A number of my first few tilts against the abusive copyright enforcement practices pursued by Mathew Higbee and Associates involved, in part, the issue whether the posting of an inline deep-link to a copyrighted photograph constitutes copyright infringement. Higbee insisted that the Ninth Circuit’s invocation of the “server test” to hold that such displays are […]
Dark Patterns (I prefer calling them Opaque Patterns) have been drawing a lot of attention from consumer protection regulators in recent years. For those who are unclear on what they are, the FTC has defined them as “practices that trick or manipulate users into making choices they would not otherwise have made and that may […]
The FTC has announced the filing and resolution of an action against Amazon, arising out of claims that the company wrongfully retained voice recordings and geolocation information of Alexa users, allowed Amazon employees to access voice information, failed to delete children’s information at the request of parents, and retained children’s personal information longer than necessary. […]
The latest episode of Ballard Spahr’s Consumer Finance Monitor Podcast explores mass arbitration and includes as a guest arbitration champion Andrew Pincus, who argued the industry’s–and winning–position in Concepcion. As I listened to the podcast, which I recommend to those interested in consumer law, it became clear that one of Mr. Pincus’s chief complaints about […]
The phrase “dark patterns” was invented by Harry Brignull and has been defined by the FTC as ““practices that trick or manipulate users into making choices they would not otherwise have made and that may cause harm.” Examples include web sites that makes it easy to purchase an ongoing service but that make it harder […]
In an amicus brief filed this week, the Federal Trade Commission once again stood up for children’s privacy protections under state law that are consistent with federal law and its regulations. The case, Jones v. Google, involved a group of children who, through their guardians ad litem, sued online video platform YouTube and its owner […]
Myriam E. Gilles of Cardozo has written The Private Attorney General in a Time of Hyper-Polarized Politics, 65 Ariz. L. Rev. 337 (2023). Here’s the abstract: With the enactment of the Federal Trade Commission Act (“FTC Act”) in 1914 and the Wheeler–Lea Act in 1938, Congress sought to establish a brawny federal consumer protection regime to […]
Yesterday, the CFPB announced that it has reached a settlement of a lawsuit filed in 2020 against Citizens Bank. The agency alleged that the bank failed to properly manage and respond to customers’ credit card disputes and fraud claims. The settlement includes a $9 million civil penalty, and an agreement that the bank will fix […]
Read Amazon’s Pricing Paradox by Rory Van Loo and Nikita Aggarwal. Here’s the abstract: Amidst contentious debates about whether Amazon wields excess market power to harm competitors, one of the few things that most parties have agreed upon is that Amazon offers low prices. This Article challenges that assumption by demonstrating that Amazon charges higher prices […]
I came across this Federal Trade Commission s interactive dashboard for refund data, which gives a state-by-state breakdown of refunds in FTC cases. Clicking on the “refunds by date” tab shows that 1.9 million people cashed refunds totaling more than $392 million in 2022.