A federal district court judge in Brooklyn, N.Y., dismissed the complaint in a case filed by Genius, a platform that lets users share and annotate lyrics, holding that the plaintiff’s claims were preempted by copyright law. The suit alleged that Google had stolen from Genius transcriptions of song lyrics, and included those song lyrics in Google’s website boxes when Google users search for a song. Such actions, Genius alleged, amounted to “unfair and anticompetitive practices.” Genius did not allege copyright infringement, however, because the relevant songwriters and publishers, not Genius, o ..read more

In a purported attempt to safeguard free speech, President Trump has issued an order “Preventing Online Censorship,” that would eliminate the protections afforded by one of our favorite topics here at Socially Aware, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which generally protects online platforms from liability for content posted by third parties. President Trump issued the order after Twitter tagged some of his tweets as misleading and linked the tweets to text contradicting their substance. Democratic presidential candidate Joseph Biden is also in favor of abolishing the law, but for ..read more

A new report from the U.S. Copyright Office suggests that Congress should fine-tune the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) to, among other things, alter the takedown system that platforms must adhere to in order to be eligible for the safe harbor the DMCA affords to online platforms when third parties post infringing content. Read about the Copyright Office’s issues with the current takedown system. Malwarebytes, an online filtering company, has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to grant certiorari in a case brought by one of Malwarebytes’ competitors, Enigma Software, alleging that—when Malwa ..read more

China’s “internet police,” who coordinate online censorship, have become especially busy since the coronavirus outbreak. Inspired by homicides that were precipitated by social media posts created by one group of teenagers to incite another, a Florida bill would allow law enforcement to charge juveniles with a misdemeanor for posting photos of themselves with firearms online. In an effort to control the proliferation of “a broad range of online harms”—from cyberbullying to child exploitation—the UK government has chosen the communications watchdog Ofcom as its first pick for enforcing its plan ..read more

The high-end skincare brand Sunday Riley has settled lawsuits filed by the Federal Trade Commission claiming that the brand’s founder encouraged employees of her eponymous company to set up accounts “under different identities” on the cosmetics retail site Sephora.com and leave positive reviews for Sunday Riley’s products. The FTC filed the complaints after the agency conducted an investigation that was prompted by a whistle blower’s post on REDDIT last year. Read about the settlement’s lenient terms, which two of the FTC’s five commissioners don’t believe are severe enough to deter other comp ..read more

A California Superior Court’s recent ruling in Murphy v. Twitter held that Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act shielded Twitter from liability for suspending and banning a user’s account for violating the platform’s policies. As we have previously noted, Section 230 has come under pressure in recent years from both courts and legislatures. But we have also examined other cases demonstrating Section 230’s staying power. The ruling in Murphy again shows that, despite the challenges facing Section 230, the statute continues to serve its broader purpose of protecting social media platfor ..read more

New York is now one of the 43 states where “revenge porn,” the posting of explicit photographs or videos to the Internet without the subject’s consent, is punishable by law. See how far the states have come – find out how many had criminalized revenge porn as of 2014, when Socially Aware first covered the issue. YouTube announced that it will not allow channels that promote anti-vaccination videos to run advertisements because such videos violate the platform’s policy, which, among other things, disallows the monetization of “dangerous content.” Many of the companies whose ads appeared alongsi ..read more

An advertising executive who lost his job after being named on an anonymous Instagram account is suing the now-defunct account for defamation. The suit names as defendants not only the account—Diet Madison Avenue, which was intended to root out harassment and discrimination at ad agencies—but also (as “Jane Doe 1,” “Jane Doe 2,” et cetera) several of the anonymous people who ran it. Whether Instagram will ultimately have to turn over the identities of the users behind the account will turn on a couple of key legal issues. A bill recently passed by the New York State Senate makes it a crime for ..read more

In an effort to deter hate groups from tweeting sanitized versions of their messages, Twitter has began considering account holders’ off platform behavior when the platform evaluates whether potentially harmful tweets should be removed and account holders should be suspended or permanently banned. In connection with Congressional efforts to deter online sex trafficking by narrowing the Communications Decency Act’s Section 230 safe harbor protection for website operators from claims arising from third-party ads and other content, a revised House bill would require proof of intent to facili ..read more

The government in Indonesia has warned the world’s biggest social media providers that they risk being banned in that country if they don’t block pornography and other content deemed obscene. A member of the House of Lords has proposed an amendment to the U.K.’s data protection bill that would subject technology companies to “minimum standards of age-appropriate design” such as not revealing the GPS locations of users younger than 16. A bill in Wisconsin would make impersonating someone on social media a misdemeanor. Google’s general counsel wrote a blog post arguing that two new cases over ri ..read more