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Full-Text Articles in Law
Paying For Nude Celebrities: Testing The Outer Limits Of Roommates.Com, Accusearch, And Section 230 Immunity, Christian Kaiser
Paying For Nude Celebrities: Testing The Outer Limits Of Roommates.Com, Accusearch, And Section 230 Immunity, Christian Kaiser
Washington Journal of Law, Technology & Arts
The Internet is a powerful tool that promotes commerce, free thought, and free speech. It is these exact values that Congress sought to solidify when it passed Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. The Internet also has a dark side, which is filled with obscenities, pornography, and illegal activity. In order to protect positive values and activities on the Internet, Congress decided to incentivize websites to police the content posted by their users. This was done by providing broad immunity from lawsuits based on content posted by third parties. But this immunity is not absolute. In the Fair Housing …
From Inwood To Internet And Beyond: Assessing The Web Host-User Relationship In Contributory Online Trademark Infringement, Julie Liu
Washington Journal of Law, Technology & Arts
While courts have created a doctrine of contributory trademark infringement in response to the expansion of goods and services from brick-and-mortar to the Internet, the exact duties of web hosts under the rule are not yet clear. Despite judicial attempts to carve out new standards to define traditional requirements, the application of these standards remains inconsistent and has left unresolved ambiguities. The disparities between the standards may be balanced through an analysis of the affirmative duties imposed by the law on online service providers, as well as a closer look at the relationship between a service provider and user. This …
The Code-Based Interpretation Of Authorization: An Incomplete Picture, Nicholas R. Ulrich
The Code-Based Interpretation Of Authorization: An Incomplete Picture, Nicholas R. Ulrich
Washington Journal of Law, Technology & Arts
The definition of authorization under the Stored Communications Act raises questions about implied authorization in situations where someone fails to secure an email account properly. The few cases that have addressed this issue under the federal act or its state equivalents have not created a bright-line rule. Instead, the question of authorization has been highly fact-dependent. Two leading interpretive theories have emerged on the question of authorization: the code-based theory and the trespass theory. While the code-based interpretation of authorization seems pleasing because it appears to provide highly predictive outcomes, it fails in some circumstances. This failure is especially obvious …