Socially Aware

August 23, 2024 - Copyright, Defamation, E-Commerce, Fraud, FTC, Online Reviews, Privacy, Social Media Policy, Trademark, Web Scraping
Social Links: Recent Developments in the Law and Business of Social Media
By: Lawrence W. Gallick, Anthony M. Ramirez and Aaron P. Rubin
The Federal Trade Commission has finalized a new rule aimed at curtailing false, misleading, and otherwise fraudulent reviews on online retail sites. Fake reviews are a significant problem for the big e-commerce platforms, given that a robust customer review system is crucial to modern
... ›
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,
... ›
June 04, 2020 - Trademark, Web Scraping, Copyright, IP
Webscraping a Publicly Available Database May Constitute Trade Secret Misappropriation
By: J. Alexander Lawrence
Is scraping data from a publicly available website trade secret misappropriation? Based on a new opinion from the Eleventh Circuit, It might be. In Compulife Software, Inc. v. Newman , Compulife Software , a life insurance quote database service alleged that one of its
... ›
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
... ›
February 05, 2020 - Web Scraping, Litigation
Combatting Unauthorized Webscraping
Socially Awar e contributors Alex Lawrence and Kristina Ehle authored an article for the Computer Law Review International that discusses the impact of the hiQ Labs v. LinkedIn decision from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which holds that automated scraping
... ›
December 20, 2019 - Terms of Use, Web Scraping, Ephemeral Messaging, User-Generated Content, Copyright, COPPA
2019: Our Greatest Hits
Here at Socially Aware we covered a wide range of issues in 2019. We reviewed an opinion reminding us that user-generated content posted on social media platforms is not necessarily freely available for use in other contexts , and a rare instance of a
... ›
September 16, 2019 - Data Security, Web Scraping, Marketing, Privacy, Cybersecurity
Ninth Circuit’s LinkedIn Decision Does Not Greenlight the Unauthorized Web Scraping of Public Websites
By: J. Alexander Lawrence
A recent decision from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in a dispute between LinkedIn and hiQ Labs has spotlighted the thorny legal issues involved in unauthorized web scraping of data from public websites. While some may interpret the LinkedIn decision as greenlighting such
... ›