CLIP-ings

Internet Governance

Droned Out: UK police and prison officers have formed a new specialist squad to share information with each other to take down drones that people use to deliver illegal drugs and mobile phones to prisoners, with the first UK citizen given a 14-month sentence last year for using a quadcopter to send three different prisoners prohibited items.

Not So Cuddly And Warm: To regulate IoT devices, California has drafted a new bill, informally called by critics the “Teddy Bear and Toaster Act,” which would require manufacturers of IoT devices to implement security features such as beeps or lights that would signal to users when the product is collecting information, but this may be problematic since some devices constantly collect information and the costs may disproportionately hit small businesses.

Privacy

Bose Boasts Boatload of Data: Bose, the maker of audio products, is being sued by a customer who alleges that the company violated the Wiretap Act and other Illinois state privacy laws when it gathered information about users’ listening patterns and provided this data to third parties.

23andMe…and You and All Third Parties: DNA testing companies, like 23andMe, which provide you with a summary of your ancestry or a disease risk assessment are not only collecting your saliva but your personal information too; while such companies sell the data in aggregate to third parties, research companies may request additional information when they detect a rare condition that is found in only a small proportion of customers.

Information Security and Cyberthreats

A New Tricky Hacker Technique: “Homograph attacks”—schemes by hackers to trick internet users into visiting what they believe are legitimate sites but are actually not—are on the rise as valid domains in non-English languages are being disguised to appear the same as common English domains like apple.com and epic.com, though this problem should have been addressed over 15 years ago.

Big Whoop! Burger King’s television advertisement scheme that attempted to trigger viewers’ voice-activated Google Home devices to respond with a definition of the Whopper backfired when Wikipedia users edited the first line of the Wiki article to contain terms such as “cancer-causing” and “cyanide,” and Google responded by altering the device so that it now only lights up but stays silent when the advertisement plays.

Intellectual Property

We Are So Zarry: Spanish retail chain Zara has removed a skirt from its websites and stores after social media outcry over the skirt’s image of a frog which bore an uncanny resemblance to Pepe the Frog, a symbol originally intended to stand for peace but which has been adopted by anti-Semitic and bigoted groups.

The Legend of Nintendo: After Nintendo’s success with “Mario Maker,” a design suite that enables fans to create their own Mario games within the console, Nintendo declined to make a “Zelda Maker” for its other successful franchise, but when a fan made his own and disseminated it to the public, Nintendo sent DMCA notices to sites that displayed video clips of the game, but these notices were not only ineffective but also created new competition.

Free Expression and Censorship

WeBlock in China: The Chinese government has been censoring WeChat, a popular messaging app, by using keyword filtering that prohibits messages that contain terms such as “human rights,” “mass arrest,” and “spiritual freedom,” although the senders are never notified that their messages were never received.

Broadcasting Crimes Online: Sexual assault, suicide, and murder are violent content being broadcasted by users on Facebook Live, but because the social media company relies on users to first view and then flag the content instead of creating an algorithm that might automatically censor free speech and because of the FCC’s unclear authority in regulating the internet, a better solution may be for video-streaming companies to implement a “delay” safeguard in case something unexpected suddenly airs.

Practice Note

Hazing the Internet: After a former sorority sister posted Phi Sigma Sigma’s “sacred” handshake onto an internet message board, the sorority first sent DMCA notices to have the post removed—alleging that it was a violation of their “trade secrets,” instead of copyright—and is now pressuring various websites to remove any mention of the handshake, which is garnering more attention to the issue and suggesting a de facto right to be forgotten that does not exist in US law.

On the Lighter Side

The Best Wingman: If you have enough confidence in your friends’ judgments of your love life, sign up for Wingman, a new dating app that gives your friends control over who to swipe right on.

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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

Easter(n) Currency: Japan’s Virtual Currency Act, in effect as of April 2017, now recognizes Bitcoin, among other cryptocurrencies, as an official medium of payment and “property of value,” subjecting it to several taxes.

An Eggstreme New Measure: New Chinese regulations allow the government to extract any data dealing with the investigation of a person under Chinese criminal law no matter where in the world the data is located, which may complicate international relations with China as data security concerns and governmental interferences are becoming increasingly worrisome.

Privacy

An Eggcellent Idea? Workers at a Swedish start-up hub called Epicenter can forego having a key card in favor of having a microchip implanted in their hand which will allow them to open doors, access printers, and purchase food.

Eggsactly What The Doctor Ordered: The prosecution of a gynecologist for possession of child pornography has unearthed a secret collaboration between the FBI and Best Buy’s “Geek Squad” IT specialists in which informants were allegedly recruited and paid by the Bureau to scour customers’ computers for such content, though how much Best Buy knew about this activity is unclear.

Information Security and Cyberthreats

Eggsiled to the Mountains: An abandoned mine on a desolate Norwegian island that is home to mainly polar bears is the unlikely source of key data that has been taken from the national archives of three countries so far, is also available to other nations as part of the Arctic World Archive initiative, will be preserved for at least 500 to 1,000 years, and can even survive a nuclear apocalypse.

Quit Egging Him On: An Arkansas programmer who created a remote administration tool called NanoCore, which he posted on HackForums.net and then sold to a member of the forum, is being federally prosecuted for conspiracy and aiding and abetting computer intrusions because NanoCore has been used by hackers in at least ten different countries, despite the programmer claiming that he never intended the tool to be used by hackers.

Intellectual Property

Unholy Mass of Allegations: Whether Satanic worship, demonic possession, witches, and child sacrifice can be deemed “historical facts” is a question that may determine the fate of a copyright infringement suit between Warner Bros.—the company behind the horror film series “The Conjuring”—and the author of a 1980 book called “The Demonologist,” which was based on the same paranormal investigators’ account of allegedly true events, with the author seeking $900M and an injunction against the release of “Annabelle 2,” the story of a possessed doll connected to the same investigators.

Not a Peep Out of You: In a 2011 copyright infringement case in which Universal Music Group sued over an illegal download of a Rihanna album, a German court has ruled that a parent whose child is found to have illegally downloaded copyrighted content must give up the identity of that child, or alternatively be held personally liable for the violation.

Free Expression and Censorship

Eggstra! Eggstra! (Don’t) Read All About It! Ranked one of the deadliest countries for journalists, Mexico is facing a crisis in which newspaper organizations are being threatened to the point where they can either report unsavory content and risk their staff being murdered or instead shut down to avoid the wrath of drug cartels.

An Eggsistential View of the Presidency: In contrast to the way former President Obama extensively utilized the official White House photographer and controlled his own image in the media, President Trump has used his official White House photographer more sparingly, which has resulted in a very different portrayal of the President in the media, with images mainly coming from iPhones and press photographers instead.

Practice Note

Unfree Eggspression: In an opinion lacking an analysis of First Amendment issues, a federal court has held that two bloggers interfered with the exercise of residents’ fair housing rights when they published numerous online posts deriding the residents for keeping emotional support dogs in their Virgin Islands condos despite the condominium association’s “no dogs” rule.

On the Lighter Side

This Is a Little Eggcessive: An image of Vladimir Putin depicted as a gay clown has been banned in Russia, but because the image’s display is prohibited, Russian news outlets are having a difficult time reporting which version of the meme is actually banned.

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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

Get Out of My Data! Congress voted this week to overturn online privacy rules that would have required broadband providers to obtain users’ permission before collecting and selling their online activity data, giving advertisers more leeway to direct specific ads at consumers and possibly driving users towards VPNs and Tor to safeguard their privacy.

An Uber-Cool Idea: Singapore’s Minister of Transport is trying to bring aerial transport into the country’s infrastructure by 2030, with an idea for scorpion-like taxi drones that would pick up passengers based on an e-hail system.

Privacy

The Trackiest Place on Earth: Visitors to Disney World have the option of wearing a MagicBand, a radio-powered bracelet which allows them to pay for food and souvenirs, open their hotel room doors at Disney resorts, and obtain access to rides more quickly, all while tracking their locations and activities throughout the resort.

The Sweet Taste of Revenge: A new GoFundMe campaign is raising funds for a privacy activist to buy the web browsing histories of all legislators who voted to overturn the internet privacy rules this past Tuesday so that he may publish them online, though it is unclear whether he will be able to do so.

Information Security and Cyberthreats

D.N.A. = Do Not Access: In a Dallas program that combats prostitution, police locate and give sex workers the option of either going to jail or speaking with a counselor, which also entails taking a sample of their DNA to be stored in a database in the event that their bodies need to be identified; however, concerns include whether the data can be used to incriminate them in criminal situations or affect their future insurance or employment.

Can You Hear Me Now? Not Good. The “can you hear me” scam is a new technique where chatbots apply natural-speech technology to trick people into believing that they are speaking to a real human, ask them if they can hear the caller, and then record that affirmation to sign them up for unsolicited products and services.

Intellectual Property

Stay Hungry. Stay Original. Although a Beijing IP court ruled last year that Apple’s iPhone 6 and 6 Plus models had violated design patents of a Chinese company—and therefore attempted to enjoin Apple from selling its iPhone 6 line in Beijing—this initial decision was recently overturned, demonstrating that Chinese courts will not always rule in favor of local businesses.

The Peach State Is Not So Peachy: Georgia has won a copyright infringement suit against a nonprofit that published the “Official Code of Georgia Annotated” online for free public use, with the court rejecting the defendant’s fair use argument and finding infringement because the publisher, LexisNexis, had assigned copyrights in the annotations to the state.

Free Expression and Censorship

“Arc” You Kidding Me? Arctic researchers, who already have limited resources, are suffering the consequences of the Trump administration’s insistence on taking down webpages, datasets, and policies about the Arctic, while scientists around the world are racing to preserve this research by creating back-up copies before the data is permanently deleted.

Stalin’ the New Legislation: The Hungarian government wants to pass a law that would ban businesses from using controversial symbols such as swastikas, arrow crosses, and hammers and sickles in their logos, and would punish violators with a jail sentence and 2 billion forint fine—approximately $7M; this “morally obligatory” bill primarily targets Heineken’s trademark, which is allegedly too similar to the Communist red star.

Practice Note

Professional Students’ Unprofessional Speech: Today the Supreme Court will decide whether to grant certiorari for a case that hinges on whether professional programs, such as law schools, medical schools, and business schools, can expel students for expressing “unprofessional” views that violate the student code of conduct, despite being expressed outside of any curricular setting.

On the Lighter Side

You’re Sending Ripples up My Spine: Ripple is a device resembling a sea anemone that you wear on your shoulder and that employs sensors and cameras to determine when someone is looking at you, thereby sending a rippling sensation up your back—just in case you’re too busy looking at your phone to realize who is trying to flirt with you.

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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

Time Out, Law Enforcement! US lawmakers are drafting a bill that would restrict the FBI and nationwide police departments’ usage of a group of databases that use facial recognition technology to identify suspects, as the technology gives 15% false positives and there is currently only limited oversight of its usage.

No Traveling: In an effort to provide greater surveillance opportunities for security officials, both the US and UK have enacted new flight restrictions that will ban all travelers coming from certain Middle Eastern countries or traveling on certain Middle Eastern airlines from bringing their laptops and tablets in carry-on luggage, while cellphones are still allowed despite posing the same security risks.

Privacy

An Infinite Shot Clock: Because a former Philadelphia police officer refused to comply with a federal court order demanding that he decrypt two hard drives seized by authorities from his home in 2015 that allegedly contain child pornography, he is being held indefinitely until he unlocks those drives, despite invoking his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.

Defense Pays for Basket of Data: A company selling “smart” vibrators has agreed to a $3.75 million settlement after customers sued the company for violating Illinois privacy laws by collecting personal data on the devices’ usage, settings, battery life, and even temperature.

Information Security and Cyberthreats

The Madness of the March Toward Verification: Germany is currently testing voice recognition software to be used in screening refugees seeking asylum by recording a sample of the refugees’ speech and detecting where they come from; due to the fluidity and nuances of language, however, critics argue that the system may allow terrorists to sneak into the country by faking an accent, or otherwise refuse to authenticate those who are actual natives.

Police Seize Victory in Search for Attacker: In a bizarre cyber attack, a man was arrested for intentionally sending 40 tweets containing strobe light effects to a Newsweek journalist who suffered a seizure from viewing the epileptogenic image; in similar past cases, 700 Japanese children were rushed to the hospital after watching a certain Pokémon episode with similar effects, and hackers bombarded an epilepsy-support message board with such animations.

Intellectual Property

No Slam Dunks Here: Although a license agreement requires purchasers of John Deere tractor equipment to only use authorized dealerships and repair shops to fix their equipment, American farmers are increasingly turning to the black market of tractor hacking firmware because of the limitations that this license agreement presents.

Bracketing the Laches Defense: In a new Supreme Court decision regarding adult diapers, the Court has eliminated the application of the laches defense in patent infringement cases, holding that the reasonability of a plaintiff’s delay in bringing suit is irrelevant as long as the statute of limitations has not yet run.

Free Expression and Censorship

Out of Bounds: Pakistan’s government says that it wants all social media networks, especially Facebook, to take down material that is insulting to Islam or the Prophet Mohammad, as posting this content is a violation of the country’s blasphemy laws which are punishable by the death penalty.

YouTube Crossed the Foul Line: YouTube issued an apology after its optional restricted-mode filter blocked videos about LGBT issues, in what the site brushed off as a technical error, but which some affected content creators allege was intentional because some blocked videos did not discuss such issues and were appropriate for all ages.

Practice Note

Court Boxes Out 3D Printer: An appeals court has refused to rehear a case in which a 3D printing company that distributed instructions for creating weapons sued the State Department for prohibiting them from doing so; the court cited prior restraint as a valid argument for restricting the company, in light of national security concerns.

On the Lighter Side

I Need to Take a Shot: If you suffer from irregular bowel movements, you may want to avoid Beijing’s largest public restroom situated near the Temple of Heaven, where defecators must first pass a facial recognition scan in order to receive their standard 60 cm square of toilet paper which can be reissued to the same person only after nine minutes; this questionable new technology has been implemented to prevent senior citizens from stealing rolls for private residential use.

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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

Kerala Blessed With Luck O’ the Internet: According to the finance minister of the Indian state of Kerala, the government will provide internet connections to two million low-income families free of charge, give service to others at a low rate, and also move most government services online by 2018.

Waiting for the Green Light: The city of Ann Arbor, Michigan is using smart technology in its traffic control system to analyze the entire network of connected traffic lights, which helps predict jams before they happen, prioritize drivers who need to get somewhere faster, and significantly cut down on congestion overall.

Privacy

It’s Your Lucky Day, Michaud: After the indictment of an alleged child pornographer in United States v. Jay Michaud, the DoJ has now filed a motion to dismiss the indictment, as the FBI is unwilling to reveal certain elements of their Network Investigative Techniques used to hack the Tor network and gather information about the alleged pornographer’s website.

Mischievous Little Leprechauns: In a surprising role-reversal, law enforcement officials are now being tracked by Uber in several major cities and countries through multiple tools including “Greyball,” which alerts drivers to avoid a certain area whenever an officer attempts to hail a ride and then sends a fake version of the app showing ghost cars to the officer’s phone.

Information Security and Cyberthreats

Mischief Online: In a recent securities and investment fraud scheme, a spear-phishing campaign targeted at least eleven different organizations’ employees who e-file documents with the SEC, sending personalized emails to these employees and asking them to download a Word document which supposedly contained important changes to a Form 10-K filing.

A Saintly App: Iranian women can now obtain information about birth control, health issues, divorce, domestic violence, rape, sexual harassment, and STDs, from an app called Hamdam, which disguises itself as a period tracker but gives these women this often unattainable information while protecting users’ personal information and identities by remaining disconnected from a server and disallowing the screenshot capability.

Sneaky Snakes: Not even wild animals are safe from hacking anymore; while researchers use tracking devices on some species to gain data, poachers, hunters, photographers, and others are intercepting these unsecure GPS signals for their own benefit.

Intellectual Property

Let’s Just Have a Drink and Settle This: In a lawsuit filed by Elon Musk’s brother, Kimbal Musk, against chef Wolfgang Puck, Musk alleges that the trademark for his Colorado restaurant, “The Kitchen Café out of Colorado,” has been infringed by Wolfgang Puck’s Chicago restaurant, “The Kitchen by Wolfgang Puck,” in a lawsuit that bizarrely hinges on the trademarkability of the generic and common words “the kitchen.”

Unholi-day: Under representation by the global law firm Baker McKenzie, the Vatican will now strictly monitor the use of the image of Pope Francis and the coat of arms of the Holy See, to prevent infringement of the Pope’s publicity rights and the Vatican’s other intellectual property.

Free Expression and Censorship

Ire Caused by Selfie: A Bavarian court has ruled against a man who sued Facebook for refusing to prohibit distribution of a photograph of him with German Chancellor Angela Merkel after the image was linked to false stories claiming that he was responsible for terrorist attacks in Brussels and Berlin and setting a homeless man on fire.

No Pot of Gold at the End of the Rainbow: BBC journalists investigating child porn rings on Facebook were granted an interview with one of the social media company’s representatives on the condition that the journalists forward the child porn images they found to Facebook, but when they did so, Facebook not only cancelled the interview but also reported the journalists to the authorities.

Practice Note

Kiss Me, I’m Public! The California Supreme Court has ruled that state officials must abide by the California Public Records Act and are therefore not permitted to hide official communications in personal email accounts or personal devices, in a landmark decision where the Court was forced to balance public access with personal privacy.

On the Lighter Side

What Happens in Vegas: You might not be able to share your life’s woes with these bartenders, but in a few months, the “first robotic bar in the world” will bring droids to the Las Vegas Strip to mix concoctions for their human customers.

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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 New York Regulation: On March 1, New York implemented new cybersecurity regulations to better protect financial institutions as well as consumers from cyberattacks; the regulations are composed of 23 different sections that comply with SEC and FINRA guidelines and include policies such as encryption of all non-public data, training of employees in security, improved multifactor authentication systems, breach disclosures, and yearly affirmance by a senior officer that the company is in compliance with the requirements of the regulation.

Free Data for Sale! The Federal Communications Commission has suspended a set of rules passed last October which, upon going into effect this December, would have prevented internet service providers like Verizon and Comcast from collecting and selling customers’ personal information without permission.

Privacy

The Caller ID That Betrayed Me: The FCC is currently considering a petition to compel phone companies to reveal blocked caller ID information from bomb threat calls that were placed to Jewish institutions nationwide this week; last year, the FCC granted these blocks to be lifted in Middletown, New York which was similarly inundated with bomb threat calls, noting that the public interest was greater than “any countervailing privacy request from the calling party.”

Alexa Hears All: Arkansas police are demanding that Amazon release information obtained by a murder suspect’s Amazon Echo after the digital assistant automatically began recording upon the use of a “wake” word uttered by someone during the murder; Amazon argues that the audio recording is protected by the First Amendment and therefore requires a warrant for access.

The Tracked and the Furious: Members of the ethnic Uyghur population in China are now required to install GPS tracking devices in their cars so that the government can track all of their movements; refusing to install this surveillance system means drivers will be prohibited from refueling their vehicles.

Information Security and Cyberthreats

Cloudfare Suffers Cloudflaw: Cloudflare, an internet infrastructure company that delivers performance and security services to six million website customers including Fitbit, Uber, and OKCupid, was recently revealed to have been victim to a bug that caused website-specific data such as cookies, user login credentials, API keys, and other authentication tokens to be leaked into the code of other websites.

TMI from IVF: Couples receiving in vitro fertilization treatments at a London hospital have had their intimate conversations exposed online due to an Indian subcontractor company storing transcripts and audio files on an unsecure server since as early as 2009.

Intellectual Property

But Isn’t It Patently Obvious? IBM has decided to relinquish its rights to a patent for out-of-office email technology that it was surprisingly granted earlier this year, after an uproar from an EFF lawyer who alleged that the USPTO grossly failed to consider both prior art and the nonobviousness requirement of a patent grant.

Will You Marry Copy Me? Known for aggressively defending its intellectual property against counterfeiting, Tiffany & Co. now finds itself at the other end of a lawsuit with a New York-based photojournalist suing the jewelry company for copyright infringement after it removed copyright information from one of his photos of Elsa Peretti and used it on the Tiffany website to sell her jewelry line.

Free Expression and Censorship

Thank God For My Free Speech: A North Carolina law that prohibits registered sex offenders from using social media sites is being challenged in the Supreme Court by a registered sex offender who was arrested after writing an unrelated Facebook post thanking God for avoiding a traffic ticket; at least five justices view the law as a restriction of free speech, noting in part the First Amendment right to speak and to receive information.

YouGuilty: After having his acquittal overturned, a British teenager is once again facing charges for violating Section 127 of the UK’s Communications Act 2003 for leaving comments under YouTube news videos in which he threatened to kill leaders, such as former prime minister David Cameron.

Practice Note

Back to the Grind: In a recent case involving dating app Grindr’s potential liability to a plaintiff whose ex-boyfriend posted fake profiles with the plaintiff’s personal contact information, prompting hundreds of unwanted users to seek him out, the court denied a request for extension of the plaintiff’s TRO, citing Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.

On the Lighter Side

It’s A-Me, Mari…! With a valid international driving license and a plane ticket to Tokyo, you can put on a onesie and drive around the streets of Shinjuku dressed as a Super Mario character—that is, unless the go-kart rental company MariCar loses the IP infringement suit recently filed by Nintendo.

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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

Reach for the Sta—Appropriate Celestial Object: After the Department of Homeland Security designated state election systems as “critical infrastructure,” thereby granting these systems the protection of the federal government, the National Association of Secretaries of State recently voted to oppose the designation, as they claim that the federal government is reaching beyond its permissible scope of authority.

Privacy

Meet the Bride of Chucky: The German Federal Network Agency has ordered a doll on the market called “My Friend Cayla” to be destroyed because it violates German telecom law prohibiting “concealed transmitting devices;” the toy contains a speaker and microphone that allow children to ask questions which the doll answers based on internet searches through an unsecure Wi-Fi connection, sparking privacy, data collection, and information security concerns.

Dark Vessels, Ghost Nets, and Illegal Fish, Oh My! In an effort to save ocean life from illegal fishing, the nonprofit group SkyTruth has formed an alliance with private satellite company DigitalGlobe to track pirates across the world by using satellite data taken from the automatic identification system (AIS)—usually used to locate ships—and then analyzing heat maps to find patterns of suspicious activity over the vast ocean, which helps locate pirate ships that have turned off their AIS signals.

Information Security and Cyberthreats

You Drive Me Crazy: Due to the absence of a factory reset option, mobile applications that car owners can use to access their vehicles from their phones still allow previous owners to access their cars long after they have sold their vehicles to a new owner, in a privacy glitch discovered by an IBM researcher.

Operation BugDrop: Using Dropbox and phishing emails containing infected Microsoft Word attachments, hackers have gathered over 600 GB of data from 70 organizations—including an international organization, an engineering company, a research institute, newspaper editors, and a company that designs monitoring systems for critical infrastructure—mainly in Ukraine, a country that has already suffered two power outages caused by hackers in less than two years.

Intellectual Property

Shiver Me Timbers! Beginning this summer, Google and Bing will implement a new UK code of practice to hasten the process of taking down sites with pirated content and putting sites with legitimate content at the top of search results, making pirated content more difficult for internet users to find.

Trump™: Despite China’s Trademark Office initially rejecting Donald Trump’s registration for the “Trump” trademark back in 2006—due to China having a “first-to-file” system and the trademark already belonging to a prior Chinese registrant—in April 2016 the Review Board suddenly invalidated the former registration and transferred the trademark to the President instead, in what may be a violation of the Emoluments Clause; the President immediately applied for 49 other trademarks after this decision.

Free Expression and Censorship

A Brand New Censor: The Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs is using a tracking page to brand news articles that supposedly contain false information with a large red “FAKE” stamp, although the Russian government’s only explanation for why these articles from major US and UK sources, such as the New York Times and the Telegraph, are being stamped is a line on the government’s own state-run news agency reading, “This material contains data, not corresponding to the truth.”

Condoning Pedophilia? The Conservative Political Action Conference has rescinded its invitation to British public speaker and former editor of Breitbart News, Milo Yiannopoulos, after a conservative news feed recently tweeted an early-2016 podcast in which Yiannopoulos can be heard victim-blaming 13-year-old boys who are raped by older women, despite alleging that he himself was a child abuse victim.

Practice Note

A Punny Lawsuit: Talk show host Ellen DeGeneres recently won a defamation suit filed by a real estate agent after her show mocked an advertisement bearing the plaintiff’s name, Titi Pierce, and phone number, which had prompted viewers to menacingly call the plaintiff’s office to make fun of her; the court ruled that the mispronunciation of the plaintiff’s name could not support a defamation claim.

On the Lighter Side

BS-ing 101: The University of Washington is now offering a new course called “Calling Bullshit in the Age of Big Data,” which will teach students the vital skill of detecting false information; though the 160-person class is already filled up, the public may be given access to the online syllabus and lectures.

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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 Spy Who Loved Me: In the UK, proposals for a new Espionage Act have been drafted without consultation with free speech organizations, even though this new law could jail and classify journalists and whistleblowers in the same category as spies for communicating, gathering, or even just obtaining classified information.

No Love for Immigrants: In response to the recent deportations of undocumented immigrants and the Muslim travel ban, the governors’ offices of all 50 states were asked about their positions on sharing immigration data with the federal government, with the results that three expressed taking active measures against it, while 47 declined to respond, gave vague responses, or expressed their support.

Privacy

You Just Keep on Pushing My Love over the Borderline: Travelers who have been stopped by border agents at American airports are reportedly being asked by Homeland Security to unlock their phones or laptops and turn over their social media passwords; despite that these agents have wider authority to search travelers at the airport than do police officers on the street, these demands are technically unlawful and requests for legal assistance are being met with great hostility.

Caught in Cupid’s Cross-Browser: Currently, websites are only able to track visitors based on a digital fingerprint embedded in a single browser, but a new mechanism called (Cross-)Browser Fingerprinting would allow websites to track visitors to a site when they use an additional browser in their device’s background; although this new technique raises privacy concerns, fingerprinting can also help enhance users’ security, for instance by alerting a user if a bank account has been logged into from a new computer.

Information Security and Cyberthreats

That PLC Needs Some TLC: At the recent RSA cybersecurity conference, a Georgia Tech PhD student demonstrated that the current landscape of industrial control systems, including water treatment, oil, and gas plants, can be easily hacked, as they are built with programmable logic controllers (PLCs)— small, specialized computers that are designed to control factory processes but that are oftentimes connected to other computers online, leaving the PLCs and therefore these industrial systems open to third party attacks.

A Date with the President: During a dinner at a private club with the Japanese Prime Minister, the President discussed classified information and allowed guests to use their phones; this lack of restriction enabled aides to direct their phones at the documents to help the President read them and a club member to take photos with the man carrying the “nuclear football,” which was later posted on Facebook.

Intellectual Property

Don’t Get All Sentimental On Me: Google has revealed that it has received website takedown requests for billions of URLs in a recent transparency report, showing a very large increase from last year; these high numbers are due mostly to a rise in piracy and websites requesting that copyright-infringing content be removed, especially in light of the recent decision of US internet service providers to vacate their piracy warning system.

A Bouquet of Images: The public can now download and freely use 375,000 high-resolution images of public domain artwork without any fear of copyright infringement under a Creative Commons Zero designation, courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Free Expression and Censorship

Let’s Just Be Friends: After a Facebook user continued to receive text message notifications from Facebook despite opting out, he sued the social media platform, alleging a violation of the federal Telephone Communications Privacy Act, while Facebook’s so far rejected defense has been that the TCPA is unconstitutional as a content-based restriction on speech.

Hell Hath No Fury Like An Industry Scorned: In Mexico—Coca-Cola’s biggest consumer market—nutrition activists, policymakers, and government employees who have been campaigning to double the national soda tax in order to combat childhood obesity have received threatening anonymous text messages after their phones were infected with government spyware provided by an Israeli cyber arms dealer called the NSO Group.

Practice Note

Will You Be My Herbalentine? Although Iowa State University initially allowed NORML, a student-run marijuana advocacy group, to create a T-shirt with the school’s trademark beside the group’s name, the school subsequently disallowed the group from printing any additional shirts after receiving a “formal legislative inquiry” from an Iowa legislature GOP staffer about whether the school’s Trademark Office had approved the shirt; what followed was a lawsuit where the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals found a First Amendment violation, claiming that the university’s refusal to reprint the shirts was motivated by viewpoint discrimination.

On the Lighter Side

A Broken Heart: A man with several medical conditions was charged with arson and insurance fraud after his story of jumping through a broken window to flee his burning home while still finding time to pack and carry his belongings was found to be inconsistent with the data on his pacemaker.

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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

Hurry Up Before You Get Sued: The New York Attorney General has filed a lawsuit against Charter Communications, parent company of Time Warner Cable, as his battle against broadband companies misleading customers intensifies; allegedly, wired internet speeds and WiFi speeds were up to 70% and 80% slower than advertised—although with a Trump-led FCC that favors these large companies, it is unclear how effective this lawsuit will be in increasing broadband companies’ transparency.

Body Cams for Entire Police Force: An agreement reached by New York City and the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association will require all NYPD officers to wear body cameras by the end of 2019; however, concerns about the completeness and ability to obtain records raise questions about the effectiveness of this project, which could cost taxpayers and officers up to $250 million over 14 years.

Privacy

Scan Me, Sue You: In a milestone case defending and promoting the use of biometric data, two gamers sued video game publisher 2K claiming that 2K’s video games never informed users that face scans used to create player avatars in their likeness would be stored indefinitely and that their biometrics could be shared, but a New York federal judge ruled that the plaintiffs did not prove sufficient injury.

PornStation: In a case where gamers used the PlayStation Network to distribute child pornography—which involved Sony combing through their messages and reporting the content to law enforcement and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children after being tipped off by other gamers—a Kansas federal judge ruled that the Fourth Amendment did not protect the accused’s expectation of privacy.

Information Security and Cyberthreats

A Partnership Against Cybercrime: In an effort to combat cybercrime, Europol and the Global Cyber Alliance have signed a MoU to symbolize their agreement to increase transparency in their information exchange and to work together on international projects to strengthen cybersecurity; the partnership will work together to recommend methods of securing organizations’ networks and domains through the Internet Immunity Project for example, by encouraging organizations to adopt the DMARC email validation policy which allows organizations to authenticate email and prevent fraud.

Not a Suite Day at This Hotel: Following a rising trend in ransomware attacks throughout Europe and the US, hackers recently gained access to the electronic room key system of an Austrian luxury hotel, thereby locking guests out of their rooms until the staff paid $1,800 in the form of two Bitcoins—a digital currency favored by hackers due to the difficulty in tracing it.

Intellectual Property

A Patent Problem: As patents for routine web development processes are on the rise—such as patents for filming a yoga class, Amazon’s patent on white-background photography, and CBS Interactive’s patent for a “computer-implemented system” that posts song lyrics and allows users to annotate those lyrics—the EFF and public interest group Public Knowledge have filed an amicus brief asking the Supreme Court to consider the obviousness standard in patent law to emphasize to patent examiners that they are able to reject common sense applications.

“G” Stands for Google: Google has requested an arbitration panel to transfer to them the domain name registration for ɢoogle.com—as opposed to Google.com—from a Russian spammer who had been using the confusing URL, spelled with a Latin “G,’ to spam Google Analytics with pro-Trump messages and bombarding users with malware, scareware, and pop-ups.

Free Expression and Censorship

Dividing the Media: Fewer than two weeks into his presidency, President Trump’s actions are already dividing media outlets including Fox News, hosted by Bill O’Reilly, and The Wall Street Journal, and causing conflict among writers and editors on their coverage perspectives—which is raising questions of fair reporting and inappropriate interference as editors insist on their writers using certain language in order to stay true to their publications’ missions.

Cyberbullying Bill Bullies Cyberbullies: A well-intentioned Texas bill against cyberbullying may in fact chill free speech and victimize unpopular groups because of its vagueness and overbreadth; the EFF argues that the bill is problematic because the term “cyberbullying” is not well-defined, students may be expelled for their behavior despite their intentions, students may not be able to communicate anonymously on the internet, and parents may also be liable when their children send harmful emails even if the parents are unaware.

Practice Note

Gorsuch a Heavy Docket: President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee Judge Neil Gorsuch may influence digital technology cases on issues such as cloud technology, authority over email stored on a foreign server, free speech rights in the digital space, and fair use of copyrighted material reproduced online.

On the Lighter Side

Online Dating for the Lazy: For only $99 a month, you can have “Audrey”—who may or may not be a bot—send messages, schedule dates, and give you feedback when you’re rejected so that you can online date without any effort of your own.

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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 “Google Tax”: Arguing that Google’s search engine has reduced their profitability, Canadian news agencies are asking the Canadian government to implement a “Google tax” on Google’s display of Canadian news media content—similar to a proposed “Facebook tax,” the EU’s “snippet tax,” and already failed “Google tax” laws in several countries including Spain.

China Strengthens Its Wall: VPN services—which for years have allowed internet users in China to bypass the government’s “Great Firewall” and access blocked websites, such as Facebook, Google, Twitter, and YouTube—now need approval by the government, in effect making most of them illegal.

Privacy

White House Staffs’ Private Emails Not So Private: Senior White House staff members are using rnchq.org, a private RNC email server, for their communications, which, according to the Office of Government Ethics, is technically not illegal—provided that these emails are copied and forwarded to an official White House address within 20 days—but still leaves these communications vulnerable to possible foreign attacks.

The Real Cost of Free Personality Quizzes: While seemingly innocuous, certain free personality quizzes on Facebook are actually operated by a data firm, Cambridge Analytica, to create psychological and demographical profiles of now more than 230 million Americans, which are then used for “dark posts”—a form of advertising that appears only to a select target audience; Cambridge Analytica was hired for the Brexit and Trump campaigns and in the US serves only Republican clients.

Information Security and Cyberthreats

Thai-d to the Government: By enabling Windows to automatically trust the Thai government’s root certificate, a mechanism to verify HTTPS-enabled websites, Microsoft is the only major tech company to help the Thai government gain more control over its citizens’ web encryption, as this root certificate can enable the government to sneak malware into websites and even present site users with counterfeit versions of entire pages.

Travel Internationally Without a Passport: The Australian government is working on the “Seamless Traveler” project, which, if successful, would allow all passengers by March 2019 to pass through Australian airports without the need for passports or human interaction; instead, biometric scanners would recognize passengers’ facial features, irises, and fingerprints, though the implementation of such a database raises privacy and security concerns.

Intellectual Property

I Know There’s Gonna Be a Lawsuit: Despite Universal Music Group giving Apple the proper authorization to use the Jamie xx song “I Know There’s Gonna Be (Good Times)” in a 2015 iPhone 6 commercial, Jerome Lawson, whose song “Good Times” is sampled in the song, is now suing Apple, claiming a violation of his right of publicity under California’s Right of Publicity law, which he argues should preempt federal copyright law.

This Fan Fiction Film Can Live Long and Prosper: A California federal court in a copyright infringement case over an amateur but professional-quality Star Trek fan fiction film heard arguments regarding similarities between the works and whether Klingon is copyrightable, but a settlement reached by Paramount Pictures, CBS Studios, and the fan’s production company will now allow the latter to keep the video online and create two more, but with several restrictions.

Free Expression and Censorship

When the Writing Is on the Cell Wall: Among the 230 people detained during violent protests on Inauguration Day last Friday, which saw protesters smashing glass buildings and lighting a limousine on fire, were six journalists covering the protests and who allegedly had no part in this violent criminal activity, thus sparking fears for the future of press freedom.

Gagged and Bound: The Trump administration has issued gag orders on several federal agencies, including the National Park Service; General Services Administration; Environmental Protection Agency; Departments of Transportation, Agriculture, Interior, Health and Human Services and Energy; and the National Institutes of Health, regarding their social media communications with the public and other communications with the government—although the current slowdown in communication could also be a result of staffing changes under the new administration.

Practice Note

Snap Me into Trouble! In a growing type of case where victims of accidents sue cellphone technology providers for motivating these accidents, a car crash victim unsuccessfully sued Snapchat after a Georgia woman—who was allegedly encouraged to drive at an unsafe speed by Snapchat’s Speed Filter—caused him permanent brain damage; the court opinion held that Snapchat was immune from liability under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which provides immunity to providers of an “interactive computer service” that publishes information provided by others–despite that the woman’s Snap was never actually published.

On the Lighter Side

Mini Einstein: This 14-inch robotic personal companion for kids teaches about science, gives compliments, makes jokes, provides weather updates, walks around without falling, maintains intense eye contact, sticks out its tongue, and even has the same fashion sense as the iconic scientist after whom it is modeled.

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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