T’is the week for year-in-review and/or looking-ahead articles. In that spirit, I recommend posts by Devlin Hartline, Hugh Stephens, and Aaron Moss. And here’s my list with commentary for your consideration: AWF v. Goldsmith Everyone in copyright world will be waiting, like Ralphie expecting his decoder ring, for the decision in this case. The highly anticipated question is whether the ...

In my recent post about Gonzalez v. Google—the Section 230 case granted cert by the Supreme Court—I expressed the view that the word “recommendation” is too charming to describe the interaction between social media algorithms and many users’ experiences. Systems capable of reinforcing suicidal ideations in a teenager or stoking violent instincts in a potential terrorist cannot sensibly be described ...

In October, the Supreme Court granted cert in two cases that may limit the immunity granted to internet platforms under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. Both Gonzalez v. Google and Twitter v. Tamneh, arise from plaintiffs seeking to hold platforms accountable for “targeted recommendations” of material associated with acts of international terrorism, but in this post, I will ...

At a panel hosted by The Reykjavik Dialogue,[1] during a discussion about law enforcement, justice, and sex discrimination, Mary Anne Franks, co-founder of the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative noted that when her organization asked perpetrators who had engaged in revenge porn what would have stopped them from doing it, the answer was almost universally, “If I thought I could go ...

In a paper published in 2020, [1] scholars Danielle Keats Citron and Mary Anne Franks advocate a relatively modest and elegant approach to amending Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996—changes that would directly help the statute’s unintended victims—but it is difficult to imagine how any nuanced consideration of the 230 issue will make headway in the current ...

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