Your privacy interest in the data collected by your car may seem like an abstract issue. After all, we typically think of such data being stored, if at all, within the vehicle itself. But what about when cars begin shouting their identifying information to the world? That’s exactly what’s about to start happening. In December […]
Snap (nee Snapchat) has just announced Spectacles, a funky pair of sunglasses with built-in video recording capability. Exactly like Google Glass before it, users can tap a button to activate a forward-facing camera in the corner of the frames for 10 seconds, and tap it again to extend the recording. Unlike Glass, they’ll cost less than […]
On Friday, September 8, Yelp became the latest mobile application maker to be held to account for potentially violating users’ privacy. The plaintiffs in a long-running class action lawsuit allege that Yelp and other app developers improperly uploaded address book data from their phones without their consent. The court’s ruling on Friday denied Yelp’s motion for summary […]
This is a great legal development in my home state’s internet law:
“In what might be Michigan’s first revenge-pornography case resulting in a monetary judgment, an Oakland County woman was awarded $500,000 Wednesday after her ex-boyfriend posted nude photographs of her on multiple Internet sites.
“According to court records from the Oakland County Circuit Court, Judge Martha Anderson awarded the sum, which is set to accrue interest over time. Anderson also granted a permanent injunction against the ex-boyfriend, forcing him to immediately destroy and never republish the photos to third-party websites. If he does … he can be held in contempt and face prison or additional fines.”
The article also notes that “In April, a bill criminalizing the posting of sexually explicit images on the Internet without the depicted person’s consent was signed into law by Lt. Gov. Brian Calley. Anyone found guilty of violating the law could face up to 93 days in jail and a $500 fine for a first offense. If a second violation occurs, the person could face up to a year in jail and a fine of $1,000. The individual could also face separate charges in connection to the crime.”
Although many similar statutes have been passed around the country, they often have First Amendment defects, because they go too far in abridging the Constitution’s sacrosanct freedom of speech. Nevertheless, cases like this prove that existing tort laws will almost always provide a way to punish those who use the internet to abuse others.
I write this post to share a thought that I didn’t get the chance to complete during my recent appearance on the Bloomberg Law Show. It’s about the July 14, 2016 decision in Detroit Free Press v. Department of Justice, in which the en banc 6th Circuit decided 9-7 to reverse 20 years of precedent that […]
A few hours before I left for the airport to attend this week’s Augmented World Expo 2016, I received a call from Boston Globe tech reporter Hiawatha Bray. We had a great and detailed conversation about several of the legal issues that AR-enabled smart glasses will raise, including personal injury concerns, intellectual property issues, and e-commerce regulations. It’s […]
On March 10, 2016, lawyers for the Detroit Free Press and the Department of Justice met in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit in the latest chapter of a decades-long battle over access to “booking photos,” or mugshots. Twenty years ago, the Free Press obtained a ruling from a panel of the 6th Circuit […]
Apologies for the horrible Star Wars puns, but such are the times. A more salient headline probably would have been, “Freedom of Speech Outweighs Rosa Parks’ Publicity Rights.” This case has been broadly covered by the legal blogosphere, but it’s too central to my practice area not to discuss here. I have long been developing […]
A recent decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit—FTC v. Wyndham Worldwide Corporation—may prove to be a watershed moment for the development of federal privacy law. The Federal Trade Commission is an executive agency charged with taking action against “unfair” trade practices. In the absence of a coordinated response at the […]
Privacy regulators across the globe are beginning to realize what the industry has known for a long time: IoT devices are woefully insecure. It can only be a matter of time before enforcement agencies introduce tough new requirements for data security and disclosures. Companies that fail to anticipate these developments will find themselves at a sever disadvantage.