by Paul Alan Levy Techdirt carries a discussion of a recent decision dismissing a class action complaint filed against Yelp on behalf of Yelp users contending that, because their reviews provide content that allows Yelp to profit through the sale of advertising, reviewers are employees who are entitled to payment for their labor under the […]
Author Archives: Paul Levy
The New York Times carries a story about the punishing pace that Amazon staff have to endure as the company squeezes every ounce of productivity out of them. Work-life balance? What's that?
by Paul Alan Levy Several years ago, the notorious Hollywood mouthpiece Martin Singer sent a demand letter to the San Diego Reader, in reaction to its having inquired about a pending law suit, threatening to sue it in the event that any story it might write about the subject of the inquiry and further threatening […]
by Paul Alan Levy A couple of weeks ago, I blogged about a Ninth Circuit decision, Multi Time Machine v. Amazon.com, that undid a great deal of progress made in that court undoing the adverse effects of that Court's decision in Brookfield Communications v. West Coast Video; last week, I noted that Amazon had sought […]
by Paul Alan Levy I blogged last week about a troubling trademark-law decision from the Ninth Circuit; this week Amazon filed a petition for rehearing en banc. Spurred by the concerns I articulated last week, we are preparing an amicus brief in support of the petition, and of course I have written to both sides […]
by Paul Alan Levy In its decision issued last week about the application of trademark law to the operation of online search engines, Multi Time Machine v. Amazon the Ninth Circuit has taken a dangerous step backwards. The case might, however, prove to be the vehicle by which that court wipes out the bad precedent […]
by Paul Alan Levy Not much, it appears. Following up on the recent spate of stories about a grand jury subpoena that the United States Attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York had issued to Reason Magazine, demanding the identities of the authors over several commenters who called for the execution of […]
by Paul Alan Levy In a decision issued today, the Washington Court of Appeals has embraced the broad consensus among state and federal courts holding that plaintiffs who want courts to force service providers to provide identifying information about anonymous online speakers must both provide notice to the speakers and present evidence of wrongdoing, for […]
by Paul Alan Levy Now that a federal court gag order against it has been lifted, Reason Magazine has now published its own comments, and a number of other bloggers have been writing as well, about Reason’s experience with a grand jury subpoena seeking to identify anonymous online commenters. In response to an article about […]
by Paul Alan Levy In a decision issued yesterday in Hadley v. Subscriber Doe a/k/a Fuboy, the Illinois Supreme Court affirmed lower court rulings that an anonymous commenter who responded to a local newspaper article by calling a local politician a “Sandusky waiting to be exposed,” making particular reference to the fact that he could […]