Law Commons^™

Understanding The Consumer Review Fairness Act Of 2016, Eric Goldman

Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review

Consumer reviews are vitally important to our modern economy. Markets become stronger and more efficient when consumers share their marketplace experiences and guide other consumers toward the best vendors and away from poor ones. Businesses recognize the importance of consumer reviews, and many businesses take numerous steps to manage how consumer reviews affect their public image. Unfortunately, in a misguided effort to control consumer reviews, some businesses have deployed contract provisions that ban or inhibit their consumers from reviewing them. I call those provisions “antireview clauses.”

Anti-review clauses distort the marketplace benefits society gets from consumer reviews by suppressing peer …

How Elonis Failed To Clarify The Analysis Of "True Threats" In Social Media Cases And The Subsequent Need For Congressional Response, Jessica L. Opila

Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review

Social media and other internet communications have altered the way people communicate with one another, including the way people threaten one another. In 2015, the United States Supreme Court decided Elonis v. United States, which imposed a heightened mental state requirement for federal prosecutions of threats issued in interstate commerce. Although the statute, 18 U.S.C. § 875(c), has no mental state requirement, the Supreme Court held that, consistent with the principles of criminal law, only those with guilty minds should be convicted and thus some showing of subjective intent is required. The opinion did not name the requisite mental …

Property Rights In Augmented Reality, Declan T. Conroy

Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review

Increasingly, cities, towns, and even rural communities are being slowly reshaped by a dynamic yet initially imperceptible phenomenon: the elaboration of augmented reality. Through applications that place virtual features over specific, real-world locations, layers of augmented reality are proliferating, adding new elements to an increasingly wide range of places. However, while many welcome the sudden appearance of arenas for battling digital creatures in their neighborhood or the chance to write virtual messages on their neighbor’s wall, the areas being augmented oftentimes are privately owned, thereby implicating property rights. Many intrusions, of course, are de minimis: an isolated, invisible Pikachu unexpectedly …

Paypal Is New Money: Extending Secondary Copyright Liability Safe Harbors To Online Payment Processors, Erika Douglas

Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) has shaped the Internet as we know it. This legislation shields online service providers from secondary copyright infringement liability in exchange for takedown of infringing content of their users. Yet online payment processors, the backbone of $300 billion in U.S. e-commerce, are completely outside of the DMCA’s protection. This Article uses PayPal, the most popular online payment company in the U.S., to illustrate the growing risk of secondary liability for payment processors. First it looks at jurisprudence that expands secondary copyright liability online, and explains how it might be applied to PayPal. Then it …