Month: November 2016

Internet Governance

No Dinner for LinkedIn: After refusing to comply with a Russian law requiring all websites to store personal data on servers located within Russia, LinkedIn has been banned from Russia even though the company has previously complied with other similar regulations; for instance, in China, LinkedIn operates as a completely separate site and hosts its data within the country.

Poachers Feasting on Profits: Vietnamese wildlife traffickers are selling illegal products made from at least 907 elephants, 225 tigers, and 579 rhinos, as well as various other dead animals to China and southeast Asian countries through WeChat and Facebook, violating both the latter’s policies and possibly an international treaty.

No More Cooking Up Memes: Spreading “images that infringe the honor of a person” without the person’s consent may become a crime in Spain if a new piece of legislation proposed by the Prime Minister passes into law; the proposal—endorsed by the Popular Party which has a history of trying to limit people’s freedom of speech—has been met with only increased internet mockery.

Privacy

Google Play Music Stuffing More into Playlists: In an effort to keep up with other music streaming services, Google Play Music will begin to suggest new music to users based on user behavior including not only user listening patterns but also user location, user activity, and the weather.

IDNYC a Recipe for Disaster: Mayor de Blasio has vowed to fight the federal government from accessing any data stored in the database for IDNYC, a program that had been implemented as a means for providing identification for New York City residents—many of whom are undocumented immigrants—to be able to use certain services, such as opening bank accounts; a kill switch for the program would prevent law enforcement from gaining access to the data.

Information Security and Cyberthreats

A Cornucopia of Duplicate Accounts: A new report studying the Twitter and LinkedIn accounts of over two-hundred Fortune 500 CEOs has found an abundance of duplicate accounts on these two platforms, exposing these executives to thieves behind these accounts who use them to send attack emails and conduct phishing schemes on unknowing enterprises and individuals.

Be Thankful You Haven’t Been X-Posed: In possibly the largest hack of 2016, a recent breach has leaked account information of over 412 million users of various websites belonging to the FriendFinder Network, including usernames, passwords, and email addresses, over 80,000 of which are registered under .gov and .mil emails.

Intellectual Property

Chess-nuts Roasting on an Open Website: The organizers of the World Chess Championship lost a bid for exclusive streaming of the chess moves in the ongoing 12-game series between world champion Magnus Carlsen and Sergey Karjakin after the website operators of Chess24.com argued in federal court that the chess moves are not protected by copyright law but rather are in the public domain.

Oh, the Lawsuits You’ll File: Dr. Seuss Enterprises is attempting to block a small group of artists’ Kickstarter project that parodies the classic “Oh, the Places You’ll Go” with Star Trek, despite the artists insisting that their work is protected as a fair use.

Free Expression and Censorship

Squashing the Alt-Right: In an effort to combat harassment and hateful conduct on its platform, Twitter has banned the accounts of several alt-right conservative figures who advocate white ethno-nationalism, including Richard Spencer, Paul Town, Pax Dickinson, Ricky Vaughn, and John Rivers, although it is unclear whether specific tweets or incidents prompted the ban, especially in light of the fact that Twitter recently allowed a white supremacist group to promote itself through the platform.

Bon Voyage, Fake News: In response to the recent controversy surrounding the circulation of fake news stories that possibly influenced the U.S. presidential election, Google and Facebook will limit their advertising features to prevent the dissemination of these stories, with Google preventing fake news websites from employing its AdSense advertising network, and Facebook similarly updating its advertising policy to include fake news in its ban on deceptive and misleading content.

Practice Note

Thanks for Giving Away My Age: IMDb is challenging the constitutionality of a new law that allows paying subscribers to demand to have certain personal information removed from their IMDb profiles; the law seeks to fight age discrimination after a failed lawsuit brought by actress Junie Hoang who was passed over for a job when producers discovered her age on the site.

On the Lighter Side

Turkey-Brained Robot: A research robot has failed to reach scores high enough to gain admission to the prestigious University of Tokyo, earning a mere 511 out of 950 on the standardized admissions test, quashing any fears of an impending rise of the machines.

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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

New Restrictive Chinese Law: China has passed a new cybersecurity law, effective next summer, in an alleged effort to protect against cyberattacks and terrorism; although critics are concerned that certain facets of the law—such as requiring data to be stored within the country and forcing users of messaging services to register their real names—will further restrict already heavily regulated internet usage and even cut China off from the rest of the world.

Net Neutrality Trumped: With President-elect Donald Trump having announced his opposition to net neutrality and decision to appoint Jeffrey Eisenach, “a crusader against regulation,” to head the FCC’s telecom transition team, the fate of the FCC’s telecom enforcement and new net neutrality protections—such as its recent decisions to reclassify internet service providers as common carriers and to provide privacy protections for broadband users—remains unclear.

Privacy

CSIS in Hot Water: Since 2006, believing it had the authority to watch citizens as a result of warrants granting surveillance powers, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service has reportedly been illegally retaining personally identifiable information about citizens and actively hiding this secret metadata collection from Canadian courts.

France’s National Identity Database: As Paris hosts the Open Government Partnership summit, the idea of a national identity database that would store personally identifiable data of 60 million citizens is being revisited in France despite fears that the system could be vulnerable to abuse; previous efforts to implement such a system were thwarted by the dangers posed by cybercriminals, hostile state actors, and the possibility of a future occupation of the country by another Nazi-like regime.

Information Security and Cyberthreats

Googling Your Technological Safety: Google’s Safe Browsing tool, which already marks sites that contain malware or unwanted software with a large red warning sign, has a new, stricter policy for sites that repeatedly implement these dangerous visitor traps; now, if a flagged site removes the offending software, then asks Google to delete the red warning sign and yet re-implements the software once the warning is removed, the “repeat offender” will be blocked from reapplying for removal of the sign for 30 days.

The FBI’s Child Porn Collection: Recently unsealed documents reveal that the FBI exceeded the scope and jurisdictional limitations of a warrant—which only granted permission to hack specific Maryland-based users of a “Dark Web” email service used by some to distribute child pornography taken from FBI-administered sites—when the Bureau used malware to also hack legitimate users of the email service across the world.

Intellectual Property

Former Guitarist off the Hook: In a suit filed by Tom Scholz, the frontman of rock band Boston, against the band’s former guitarist Barry Goudreau for trademark infringement of the band’s name when Goudreau referred to himself as “Barry Goudreau from Boston” while promoting gigs with other musical acts, a district court jury has found that Scholz’s claim has no merit.

Public RSS Feeds Not Really Public? The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) has accused a podcast’s app developers of copyright violation, claiming that accessing its public RSS feed without paying a licensing fee is considered “commercial use,” due to the app selling banner ads, even though the apps are not specific to CBC content.

Free Expression and Censorship

I Can Get Some Satisfaction: In a federal case regarding Rolling Stone Magazine’s now-discredited November 2014 story describing a University of Virginia administrator’s failure to take action after the brutal gang rape of a student at a fraternity party, a jury found the publication liable in the amount of $3 million for defamation resulting from comments made both in the article and by the author and magazine after the story was published.

Turkey Blocks the Internet: After the arrest of 11 members of the opposing pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party, the Turkish government blocked access to Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and WhatsApp, but this is not the first time the country has gone to such measures to quell political unrest; last week, the internet was shut down entirely in the southeast region, and last month, access was limited to Dropbox, Google Drive, and Microsoft OneDrive after private emails belonging to the President’s son-in-law were leaked.

Practice Note

Google Play and YouTube Cases: Two successful recent cases against Google illustrate how a plaintiff can allege bad faith on the defendant’s part to defeat a Section 230(c)(2) defense, which provides civil liability protection for “Good Samaritan” blocking and screening of offensive material under the Communications Decency Act.

On the Lighter Side

Keeping Toasty With Technology: Currently in a Kickstarter crowdfunded campaign, Taps are fake fingerprint stickers that users would be able to stick onto gloves so that they can use the Touch ID feature of their iPhones without facing the risk of frostbite.

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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

The Ballot of the Dark Web: Police in various countries, including the US, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the UK, recently cracked down on users of the “Dark Web,” warning and even arresting specific buyers and sellers of illegal drugs and goods such as live turtles and counterfeits.

Privacy

Campaigning for Transparency: Facebook-owned texting app WhatsApp is under scrutiny by the European Article 29 Working Party, which is concerned that, after WhatsApp updated its privacy policy this summer to reflect Facebook’s new access to WhatsApp user data, these terms may not have been communicated to users in a legally permissible way.

Solving Crime Through Text Messaging: In an attempt to find a killer, police in Ontario have obtained the phone numbers of 7,500 people from a cell tower and plan to send them text messages asking to fill out an online questionnaire to determine whether they witnessed the murder; though responses are voluntary, police may make follow-up calls to those who don’t respond and have expressed no plans for deleting any of the collected data.

Information Security and Cyberthreats

Nominating a New Policy: With the worldwide cost of cyberspace crimes estimated at $445 billion, the UK has launched a new initiative, the National Cyber Security Strategy, which outlines a plan to augment the UK’s defenses by using automated defense techniques, to strengthen law enforcement resources that detect cyber criminals, and to develop the nation’s next generation of cyberspace experts.

iOS Bug Calls 911: A teenager is facing multiple felony computer tampering charges after an alleged prank in which he admitted to discovering an iOS bug, tampering with it by inputting his own code, then spreading a link containing the bug through social media, which caused people’s iPhones to repeatedly dial 911, thereby threatening to take down the emergency system in parts of Arizona, California, and Texas.

Intellectual Property

A Vote for Harmony: Germany’s royalty collecting association GEMA has ended a 7-year dispute with YouTube that stemmed from GEMA’s demand for 17 cents per YouTube stream of content represented by GEMA; as a result of this settlement, German YouTube users will now be able to access many music videos that were once blocked.

Not Much Cheering in the Supreme Court: In a landmark case for copyright law in the fashion industry, Star Athletica v. Varsity Brands is before the Supreme Court to determine whether certain aspects of cheerleading uniforms should receive copyright protection; while Justice Ginsburg agreed on Monday that the two-dimensional designs may be separable from the three-dimensional cut and shape of the garment, Chief Justice Roberts disagreed, saying that the artwork is applied to the fabric to merely serve a utilitarian function, and thus not copyrightable.

Free Expression and Censorship

Debating Free Speech: The ACLU filed a lawsuit against the State of California on Monday, claiming that a 12-year-old ban on taking photographs of voter ballots, which is currently espoused by 18 different states, is outdated and a First Amendment violation, since voters express their enthusiasm, support, and patriotism for the nation’s election through taking and sharing these photos.

How to Censor the Election for Kids: Since Calvin Coolidge’s presidential campaign in 1924, children’s book publisher Scholastic has been providing child-appropriate election news to schools, but this year the preteen reporters of Scholastic’s children’s press corps program are facing new challenges on how to report the news for other young readers, considering this election’s especially controversial topics.

Practice Note

Electing to Hack: The Copyright Office has enacted a new exception to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which previously allowed manufacturers to sue digital device owners who hack into their device’s software and expose security vulnerabilities; the new exception will exist for a trial period of 2 years and will allow these hacks, for example, when they are conducted for the purpose of security research and digital repair of vehicles that employ this technology.

On the Lighter Side

Virtual Hairstyling: L’Oréal’s hairstylist training program, Matrix Academy, will now feature virtual reality that will allow trainees to immerse themselves in a room-sized program and observe from every angle a hologram of an actual stylist cutting a client’s hair.

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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