Month: August 2015

Internet Governance 

Home Rental Service Tax Deal: Starting October 1, Airbnb will collect a one dollar per person per night tourist tax from customers renting in Paris—the company’s largest market—and will pass that tax on to the city.

Less Than Lethal: A new law permits North Dakota police to equip drones with weapons such as rubber bullets, tear gas, and Tasers; the original bill would have banned drone weaponization entirely but was amended at the last minute due to efforts by a pro-police lobbyist.

Privacy

In The Public Interest? The UK Information Commissioner’s Office has relied on the EU’s “right to be forgotten” to require that Google remove from its search results links to certain pages reporting on the removal of delisted links on the ground that the reports include details about the previously-removed pages’ contents.

Information Security And Cyberthreats 

Cool Hack: At the recent DEFCON hacking conference, researchers revealed a security flaw in a Samsung smart fridge that enables potential hackers to obtain the fridge owner’s Gmail login credentials.

Intellectual Property  

#trademark? A California federal district court ruled that hashtags are “merely descriptive devices, not trademarks,” and rejected the argument that one party’s use of certain hashtags on social media breached its agreement with the other party to not use the hashtagged terms in connection with the sale of products.

Free Expression and Censorship 

Deletion As Expression? Twitter suspended the API access of, and effectively shut down, Politwoops—a “network of sites dedicated to archiving deleted tweets” by world politicians.

Practice Note 

Acting On Consumers’ Behalf: The Third Circuit upheld a lower court ruling confirming the FTC’s authority to regulate businesses’ cybersecurity practices; as a result, the Commission may pursue its suit against Wyndham Worldwide Corp for inadequately protecting its customers’ information.

On the Lighter Side 

Caught On Drone: A Rhode Island man was surprised to discover a drone watching him sunbathe . . . on top of a 200-foot tall wind turbine.

Internet Governance

Now On Notice: The FCC fined Smart City LLC, a company that provides WiFi service to hotels and convention centers, $750,000 for charging guests exorbitant access fees while blocking them from connecting to their personal WiFi networks.

No More Near Misses? Senator Schumer will propose an amendment to the FAA Reauthorization Bill that would mandate drone “geofencing”—the limiting of drone movement through the use of GPS and similar technology.

Privacy

Partners In Spying? Newly disclosed documents reveal that AT&T provided the N.S.A. access to billions of emails stored on domestic networks and offered technical assistance to carry out secret wiretapping orders.

Information Security And Cyberthreats

Market Manipulation? Former Kaspersky Lab employees allege that the company sabotages antivirus software competitors by injecting into their programs code that tags as “malicious” and disables “clean” files on their customers’ computers.

Dumped: The Ashley Madison hackers released ten gigabytes of compressed data obtained from the hack, in turn exposing personal information affiliated with over 33 million accounts.

Intellectual Property

Pay Up? Samsung plans to appeal to the Supreme Court after the Federal Circuit refused to hear the company’s appeal of a ruling requiring that it pay Apple $548 million for shipping Android smartphones containing technology that infringes Apple’s patents.

Free Expression And Censorship

Policia Of Speech? A woman in Spain was fined under the Citizens Security Law, which is designed in part to prevent the unauthorized use of images of police officers, for posting on Facebook her photo of a police car parked in a handicap spot.

On The Lighter Side

Leonardo da Emoji? Make all of your photos masterpieces with this emoji mosaic creator.

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

N. Cameron Russell
Executive Director, Fordham CLIP

Thomas B. Norton
Privacy Fellow, Fordham CLIP

Editorial Fellows
Elle Davis
Sam Borenzweig

Internet Governance

#Risky: The FDA required Kim Kardashian to remove from Instagram a post promoting a morning sickness drug on the ground that her failure to disclose the drug’s risks resulted in a “false and misleading” advertisement.

Scammers On Trial: The FTC charged two data brokers for illegally selling consumer loan application data, including social security and account numbers, to a third party who used the information to charge consumer accounts $7 million in unauthorized transactions.

Privacy

Encryption Tug-Of-War: In the ongoing dispute between the government and businesses over data encryption, the DOJ has asserted that service providers already maintain some access to user information for business purposes and that the same access should be extended to law enforcement.

Information Security And Cyberthreats

Pressed With Fraud: The SEC charged a “hacking ring” that allegedly stole over five years of not-yet-public press releases and used the information contained therein to predict and profit from changes in stock performance.

Intellectual Property

Battle Of The Alpha-Brands: BMW is assessing whether Alphabet, Google’s new parent company, infringes BMW’s trademark for a subsidiary of the same name; a dispute is unlikely because Google does not intend for the company to manufacture products.

Free Expression And Censorship

Voters Say Cheese: A New Hampshire court struck a state bill banning voters’ ballot selfies, which was enacted to prevent vote-buying schemes, as a “content-based restriction on speech.”

Practice Note

Social Network Expert: In a case about whether a man’s Facebook posts amounted to threats, an Indiana District Court has allowed expert testimony from a professor whose extensive research on the site’s users “qualifies her to opine on [their] general behavioral patterns.”

On The Lighter Side

Privacy? Priceless: A $240 pair of shades can protect your face from those harmful facial recognition rays.

Joel R. Reidenberg

Stanley D. and Nikki Waxberg Chair and Professor of Law

Founding Academic Director, Fordham CLIP

N. Cameron Russell

Executive Director, Fordham CLIP

Thomas B. Norton

Privacy Fellow, Fordham CLIP

Editorial Fellows

Elle Davis

Sam Borenzweig