Consumer Protection Law Commons^™

Workplace Privacy In The Age Of Social Media, Tess Traylor-Notaro

Global Business Law Review

This note addresses the lack of adequate protections in Ohio for social media privacy laws in the workplace and compares proposed legislation in Ohio to legislation that has passed in other states. It examines the provision of the SCA including the definition of "user" and whether social media sites fall under its umbrella. It also looks at the safeguards and limitations of the SCA and how it is used to protect a private employee’s social media account. It analyzes the state statutory laws in Arkansas, Illinois, and California passed specifically to prevent employers from requesting passwords to personal Internet accounts. …

Consumer Law Immersion, Kevin M. Mcdonald, Karl Hochkammer, Steven Wernikoff

Global Business Law Review

As part of Washington University School of Law’s (WashULaw) Online Master of Legal Studies (MLS) program, students attend optional weekend immersion courses at the law school in St. Louis in both the spring and fall. We recently taught a course on consumer law over the spring 2018 weekend session held on March 23-25, 2018. In attendance were twenty-two students, most of whom were enrolled in the MLS program. Several were foreign lawyers and one was an LL.M. student. This article summarizes our three-day experience and concludes with our key learnings that incorporate feedback we received from students both during and …

Social Data Discovery And Proportional Privacy, Agnieszka Mcpeak

Cleveland State Law Review

Social media platforms aggregate large amounts of personal information as "social data" that can be easily downloaded as a complete archive. Litigants in civil cases increasingly seek out broad access to social data during the discovery process, often with few limits on the scope of such discovery. But unfettered access to social data implicates unique privacy concerns—concerns that should help define the proper scope of discovery.

The Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, as amended in 2015, already contain the tools for crafting meaningful limits on intrusive social data discovery. In particular, the proportionality test under Rule 26 weighs the burdens …

It Depends: Recasting Internet Clickwrap, Browsewrap, "I Agree," And Click-Through Privacy Clauses As Waivers Of Adhesion, Charles E. Maclean

Cleveland State Law Review

Digital giants, enabled by America’s courts, Congress, and the Federal Trade Commission, devise click-through, clickwrap, browsewrap, "I Agree" waivers, and other legal fictions that purport to evidence user "consent" to consumer privacy erosions. It is no longer enough to justify privacy invasions as technologically inevitable or as essential to the American economy. As forced consent is no consent at all, privacy policies must advance with the technology. This article discusses adhesion waivers, the potential for FTC corrective action, and a comparison to privacy policies of the European Union.