Author: Tom Norton

Internet Governance

Behold, Greater Trans-Pacific Speeds! In a move toward building up infrastructure mirrored by many tech companies, Google, Facebook, Pacific Light Data Communications, and TE Subcom are working together to build a giant submarine cable connecting Los Angeles to Hong Kong; the cable will have 12,800 km of fiber and a cable capacity of approximately 120 Tbps—the largest capacity of any trans-Pacific route—and will allow faster and more reliable connections by increasing bandwidth.

New Protections for Prepaid Debit Cards: The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has issued new rules, going into effect in October 2017, that will provide most prepaid debit cards with some of the same protections given to regular debit and credit cards, including free access to account information, limited liability for fraudulent transactions, and greater transparency.

Privacy

Please Leave Your Apple Watch Behind: The UK has banned ministers from wearing Apple Watches during cabinet meetings because of concerns that the smart watches could be hacked by Russian cyber spies to record conversations through the microphone, steal user data such as passwords, and even track a user’s hand motions to steal PIN numbers inputted into ATM machines.

Police Surveillance of Social Media: Geofeedia—a Chicago-based online surveillance company that collects data from twelve major social media networks, including Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram—has allowed law enforcement agencies and more than 500 other similar clients to search for a user’s social media content by inputting a specific location rather than words or hashtags.

Information Security and Cyberthreats

DARPA Considers Blockchain: The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the research unit of the DoD, may introduce blockchain technology to secure sensitive data; this technology would create a record any time a network or database has been altered, thus preventing hackers from secretly modifying a system.

Hackers Targeting Banks: Financial institutions that use SWIFT, a payment network commonly used to transfer large sums of money, are still being targeted by a hacking group months after the Bangladesh Central Bank nearly lost $1 billion to different hackers.

Intellectual Property

NFL Crackdown: In a move to promote “meaningful reach and engagement” with fans, the NFL will prohibit teams from posting to social media any GIFs or video footage of football games, including highlights and anything shot in stadiums; teams may face fines ranging from up to $25,000 to $100,000 depending on the number of previous violations.

Scam to De-Index Sites from Google: At least twenty-five lawsuits have been filed in the past year as part of a scam to de-index websites from Google’s search engine, whereby a plaintiff files a lawsuit alleging copyright infringement or defamation against a “dummy defendant,” who agrees to an injunction, and a record of that approved injunction is then sent to Google, which de-indexes the site.

Free Expression and Censorship

Life Imprisonment for Open Source Code: Saeed Malekpour, a Canadian resident, continues to serve a life sentence—which was initially a death sentence—in Iran for creating an open source code for sharing photos online, which some Iranians used to upload pornography; the government charged him with creating propaganda that threatened the country’s Islamic ideals and national security, while the third parties’ acts were deemed irrelevant.

Practice Note

Deleting Browsing History: In a recent case concerning a possible breach of confidence, where an employee joined a competitor company and was given a consent order to maintain all records relating to his original company, a Canadian court ruled that the employee did not violate the order when he deleted his personal browsing history.

On the Lighter Side

New Consent Model: Alibaba Group Holdings has announced a new payment system, VR Pay, which will allow people using virtual reality goggles to enter virtual shopping malls and pay for purchases by nodding their heads rather than having to take off the goggles.

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Joel R. Reidenberg
Stanley D. and Nikki Waxberg Chair and Professor of Law and Founding Academic Director, CLIP

N. Cameron Russell
Executive Director, Fordham CLIP

Editorial Fellows, CLIP
Nadia Kashem
Meghna Prasad

Internet Governance

ICANN Acquires IANA: In a symbolic move toward web decentralization, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), an organization that counts several governments and corporations as its members, has acquired ownership of the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA), the database that stores all Internet domain names; although this move will not have many tangible implications, it will put more faith in foreign governments and corporations that the internet belongs not to the United States, but rather to everyone.

Self-Driving Cars: California has approved a new bill that will allow driverless cars to be tested in certain locations without requiring human oversight; Uber-owned Otto has already signed up for the tests, and Apple and Google have also expressed interest.

Privacy

Government Surveillance of Emails: Yahoo has been accused of helping the NSA and the FBI conduct mass surveillance of individuals by scanning incoming users’ emails for a list of specific words and characters—a practice that may be legal under current laws expiring at the end of the year.

Wanted for Theft: The FBI has covertly arrested a Maryland man working as a secret NSA contractor, who allegedly took classified computer code developed by the NSA to hack into computer systems of rival nations such as Russia and North Korea; although it is unlikely that the man sought to be a martyr for transparency and it is also unclear whether he had any political motives, the leak falls in the wake of the Edward Snowden scandal.

Information Security and Cyberthreats

New Credit Card Security: Two French banks, Société Générale and Group BPCE, will soon introduce a new credit card that employs Motion Code, a system in which a screen powered by a three-year lithium battery will be installed into the waterproof card and will display an hourly changing security code to prevent fraud and render information stolen online by thieves useless.

Your Body Can Transmit Data: Researchers at the University of Washington have created a system that transforms the human body into a transmitter of passwords and encryption keys by passing electromagnetic signals from a fingerprint sensor or touchpad into receivers on the body, thereby preventing the information from being leaked into the air and becoming vulnerable to security threats.

Intellectual Property

Supreme Court to Hear The Slants Case: The Supreme Court will rule on whether the 1946 Lanham Act—which prohibits the trademarking of offensive terms—violates the constitutional right to free speech, in a case involving a Portland-based Asian-American band called The Slants who were denied a trademark for their band name; this case follows the controversy surrounding the Washington Redskins who were stripped of their trademark registration by the US Patent and Trademark Office in a 2014 decision and whose appeal the Supreme Court has refused to hear earlier this week.

Copyrighted Computer Codes: In what may be a violation of the First Amendment, writers can potentially face jail time and other penalties for publishing books about methods of improving computer security, under Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), even though such research and publication of copyrighted computer code obtained without authorization may be permitted as fair use under copyright law.

Free Expression and Censorship

Did the NYT Violate the First Amendment? After the New York Times published three pages of Donald Trump’s 1995 income tax returns for New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut, several news sources reported that the First Amendment would most likely protect the Times, although more specifically, the fact that they were state returns and received anonymously could further shield the publication from liability.

Amazon Bans Incentivized Reviews: To protect the integrity of its 5-star review system, Amazon is now prohibiting incentivized reviews—which are reviews that users write on behalf of companies in return for money or free or discounted products; Amazon has also sued individuals and businesses that offer fake review services.

Practice Note

UK Hacking Offense Prosecuted in the US: Though Parliament had intended the Computer Misuse Act 1990 to have global effect, i.e., allowing a UK-based hacker to be prosecuted in the UK despite the computer being located outside the UK, the extradition proceedings of Lauri Love—a British hacker with autism who accessed the computers of various US governmental agencies and who now faces a possible 99-year prison sentence in the US—is an example of the UK not using the CMA to prosecute and instead deferring to a foreign government.

On the Lighter Side

Let’s Take a Selfie: Mastercard is rolling out a new feature called “Identity Check Mobile” which will allow users of the Mastercard app to circumvent inputting a password and instead verify their identity with either a fingerprint or a selfie; for the selfie feature, users will first need to take a photo of themselves, which will be stored on the Mastercard servers, and will then need to blink to assure that an identity thief is not simply using a photo to gain access to their account.

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Joel R. Reidenberg
Stanley D. and Nikki Waxberg Chair and Professor of Law and Founding Academic Director, CLIP

N. Cameron Russell
Executive Director, Fordham CLIP

Editorial Fellows, CLIP
Nadia Kashem
Meghna Prasad

Internet Governance

State-Run Email in Russia: Despite previously using Microsoft to survey and raid opposition groups, Moscow will now replace its Microsoft email software on 6,000 government computers with a state-run system in an effort declared by President Putin to move toward better “security and reliability” by using local rather than foreign software.

Privacy

Apple Is Monitoring Your iMessages: Although Apple has long maintained that iMessage data is entirely secure and encrypted, the company reportedly creates a log that includes the date, time, and IP address of the device whenever a user types a number into an iPhone for a text conversation; although the log only lives for 30 days, a court order could compel Apple to turn over this information and extend the log’s lifespan.

Information Security and Cyberthreats

Yahoo in Trouble: Yahoo may have misled investors in the wording of their September 9 proxy statement by failing to adequately disclose that it may have been aware, in as early as August, of a massive security breach that exposed 500 million user accounts.

Hacker Convicted of Terrorism: An ISIS hacker from Kosovo who provided the organization with a kill list—a compilation of the names, locations, phone numbers, email addresses, and email passwords of 1,351 US military and government officials—has been sentenced to 20 years in prison by a Virginia federal court, marking the first time that the US has prosecuted a hacker for an act of terrorism.

Intellectual Property

Record Industry Fights Stream-Rippers: In a symbolic move toward protecting musicians, the Recording Industry Association of America, the British Recorded Music Industry, and other industry lobbyists have filed suit against YouTube-mp3.org—a website that enables users to convert YouTube videos to mp3s—alleging that stream-ripping constitutes copyright infringement.

Legality of Video-Streaming Boxes: In what is being called a landmark case, a UK court will determine whether a seller can be held liable for facilitating the circumvention of copyright protection systems where he sells a set-top box preloaded with third-party add-ons—a device that allows content pirated from the internet to be streamed on electronic devices.

Free Expression and Censorship

Wi-Fi Ban at Presidential Debate: Journalists covering the first presidential debate at Hofstra University on Monday were banned from using their own Wi-Fi hotspots and, instead, were required to pay $200 to access the event’s Wi-Fi or be forced to leave if they used their own—an issue that a Federal Communications Commissioner is now asking the agency to investigate.

Facebook Censoring Palestinians: After seven Palestinian journalists, four news editors and three executives suddenly lost access to their personal Facebook accounts in what Facebook alleges was a mistake, the social media platform has been accused of working with the Israeli government, after the two recently agreed to cooperate in quelling violence-inciting content.

Practice Note

The CFAA’s 30-Year History: With numerous reforms and contradictory court decisions over the years, the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act still leaves ambiguities regarding the definition of “access” and “authorization,” creating the issue: Should the scope of cybercrimes be interpreted narrowly, or should the scope be defined broadly—which could decentivize people from discovering and testing security system vulnerabilities for fear of prosecution.

On the Lighter Side

Uber Zombies: While Uber drivers in China could previously receive a subsidy for every 30 rides, that subsidy has been reduced, leading some drivers to now post profile pictures of themselves as zombies in an effort to scare passengers away, so that the drivers may collect a cancellation fee—a tactic known as ghost-driving.

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Joel R. Reidenberg
Stanley D. and Nikki Waxberg Chair and Professor of Law and Founding Academic Director, CLIP

N. Cameron Russell
Executive Director, Fordham CLIP

Editorial Fellows, CLIP
Nadia Kashem
Meghna Prasad

Internet Governance

Internet Removed from NYC WiFi Kiosks: Due to problems of lewd conduct, people congregating on busy sidewalks, and the city’s homeless population being put on display, New York City has decided to remove the internet browsing feature from its free WiFi kiosks after efforts to filter porn failed.

Cruz Blocking IANA Transition: With a firm deadline for the IANA transition approaching next week—by which the US government’s authority over major technical internet functions would be transferred—Senator Ted Cruz is preventing negotiations by insisting that the transition would transfer power to foreign governments and threaten free speech, despite fact-checkers questioning the credibility of these statements.

Privacy

Finding the Bombing Suspect: In order to track down Ahmad Khan Rahami, the man charged with attempted murder for planting bombs in Manhattan and New Jersey, police used the bomb squad, fingerprints, Chelsea surveillance footage, and the Wireless Emergency Alert—a new feature which pushes an alert to cell phones in New York City.

FBI Contracting with Hackers: After Apple’s refusal to unlock the device earlier this year, three media giants have failed in their efforts to force the FBI, under the Freedom of Information Act, to reveal how the Bureau gained access to the contents of the iPhone belonging to the perpetrator of the San Bernardino attack.

Information Security and Cyberthreats

Election Integrity Act Introduced: As concerns mount that Russian cyber spies might be tampering with the upcoming presidential election, Representative Hank Johnson (D-GA) has introduced the Election Integrity Act which would implement regulations to combat election hacks, including a prohibition on voting systems from being web-connected, and a requirement that states purchase electronic voting machines that leave a paper trail.

Hacked North American iPhones Spamming Chinese Users: Using a loophole in the iPhone’s “Send as SMS” feature, hackers have sent more than 280,000 spam text messages—which advertise counterfeit Coach and Prada handbags—from iPhones belonging to unsuspecting North American iCloud account holders to mobile users mainly in China but also in other parts of the world.

Intellectual Property

Unpatent Working to Eliminate Stupid Patents: A new platform, Unpatent, seeks to invalidate junk patents by arranging a crowdfunding campaign for each potential junk patent; the $20,000 raised in each campaign covers the costs of legally challenging the patent at the Patent and Trademark Office and compensating those who find compelling prior art that nullify the patent.

WiFi Operators Not Liable for Pirate Users: The Court of Justice of the European Union held in a case regarding a WiFi operator who was sued by Sony for facilitating music piracy that WiFi operators will not be held liable for copyright infringement as long as they did not initiate transmission, select the recipient of transmission, or select or alter the information during transmission in any way.

Free Expression and Censorship

Censoring Bad Customer Reviews: As more businesses are trying to control their image by banning or penalizing negative online reviews, the House passed the Consumer Review Fairness Act to sanction this practice; the Senate’s Consumer Review Freedom Act, passed in December 2015, similarly disallows such censorship.

Lighter Side 

Robot Under Arrest: Promobot, a rebellious robot from Russia who gained infamy after escaping from his laboratory this past June, has now been arrested at a political rally in Moscow for “suspicious activity.”

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Joel R. Reidenberg
Stanley D. and Nikki Waxberg Chair and Professor of Law and Founding Academic Director, CLIP

N. Cameron Russell
Executive Director, Fordham CLIP

Editorial Fellows, CLIP
Nadia Kashem
Meghna Prasad

Internet Governance

Social Media Platforms Fight Against Hoax Stories: Facebook has joined the First Draft Coalition, an initiative that also counts Twitter as one of its partners, to stop fake and deceptive news stories such as fake celebrity deaths and other hoaxes from circulating through social media platforms.

Free Wi-Fi for All: The European Commission recently proposed a new law called the European Electronic Communications Code, which would seek to make Wi-Fi available to all EU citizens and improve download speeds to at least 100Mbps by the year 2025.

Privacy

“Plain Hearing” Rule About Wiretaps Reinterpreted: The Court of Appeals has elaborated on the “plain hearing” doctrine and ruled that if the government has obtained a warrant to listen in on a conversation but discovers that someone other than the warrant’s target is using that phone number, the government must cease eavesdropping.

Stalked by Google: Despite complaints about privacy and battery drainage, Google continues to track Android users’ locations through both Google Play—which refuses to stop tracking users unless location tracking is turned off for all applications at once—and Google Maps—whose basic features can stop working if location tracking is disabled.

Information Security and Cyberthreats

Your Local ATM Could Be Compromised: A new type of ATM hacking device that uses “periscope skimming” has been discovered in ATMs in Connecticut and Pennsylvania and is frighteningly undetectable, as the devices are installed inside of ATM machines and can obtain over 32,000 credit card numbers in just 14 days.

Russian Hackers Release Olympic Athletes’ Medical Info: After a doping scandal at the Rio Olympic games this summer, during which 119 Russian athletes were ultimately banned, a Russian hacker group called Fancy Bear infiltrated the World Anti-Doping Agency’s database and gained access to medical information of Olympic athletes, some of which the group has already released.

Intellectual Property

Stealing Content from 3-D Printers: Placing an ordinary smartphone as far as 8 inches away from a 3-D printer may allow forgers and copyright thieves to recreate 3-D printed objects, such as cases and packaging, with 90-94% accuracy, by recording the acoustic and electromagnetic energy released by the printer and then reverse-engineering the product.

Free Expression and Censorship

Instagram’s Efforts to Moderate: Instagram has introduced a new comment moderation feature that enables users to filter out certain words or emojis from others’ comments on their posts in an effort to fight harassment, similar to a tool that Twitter is also developing.

Napalm Girl Censored for Nudity: After Facebook deleted several posts by Norwegian journalists that depicted “Terror of War,” a famous Vietnam War photograph of a naked girl escaping a napalm attack, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg wrote a letter to the Norwegian Prime Minister expressing the company’s regret over deleting the posts despite the photo’s historical importance.

Practice Note

Robots Not to Be Feared: Despite fears that robots will replace humans in the professional world, another way to view these innovations is as an opportunity for building creative intelligence and maintaining jobs, as robots will always need humans to manage their existence.

On the Lighter Side

AirPods at the Butt of the Jokes: Whether by creating memes, snipping off the wire from regular headphones, or making a parody advertisement featuring uncontrollable laughter, the Internet has found creative ways to mock Apple’s new earring-like headphones.

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Joel R. Reidenberg
Stanley D. and Nikki Waxberg Chair and Professor of Law and Founding Academic Director, CLIP

N. Cameron Russell
Executive Director, Fordham CLIP

Editorial Fellows, CLIP
Nadia Kashem
Meghna Prasad

Internet Governance

European Broadband to Change? Europe may give control of broadband regulations to smaller bodies in individual countries rather than maintain current regulations at the European level that require companies that install broadband in residences to rent access to other businesses at a fair price.

Privacy

Microsoft’s Fight Against DOJ Gag Orders: Apple, Google, and Mozilla are among several tech companies supporting Microsoft in its legal battle against the Department of Justice by filing an amicus brief asserting the unconstitutionality of aspects of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, which allows the government to use gag orders to prevent companies from notifying their users when the government seizes data.

Information Security and Cyberthreats

Google Adding Transparency to Safe Browsing: Google, which employs “Safe Browsing,” a technology that uses robots to create a list of websites that host malware, harmful downloads, or deceptive ads and pages and then blocks those sites from web users, has updated its Search Console to offer otherwise unknowing webmasters more information about why their sites have been blacklisted.

Spyware Data for Sale:  An Israeli company called NSO Group is just one of dozens of spyware companies that offer international governments and law enforcement agencies a service that allows traceless collection of data from private smartphones, including collection of text messages, contacts, calendars, emails, and GPS locations.

Intellectual Property

Apple’s Trademark Applications Provide Clues: Even prior to Apple’s most recent launch, a look into its trademark applications revealed details of the upcoming products, such as the number of iPhones being released and that Apple was indeed the company behind “Airpods.”

Free Expression and Censorship

Cuba’s Text Message Censorship: The communist government in Cuba is censoring text messages by blocking the transmission of those that contain any of 30 keywords such as “democracy,” “human rights,” and “hunger strike,” while marking the messages as “sent” on the sender’s phone.

Using Google and YouTube to Reverse-Brainwash Potential ISIS Recruits: Jigsaw, a Google think tank, is developing a program to deter those attracted to ISIS propaganda by placing advertisement links next to Google search results for keywords such as “jihad,” which direct the viewer to YouTube videos containing anti-ISIS messages.

Practice Note

FIDO Alliance Seeks to Standardize Biometrics: As authentication security, specifically biometric identification and fingerprints, are becoming a more prominent way of securing information than using passwords, the FIDO Alliance is seeking to standardize the method behind using biometrics in a world where companies are currently developing their own methods, often in isolation.

On the Lighter Side

Selfie Drone: Dobby, a foldable, pocket-sized, voice-enabled selfie drone that can track targets and even take photos while doing barrel rolls, is now available in China, Europe, and the US.

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Joel R. Reidenberg
Stanley D. and Nikki Waxberg Chair and Professor of Law and Founding Academic Director, CLIP

N. Cameron Russell
Executive Director, Fordham CLIP

Editorial Fellows, CLIP
Nadia Kashem
Meghna Prasad

Internet Governance

Government to Relinquish DNS Oversight: The NTIA will allow the IANA functions contract to expire on October 1st, transferring control of DNS to ICANN and signaling an end to US management of ICANN’s administrative activities; however, the government will retain control over .mil and .gov.

Pakistan’s Rigid Security Reform: Pakistan’s National Assembly passed the Prevention of Electronic Crimes Bill 2015, a law that gives the Pakistani Telecommunications Authority broad power over citizen’s use of mobile devices and internet activity by including vague and sweeping language to define illegal activities and providing for harsh penalties.

Privacy

Oracle Unleashes New Data Source: Oracle revealed a new cloud database that includes 400 million business users and one million addressable US companies, the largest forum of audience data geared specifically toward brands that conduct business using “programmatic and data-driven B2B marketing techniques,” but large data quantities face accuracy issues at lower levels.

Real Change to US Surveillance Rules?  The Defense Department issued the first update to its domestic surveillance rules in 30 years; changes include redefining the point at which US personal records are deemed “collected” and requiring the NSA to obtain FISA warrants for nonconsensual physical searches inside the US and collection of targeted US personal data outside the US, but the language reveals loopholes and exceptions to allow for NSA targeting and surveillance.

Information Security and Cyberthreats

Origins of NSA Hack Unclear: A group called the Shadow Brokers posted a cache of files containing sophisticated hacking tools and malware used by cyber hackers linked to the NSA under the name Equation Group; while it remains unclear whether the NSA itself was hacked or whether the leak was an internal error, many suspect Russia is behind the cache’s release.

Intellectual Property

Company Liable for User Copyright: A federal judge found internet provider Cox Communications liable for its customers’ illegal music and movie downloads, despite DMCA’s safe harbor provision that protects companies from their users’ piracy, and ordered Cox to pay $25 million in damages to music rights company BMG.

Free Expression and Censorship

Facebook Censors Significant Video: Facebook banned a Hong Kong politician from the site for a “terms of service violation” after he uploaded a video of him confronting two men in a car that had been following him for a month and who identified their ties to the Chinese Communist Party; Facebook restored the video after the story received media attention.

Practice Note

Improve Security During the Hack: While deterring hackers from obtaining and disclosing information through data center perimeter security is important, a more realistic focus may be on reducing the amount of “dwell time,” the period during which hackers can remain inside an infiltrated network; attackers require time to move around a network and access multiple systems to gather large amounts of data, and a shorter dwell time would limit this movement and lead to more hacking failures.

On the Lighter Side

Meal of the Future? A recent robotic showcase included a demo of a sushi-making robot, created to demonstrate the accuracy and dexterity of a pair of robotic arms.

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Joel R. Reidenberg
Stanley D. and Nikki Waxberg Chair and Professor of Law and Founding Academic Director, CLIP

N. Cameron Russell
Executive Director, Fordham CLIP

Editorial Fellow, CLIP
Victoria J.A. Loeb

Internet Governance

Limiting Municipal Broadband Expansion: The Sixth Circuit ruled that the FCC could not prevent Tennessee and North Carolina from regulating to restrict municipal broadband expansion beyond existing boundaries, after the FCC voted last year for an order to preempt such state laws.

Connecting Users in India: Google is enabling internet access for millions of people in India by providing free Wi-Fi at train stations, seeking to maximize online users and advertisement visibility, while Facebook is testing services to deliver cheaper internet access to people in India while maintaining stakeholder sustainability.

Privacy

New Privacy Technology: Apple will incorporate differential privacy into its newest mobile operating system, a technology that will track and collect user activity but will add noise to the data before it is transmitted to prevent accumulation of “raw data” that reveals a specific individual’s activity.

Unprecedented Info for PI’s: A company has combined public and nonpublic records of personal information with marketing, demographic, and behavioral data to create a profile on every American adult for private investigators to access; use of this and like databases must comply with US privacy laws and FTC oversight, but the high volume of searches means that private investigation companies are mostly expected to monitor themselves.

Narrowing Down “Periodic” Review: The DC District Court ruled in a redacted order that the FBI should specify a time frame for its “periodic” reviews of NSL gag orders, finding that a three-year review balances the burdens on the FBI against the company’s countervailing interest in “avoiding a lengthy and indefinite nondisclosure bar.”

Information Security and Cyberthreats

Problems for Australian Census:  Australia’s first online national census, containing personal, economic, religious, and social information and requiring Australians to identify themselves, came under a possible cyber attack when the survey website crashed overnight.

Oracle Payment Systems Infiltrated: A Russian cybercrime group hacked Oracle’s Micros division, one of world’s largest point of sale vendor systems used at over 330,000 payment locations; the company said payment card data is encrypted “both at rest and in transit” in the Micros systems and it will be implementing security measures to prevent another attack.

Election System Critical Infrastructure? Following the DNC hack, the Obama administration may classify US election systems as critical infrastructure and increase their cyber protections; however, US response to attacks on the political process may have varying implications for national security.

Intellectual Property

Viral Videos and Copyright: While news programs that show videos of events shot by people using their mobile phones in real time are protected by fair use, “middlemen” who buy the videos immediately after they go viral and then attempt to license them have established a monetary value to the videos, complicating the fair use formula by skewing one of the factors involved, the market of the use.

Free Expression and Censorship

Muffling Deceptive Links: Facebook is altering its rules for displaying outside content, featuring headlines that “withhold or distort information” farther down rather than ordering outside stories by amount of traffic; the company is concerned about the association between the content it links to and its brand as a function of user happiness.

On the Lighter Side

Meme of 2016: Some memes, like that created by K.C. Green and shared by the Republican Party during the DNC, reach beyond pop culture silliness to resonate as cultural commentary.

Internet Governance

Blocking Out Dissent: The Turkish government blocked access to WikiLeaks after the site released approximately 300,000 emails of the ruling party; WikiLeaks stated that it released the data in response to the government suspending and arresting 50,000 people in the last week.

Plans for Cross-Border Data Searches: After last week’s federal appeals court ruling against the use of federal warrants to search Microsoft’s data held overseas, the Obama administration has initiated agreements that would allow foreign governments to serve US tech companies with warrants to search their email or intercept their messages, as well as authorize US investigators to search data in other nations.

Privacy

Privacy Interest in Mug Shots: The Sixth Circuit ruled that federal agencies are not required to release a federal suspect’s mug shot to the media under the FOIA; agencies may refuse to comply with requests for law enforcement information if such a release could “reasonably be expected to constitute an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy.”

Microsoft to Comply with French Data Rules: In response to findings that Windows 10 collects excessive user data and has caused serious breaches, France’s national data protection authority (CNIL) ordered Microsoft to comply with the French Data Protection Act within three months and stop its tracking and data-gathering activities that compromise user privacy and security.

Restraints on Data Retention: In a preliminary ruling over a challenge to UK data retention under the Data Retention and Investigation Powers Act, the Court of Justice of the European Union found that governments may impose general metadata retention obligations and maintain compatibility with EU law, but the obligation must be “necessary to the fight against serious crime[s]” and balanced against privacy risks; the decision is highly influential, albeit not yet legally binding.

Information Security and Cyberthreats

Arrested Overseas: Ars Vaulin, alleged founder of the world’s largest BitTorrent distributor, was arrested in Poland; the DOJ charged him with running the website that unlawfully distributed over $1 billion in copyrighted materials.

Intellectual Property

Fitbit Patents Invalidated: A US International Trade Commission judge invalidated three Fitbit patents in a case against Jawbone, finding that the technology in question embodied abstract ideas not subject to patent protection.

Free Expression and Censorship

Making Amends: Twitter permanently banned controversial blogger Milo Yiannopoulos in response to criticism of the social network for failing to prevent anonymous trolls from sending abusive comments to users; Yiannopoulos targeted Leslie Jones, star of the newly-released Ghostbusters movie, with racist and sexist attacks that caused her to leave Twitter.

What Constitutes a Threat? In the wake of the Dallas shooting, the police have arrested several people in four different states for their “threatening” posts on social media, including those naming the shooter a “hero;” the arrests raise concerns as it is unclear whether the speech amounts to a “true threat,” under Supreme Court precedent.

Practice Note

Hijacking Legitimate Websites: A recent cybersecurity report finds that hackers seek to not only harm their target directly, but are increasingly hijacking legitimate websites through an inconspicuous “piggybacking” technique that enables long-term use of websites’ resources and reputation to facilitate the hacker’s own illicit businesses.

On the Lighter Side

Real-Life Filter: Warby Parker is offering its Snapchat followers a chance to bring the app’s features to real life by selling Snapchat-exclusive sunglasses to its followers.

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Joel R. Reidenberg
Stanley D. and Nikki Waxberg Chair and Professor of Law and Founding Academic Director, CLIP

N. Cameron Russell
Executive Director, Fordham CLIP

Editorial Fellows, CLIP
Victoria J.A. Loeb
Vlad A. Herta