Category Archives: Uncategorized

Rockefeller Photos: Prepared Foods Photos’ Abusive Copyright Enforcement Continues Under a New Name

It’s been a few months since I last published about the abusive copyright enforcement campaign operated by Prepared Food Photos,  which has been shaking down small business that have used its stock photos of food, rightly or wrongly, for damages settlements many times the market value of its copyrighted images. (Other discussions are here, here […]

Maryland enacts anti-surveillance pricing bill

Text available here. It’s believed to be the first law banning surveillance pricing in the country (New York has a law requiring that any use of algorithmic pricing be disclosed). The law is limited to larger grocery stores and delivery services. It follows a December story by Consumer Reports that Instacart was using surveillance pricing […]

Podcast on BNL regulation and more in NY

On the Ballard Spahr Consumer Finance Monitor podcast: an interview with the NY Department of Financial Services’ Max Dubin, Chief of Staff to the Acting Superintendent of Banking. With the CFPB’s sidelining, state regulatory agencies have become even more important, and New York, aside from being a large market, may foreshadow what other states do.

Maryland paper calls for state law protecting BNPL consumers

Here in a Maryland Daily Record editorial (behind a paywall but available on Lexis). Here’s an excerpt (disclosure: I am on the editorial board): Some consumers, enticed by BNPL, become overcommitted and can’t meet their financial obligations. You might think BNPL providers would suffer when consumers are in that situation, but the BNPL companies have […]

The EEOC Invokes A Hostile Work Environment Theory to Create a Hecklers’ Veto Against Universities Allowing Political Speech That Trump Disapproves

Over the past year, the Trump Administration campaigned against institutions of higher education openly scorned for being too liberal, or “woke” in the derisive terminology of the right, often seizing hypocritically on charges of anti-Semitism. The threats to Harvard University, which it has thus far fought off by virtue of its successful litigation in federal […]

Class certification *may* revive right to compel arbitration, Third Circuit holds

Today’s decision from the Third Circuit as to waiver of arbitration reflects some of the dangers raised by protracted delays in litigation. In 2014, Dawn Valli commenced a putative class action against Avis related to its practices related to fines and penalties incurred by car rental consumers.  There were amendments and motions to dismiss over […]

Protecting Anonymous Political Satire

Is this cartoon, originally posted to the satirical Facebook page Benito Beet Beat, a true threat that is outside the protection of the First Amendment? That is what the County of San Benito California contends. The county sheriff proclaimed to the press that he was investigating the cartoon as a potential crime; even though the […]