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Paul Levy
Cyberlitigator on free speech issues at Public Citizen
Recent Activity
Virginia Political Figures Should Not Be Able to Subpoena the Name of a Hostile Blogger
by Paul Alan Levy A new Virginia case presents one of the less-frequently-litigated issues in the realm of the First Amendment right to speak anonymously — when the identity of an anonymous blogger (or other Internet speaker) can be demanded... Continue reading
Posted Dec 4, 2018 at CL&P Blog
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Is there a duty to reconsider a report after its subject claims it is false?
by Paul Alan Levy A recent trial court decision from New York addresses a question about which I have long held a tentative opinion, albeit without having known of any direct precedent to back up my view: When speaker states... Continue reading
Posted Nov 2, 2018 at CL&P Blog
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Blogger Found Liable for Copyright Infringement Nevertheless Maintains Anonymity
by Paul Alan Levy A few months ago, I blogged about an important Sixth Circuit ruling on the issue of online anonymity. Signature Management Team v. Doe, 876 F.3d 831 (2017), came close to endorsing the Dendrite approach to deciding... Continue reading
Posted Aug 21, 2018 at CL&P Blog
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Is Yelp Only for Losers?
by Paul Alan Levy An article in the Washington City Paper discusses a new feature on Yelp’s web site, which captures health department inspection records and boils them down to a score (in most jurisdictions, the scale runs from zero... Continue reading
Posted Aug 7, 2018 at CL&P Blog
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California Supreme Court Reverses Order Compelling Yelp to Comply with Order Compelling User to Remove a Defamatory Review
by Paul Alan Levy In Hassell v. Bird, the California Supreme Court held this morning, by a narrow margin of four votes to three, that section 230 of the Communications Decency Act protects Yelp against an injunction compelling it to... Continue reading
Posted Jul 2, 2018 at CL&P Blog
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Ninth Circuit Refuses to Vacate Judgment in Bogus Copyright Suit Brought in the Name of a Monkey
Posted Apr 13, 2018 at CL&P Blog
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Continued Issues with Nondisparagement Clauses in Form Consumer Contracts
by Paul Alan Levy Despite the passage of the Consumer Review Fairness Act in December 2016, businesses continue to use non-disclosure and non-disparagement clauses in form contracts to suppress criticism of their products and services. This blog post summarizes several... Continue reading
Posted Mar 29, 2018 at CL&P Blog
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Sales that don't offer genuine discounts
Kevin Brasler of Washington Consumer Checkbook has an interesting column in last week’s Washington Post detailing the findings of a study of consistently deceptive advertising of ”big ticket items” that are supposedly on sale, even though the supposed regular price... Continue reading
Posted Mar 22, 2018 at CL&P Blog
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Can Right of Publicity Claims Stop Televised Portrayals of Well-Known Figures?
The New York Times carried a story this weekend about a disturbing lawsuit that will be argued in the California Court of Appeal later this month. Olivia de Havilland sued FX for running the docudrama “Feud,” a fictionalized account of... Continue reading
Posted Mar 7, 2018 at CL&P Blog
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Indeed. This afternoon I endured a private lecture from a young activist who told me, with an entirely straight face, that criticizing the King Estate is an example of "white privilege."
Commented Feb 5, 2018 on Martin Luther King’s Heirs' Blatant Abuse of IP Claims to Control His Image at CL&P Blog
Martin Luther King’s Heirs' Blatant Abuse of IP Claims to Control His Image
by Paul Alan Levy The current controversy stirred by broad popular revulsion over the Superbowl ad run by Dodge Ram, which included a voice-over excerpted from a speech by Martin Luther King Jr., thus using it to sell a truck, ignores a dirty little secret all-to-well known among those of us who...
Martin Luther King’s Heirs' Blatant Abuse of IP Claims to Control His Image
by Paul Alan Levy The current controversy stirred by broad popular revulsion over the Superbowl ad run by Dodge Ram, which included a voice-over excerpted from a speech by Martin Luther King Jr., thus using it to sell a truck,... Continue reading
Posted Feb 5, 2018 at CL&P Blog
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Recent Developments in “Fake Litigation"
by Paul Alan Levy In the past few days there have been a couple of significant developments in the area of ”fake litigation” directed at consumer commentary – the use of fraudulent litigation techniques to obtain judicial relief against consumer... Continue reading
Posted Jan 30, 2018 at CL&P Blog
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Identity Theft Issues on Twitter
The Times carries this report of the role played by identity theft in the problem of commercial bots on Twitter. The victims of the identity theft might well have right of publicity claims given the commercial purpose of the identity... Continue reading
Posted Jan 28, 2018 at CL&P Blog
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Handy Practical Guide to Copyright and Other Issues
by Paul Alan Levy Consumer groups, bloggers and others would do well to look through the Berkman Center's new "Cyberlaw Guide to Protest Art," a handy guide to assessing copyright and other IP risks associated with using content that might... Continue reading
Posted Jan 24, 2018 at CL&P Blog
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Choice of Law in Anti-SLAPP Motions: Muhammad Ali Enterprises v. Fox
by Paul Alan Levy Muhammad Ali's estate has sued Fox for running a promotion for its Superbowl broadcast that contrasted Ali''s greatness with the greatness of various football players. Originally filed in the Northern District of Illinois, the complaint alleged... Continue reading
Posted Jan 18, 2018 at CL&P Blog
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Can a standard clause in a settlement agreement be subject to the Consumer Review Fairness Act?
by Paul Alan Levy After the Freehold Animal Hospital botched the neutering of a consumer’s dog, requiring the consumer to pay thousands of dollars for corrective surgery by a different hospital, the animal hospital agreed to refund the cost of... Continue reading
Posted Jan 9, 2018 at CL&P Blog
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Should consumers “beware” social media as a trap for the unwary?
by Paul Alan Levy Eugene Volokh has a short article this morning about the brief concurring opinion filed by an appellate judge in Breen v. Holmes , 2017 WL 6133325 (La. App. Dec. 7, 2017). The case concerned statements made... Continue reading
Posted Dec 12, 2017 at CL&P Blog
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Sixth Circuit Implicitly Embraces Dendrite Balancing Standard for Protecting Anonymous Speech
by Paul Alan Levy In a decision issued on Tuesday in Signature Management Team v. Doe, the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit implicitly adopted the majority rule followed in the state courts that have addressed the issue, holding... Continue reading
Posted Dec 1, 2017 at CL&P Blog
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Homeland Security Inspector General Pegs Back Misuse of Importation Summons Authority
by Paul Alan Levy Last spring, Twitter received a fair amount of attention for fighting a patently bogus attempt by the Department of Homeland Security to abuse its statutory authority to investigate the importation of goods as the basis for... Continue reading
Posted Nov 21, 2017 at CL&P Blog
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DC Superior Court Ruling on the Facebook Search Warrant: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
by Paul Alan Levy D.C. Superior Court Chief Judge Robert Morin has issued his ruling on the pending objections to search warrants served on Facebook by Federal prosecutors seeking the entire contents of the Facebook accounts for the DisruptJ20 Facebook... Continue reading
Posted Nov 13, 2017 at CL&P Blog
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Texas Anti-SLAPP Motion Cannot Be Evaded by Voluntary Dismissal
by Paul Alan Levy Prestigious Pets, the Dallas-area pet-sitting company that faced a blizzard of public criticism after it invoked a non-disparagement clause as a basis for suing a husband and wife in small claims court after the wife posted... Continue reading
Posted Nov 7, 2017 at CL&P Blog
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Demand Letters That Purport to Forbid Posting
Posted Nov 6, 2017 at CL&P Blog
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Use of Search Warrants to Create Trump Enemies List Continues
by Paul Alan Levy In a motion to quash filed today, three Facebook users are challenging search warrants issued by federal prosecutors seeking to rummage through accounts in which they supported protests against the inauguration of Donald Trump on the... Continue reading
Posted Sep 28, 2017 at CL&P Blog
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Response to Trump Prosecutors’ Effort to Attack Peaceful Protests
by Paul Alan Levy In my blog post yesterday about developments in the litigation over the search warrant to DreamHost, I recounted the encouraging signs from DC Superior Court Chief Judge Morin’s written order and colloquys with counsel during oral... Continue reading
Posted Sep 22, 2017 at CL&P Blog
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DC Court Narrows Prosecutors Options for Searching Trump Inauguration Protest Web Site
by Paul Alan Levy Late last week, DC Superior Court Chief Judge Robert Morin issued an opinion explaining his oral ruling at last month’s hearing on a search warrant issued to DreamHost demanding production of its files pertaining to DisruptJ20.org,... Continue reading
Posted Sep 21, 2017 at CL&P Blog
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