michigan State volleyball player, and recent admitee to the California bar with particular interest in the First Amendment.] Zoosk Inc. v. Does, 2010 WL 5115670 (N...

Credit card receipt shown on computer screen not ?printed? for purposes of FACTA

Posted on December 07, 2010
Kelleher v. Eaglerider, Inc., 2010 WL 4684037 (N.D.Ill., Nov. 10 2010) The Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act of 2003 (FACTA) prohibits any “person that accepts credit cards or debit cards for the transaction of business” from “print[ing] more than the last 5 digits of the card number or the expiration date upon any receipt [...

Another massive porn Bittorrent copyright lawsuit in the Northern District of Illinois

Posted on December 04, 2010
MCGIP, LLC v. Does 1-1,164, No. 10-7675 (N.D.Ill., filed December 2, 2010) [Download Complaint] Filing of copyright infringement complaint will be precursor to more subpoenas seeking to identify unknown file-sharing defendants. Another porn company has filed a copyright lawsuit against hundreds of anonymous John Doe defendants who allegedly used the Bittorrent protocol to trade plaintiffs’ [...

Negligence claim against RIAA fails because there was no physical injury

Posted on November 29, 2010
Andersen v. Atlantic Recording Corp., 2010 WL 4791728 (D.Or. November 18, 2010) [Download complaint] Tanya Andersen has waged a years-long battle against the record companies after she was sued for copyright infringement for trading music files via a peer-to-peer network...

Smoked turkey company alleges that competitor infringed copyright in directions

Posted on November 25, 2010
Greenberg Smoked Turkeys, Inc. v. Goode-Cook, Inc., No. 10-621, (Complaint filed November 23, 2010, E.D. Texas) [Download the Complaint] Happy Thanksgiving. I’m grateful for your continued support and interest in Internet Cases. It truly is a pleasure to write these posts and to get your feedback and engagement...

Class action lawsuit challenges Bittorent lawsuit factory?s business model

Posted on November 25, 2010
Well this is interesting. One of the bittorrent copyright defendants who has been victimized targeted by the law firm of Dunlap, Grubb & Weaver, a/k/a the US Copyright Group, has filed a class action lawsuit against the law firm. The complaint [download], filed yesterday (November 24), is 96 pages long, includes 456 paragraphs of allegations, [...

If Thomas Aquinas considered the copyright implications of Firesheep and Blacksheep

Posted on November 19, 2010
Whether Blacksheep infringes copyright by “leveraging” Firesheep’s code? Objection 1: Firesheep claims that its purpose is to demonstrate security vulnerabilities and is not intended for nefarious purposes. Would not what it does be illegal otherwise? If it complained about others using its code for similar purposes, would that not illustrate that its objective is other [...

Case against iPhone eavesdropper moves forward

Posted on November 16, 2010
Caro v. Weintraub, 2010 WL 4514273 (D. Conn. November 2, 2010) Stepson who used iPhone to record conversation about dying mother’s will may be liable for invasion of privacy and infliction of emotional distress. This past summer the case against a man accused of using his iPhone to surreptitiously record a family conversation about his [...

Facebook account protected from disclosure in discovery, for now

Posted on November 14, 2010
McCann v. Harleysville Insurance, — N.Y.S.2d —, 2010 WL 4540599 (November 12, 2010) Unlike some recent cases such as Romano v. Steelcase, which seem give the impression that the information in a person’s social networking account is always fair game for discovery in litigation, one New York court has come down on the side of [...

Court orders company to stop sending bogus DMCA notices to eBay

Posted on November 09, 2010
Design Furnishings, Inc. v. Zen Path LLC, No. 10-2765, 2010 WL 4321568 (E.D. Cal. October 21, 2010) Decision shows court’s willingness to crack down on overreaching rights holders and abusive DMCA takedown practices. Plaintiff and defendant both sell wicker furniture on eBay...

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