Suggestion: Don't Sue Google For $50 Billion Over Something It's Not Liable For

from the unless-you-want-the-court-to-slam-you dept

We see all sorts of ridiculous lawsuits floating around, but here's a good one. Eric Goldman has the story of a journalist who was upset about a story written by a local college professor. The journalist felt the story was defamatory, so obviously, he sued Google for $50 billion. Yes, you read that correctly. Pissed off journalist feels that he was defamed by someone totally unconnected to Google... and responds by suing Google for $50 billion. Not surprisingly, the court wasted no time tossing this lawsuit out, and then even slapped the journalist with an order to pay Google's $12,000 in legal fees. The order to pay those legal fees was later removed on a technicality, but as Goldman notes, it appears that judges are getting pretty sick of these sorts of lawsuits, and are finally beginning to punish folks who are filing them.

Filed Under: defamation, liability, section 230
Companies: google

Court Says Wikimedia Isn't Liable For Statements On Wikipedia

from the section-230-isn't-user-editable dept

Back in May, when literary agent Barbara Bauer sued the Wikimedia Foundation, claiming that it was liable for various critical comments on the site (such as the ones calling her the "dumbest of the twenty worst" agents, who has "no documented sales at all"), we suggested she probably would have saved a lot of time, effort and heartbreak using Wikipedia to look up Section 230 of the CDA that says that service providers are not liable for the content of their users. Instead, she went forward with the lawsuit and had the court teach her the lesson that Wikipedia could have: the court tossed out the case, noting that the Wikimedia Foundation is not liable under section 230. The end result for Barbara Bauer? She doesn't get to sue Wikipedia, and her actions brought a lot more attention to the fact that she has a lot of critics. I have no idea how "smart" she is as a literary agent, but this didn't seem very "smart" concerning how to respond to criticism of her reputation.

Filed Under: barbara bauer, liability, section 230, wikipedia
Companies: wikipedia

Belgian Court Agrees With US Court That eBay Not Liable For Fake Products

from the another-good-decision dept

Just days after Tiffany appealed the correct US ruling that eBay isn't liable for counterfeit goods sold on the site, a Belgian court has sided with eBay in a very similar lawsuit involving L'Oreal. Apparently, the Belgian courts understand how liability works a lot better than their neighbors in France, who ruled the other way in a case involving Louis Vuitton.

L'Oreal says it's "surprised" by the decision and will appeal, but fails to explain why eBay, as a platform maker, should be responsible for what people do with that platform. About the only answer seems to be that L'Oreal recognizes eBay is an easier target than going after those actually responsible (those selling the counterfeit goods). It's nice that most courts recognize that the easiest entity to sue is not necessarily the proper entity to sue.

Filed Under: auctions, counterfeit, fraud. belgium, liability, luxury goods
Companies: ebay, l'oreal

Tiffany Still Confused About How Liability Works; Appeals eBay Decision

from the let's-try-this-again dept

Last month a US court correctly pointed out that eBay was not liable for counterfeit products showing up on the auction site. That doesn't mean that it's legal to sell counterfeit products, just that eBay isn't liable for the counterfeits showing up there. Instead, it should be the person who actually lists the item that's liable. That makes perfect common sense. Except to Tiffany, apparently.

The company is now appealing the ruling, making some bizarre arguments in its own defense:

"If one were a flea market operator and you become aware that counterfeiting is going on with the individual sellers at the flea market, you have a duty to investigate it. Why is eBay any different from that analogy?"

Well, two things, actually. First, it's the individual seller in that situation that's liable, not the flea market operator, and much more importantly, eBay is quite different than a typical flea market in that it doesn't pre-vet any of the sellers. A traditional flea market involves the flea market operator finding sellers. eBay is just a platform where anyone can sell. That is, eBay has simply no knowledge of what anyone is selling on the site -- nor should it be required to. The law is pretty clear on this, so it's not at all clear what Tiffany thinks it's going to accomplish here other than to waste a lot of money on lawyers who seem to be giving the company really bad advice.

Filed Under: auctions, flea markets, liability, section 230
Companies: ebay, tiffany

Italian Media Company Mediaset Joins In On The Fun: Sues YouTube

from the come-on,-everyone-join-in dept

While we all wait for the outcome of Viacom's billion dollar lawsuit against YouTube, it appears that some other media companies aren't waiting around. Italian media firm MediaSet, which just so happens to be owned by Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, has sued YouTube and Google for $779 million (almost as much as Viacom is suing for!). MediaSet claims that the 4,643 videos on YouTube that infringe on its copyrights have cost it 315,700 viewer days. Apparently, MediaSet prefers not to take into consideration (a) that most videos on YouTube are limited to under 10 minutes, meaning that it's a poor replacement for watching on TV and (b) that people who watch on YouTube aren't necessarily people who would have watched it on TV and (c) that folks who watch something on YouTube may, in turn, be convinced to watch a show on TV that they wouldn't have watched otherwise. Why bother with little pesky details like that when you can just sue a huge company that has a lot of cash. Given that the Italian government is already trying to put Google execs in jail over some YouTube videos, this looks like a larger Italian campaign against YouTube in general.

Filed Under: copyright, italy, liability, video, youtube
Companies: google, mediaset, youtube

Software Industry Assocation About To Learn What Safe Harbors Mean

from the if-you-want-to-waste-your-money,-go-right-ahead... dept

It appears that the Software and Information Industry Association (SIIA) is about to learn what DMCA safe harbors mean. The group is apparently upset about the fact that some people sell counterfeit software on eBay. That's not surprising. But, the SIIA is planning to sue eBay for this activity, rather than going after the counterfeiters themselves. Of course, if anyone from the SIIA had been paying attention, they would know that courts in the US have repeatedly found that eBay and sites like it are protected by various safe harbor provisions. This is for a very good reason: it's not eBay counterfeiting anything. eBay is merely the platform. If the SIIA wants to go after the actual counterfeiters, that's their issue. But going after eBay for providing the platform is going to fail miserably. You would think that a trade group that claims they cover the "Information Industry" would know that already.

Filed Under: auctions, copyright, counterfeits, dmca, liability, safe harbors, siia
Companies: ebay, siia

Italy Wants To Put Google Execs In Jail Over Uploaded Video

from the punish-whoever dept

Sometimes you hear about lawsuits that are so bizarre and so wrongheaded, you just have to shake your head and wonder what people are thinking. For example, take this news that Italian prosecutors are preparing to file criminal charges against four Google execs. Why? Not for anything Google, as a company, did. Or anything those executives actually did. But, because four kids filmed themselves taunting a disabled boy in a classroom and that film was uploaded to Google. The four kids in question are also facing criminal charges -- which is perfectly reasonable.

But under what distorted sense of justice does one somehow have to have to think that Google executives also deserve criminal charges over this event?

The fact that the video was uploaded to Google gave the prosecutors the evidence necessary to go after the kids in question. Google, itself, had no proactive role in uploading the video. Neither Google, nor the executives in question, had anything to do with the video whatsoever. In fact, Google took the video down within hours of being alerted to it. It serves no viable purpose under any justice system whatsoever to charge Google executives for the content in the video. The report notes that the kids in the video hit the disabled boy with a pack of tissues as well. I would think that the tissue company has just as much, if not more, responsibility for the video than Google. Will we soon see charges against its execs as well?

Filed Under: italy, lawsuits, liability, online video
Companies: google

Judge Recognizes The Obvious: Printer Shouldn't Be Liable For A Book It Prints

from the putting-liability-where-it-belongs dept

Just last week we wrote about the Republican National Committee suing CafePress for selling t-shirt designs from users that include RNC trademarks (the "GOP" phrase and the RNC's elephant). Even though the RNC has backed down, CafePress may be happy to hear that a ruling in a different case seems to support the idea that CafePress shouldn't be liable. Eric Goldman points us to quite a series of lawsuits up in Maine between two families. Apparently, the daughters of the families were once friends in high school but had something of... er... a falling out. Take your average "former best friends" dispute and multiply it by about 100. This one involved both girls getting expelled and one eventually being convicted of a hate crime against the other.

The family of the convicted girl believe they've been wronged, and began a publicity campaign in their own favor. Part of this campaign involved a self-published book telling their side of the story. They tried to find a publisher for it, but publishers (wisely, from the sound of it) wanted no part of it. So, instead, they used a print-on-demand publisher. The other family, of course, sued everyone involved for defamation, including the print-on-demand company, BookSurge.

Without even using section 230 of the CDA, BookSurge has been let off the hook in the case, as the judge noted that it made no sense to include them in the case:

Because BookSurge does not undertake to edit, review or fact-check any of its publications, it has no means or way of knowing whether defamatory material is contained within the works that it publishes. BookSurge maintained no editorial control over the works published. The responsibilities of BookSurge, which are known to the authors of the works, indicate that it is not an active participant in the creation of any defamation.

This fits with what we've always said about section 230 of the CDA. Even if it didn't exist, it makes legal sense simply not to allow lawsuits against a mere middleman for the actions of an end user. It's nice to see the court recognize that here.

Filed Under: liability, print on demand

Now A German Court Says Open WiFi Owner Is Responsible For What Others Do On WiFi

from the courts-disagree dept

Remember just over a week ago the good news coming out of Germany concerning an appeals court ruling that noted (properly) that the owner of an open WiFi access point was not liable for actions done by others on that WiFi? Well, apparently there's a bit of a "split" in the German courts. An anonymous reader sends us notice of a news report out of Germany with a lower level court apparently ruling in the exact opposite way (link in German, translations welcome; here's Google's translation). From what the submitter and the translation suggest, the court claims that it's the responsibility of the access point owner to secure the WiFi, and if they do not, they have to take on some liability for what happens on that system. There's no question, apparently, that the owners of the WiFi system did not actually share the file in question. They showed they were not at home at the time of the alleged infringement, and they had no file sharing software on their computer. While the case isn't yet over, the owners of the WiFi access point have to pay court costs, lawyers fees and the amount they were sued for... and they may face criminal prosecution as well.

Filed Under: germany, liability, open wife, wifi

US Courts Recognize That eBay Isn't Responsible For Auctions By Users

from the a-good-ruling dept

Unlike last month's awful ruling in a French court, costing eBay millions, a US court has correctly recognized that eBay should not be found responsible for auctions of counterfeit goods. This case involved Tiffany Co., who wanted eBay to be held liable for others selling fake Tiffany goods on eBay auctions. The court sided with eBay on every single charge, and smacked down Tiffany over and over again in the ruling. It noted that eBay is not responsible for the actions of its users, and Tiffany is wrong to suggest that eBay has the responsibility to monitor the auction site for infringing auctions. eBay does take down such counterfeit auctions when made aware of them, and that is all that the company is required to do. The court specifically points out that the Supreme Court had already rejected the idea of a "reasonable anticipation" standard that would have made eBay liable, even though Tiffany tries to suggest otherwise. The court also notes that eBay didn't infringe on Tiffany trademarks in mentioning Tiffany in advertisements for the site. This is an excellent overall ruling, and nearly the complete opposite of the terrible French ruling.

Filed Under: auctions, counterfeit goods, liability, platforms
Companies: ebay, tiffany