Socially Aware

June 04, 2024 - Contracts, Copyright, Fair Use, Social Media Policy, Terms of Use, User-Generated Content, Web Scraping
California Federal Court Holds X’s Claims Against Scraper Preempted by Federal Law
By: Lawrence W. Gallick and Aaron P. Rubin
On May 9, 2024, in X Corp. v. Bright Data Ltd. , the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California dismissed X’s claims alleging that Bright Data’s access to X’s systems, and scraping and selling of publicly available data from X’s platform,
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July 28, 2023 - Contracts, Digital Content
Be Careful What You Click for: A Canadian Court Rules that a Thumbs-Up Emoji Indicates a Binding Contractual Agreement
By: Aaron P. Rubin, Anthony M. Ramirez and Julie O'Neill
In this age of social media and texting, we use a plethora of shorthand visual and typographic icons to express a range of responses or reactions to posts or texts: a heart to indicate love, a laughing face or an “LOL” to indicate humor,
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October 12, 2021 - European Union, Contracts, Compliance
New “Two-Click Cancellation” Button – German Exceptionalism for Subscription Terminations
By: Kristina Ehle and Stephan Kreß
As part of the new Fair Consumer Contracts Act , [ Gesetz für Faire Verbraucherverträge ; published in the Federal Gazette (Part I) no. 53/2021, p. 3433 et seq., full text publicly available ( in German ) Germany will soon require specific cancellation/termination mechanisms
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June 17, 2021 - European Union, Contracts, Financial Institutions, Compliance
Some Things Never Change… Including, Apparently, T&Cs in Germany
By: Kristina Ehle
With a judgment dated April 27 and published on June 4, 2021, the German Federal Court (Bundesgerichtshof – the “Court”) declared unfair and therefore illegal and unenforceable a common way to make changes to terms and conditions (“T&Cs”) used vis-à-vis consumers in Germany. For
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January 20, 2021 - Contracts, Terms of Use
Role Reversal: Ninth Circuit Rejects Consumer’s Attempt to Enforce Updated Arbitration Provision in Website Terms of Use
By: Aaron P. Rubin
In Stover v. Experian Holdings , the Ninth Circuit decided an issue of first impression for the circuit, holding that a party’s single visit to a website four years after her original visit—when she agreed to an online contract containing a change-of-terms provision—is not
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June 01, 2020 - Contracts, Terms of Use, Online Contracts
Court Discovers Rare and Elusive “Enforceable Browsewrap”
By: Aaron P. Rubin
As we have noted many times in prior articles , courts often refuse to enforce “browsewrap” agreements where terms are presented to users merely by including a link on a page or screen without requiring affirmative acceptance. Courts typically look more favorably on “clickwrap”
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February 10, 2020 - Contracts, Web Scraping, Privacy, Copyright, Litigation
Clearview AI and the Legal Challenges Facing Facial Recognition Databases
By: J. Alexander Lawrence
Every day, social media users upload millions of images to their accounts; each day 350 million photos are uploaded to Facebook alone. Many social media websites make users’ information and images available to anyone with a web browser. The wealth of public information available
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June 21, 2018 - Blockchain, Contracts
Five Things to Know About Smart Contracts
Computer scientist and legal scholar Nick Szabo first proposed the idea of “smart contracts” in 1996. Szabo published his initial paper on the topic in a publication called Extropy , a journal of transhumanism, a movement seeking to enhance human intellect and physiology by
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