Jones v. Dirty World Entm't
Court: U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals
| Docket: 13-5946 | Opinion Date: June 16, 2014 |
Judge: Gibbons
Areas of Law: Communications Law, Constitutional Law, Injury Law, Internet Law
The Dirty World website enables users to anonymously upload comments, photographs, and video, which Richie selects and publishes along with his own editorial comments. Jones is a Kentucky high school teacher and a member of the cheerleading squad for the Cincinnati Bengals football team. She was the subject of several submissions posted by anonymous users and of editorial remarks posted by Richie, including photographs of Jones and a statement that she “slept with every other Bengal Football player.” Jones requested that the post be removed. Richie declined. A subsequent post alleged that her former boyfriend “tested positive for Chlamydia Infection and Gonorrhea ... sure Sarah also has both ... he brags about doing sarah in … her class room at the school she teaches at DIXIE Heights." Richie's responded to the post: “Why are all high school teachers freaks in the sack?” Jones brought claims of defamation, libel per se, false light, and intentional inflection of emotional distress. The district court rejected arguments that the claims were barred by the Communications Decency Act of 1996 (CDA), 47 U.S.C. 230. A second trial resulted in a verdict for $38,000 in compensatory damages and $300,000 in punitive damages. The Sixth Circuit reversed. Under the CDA, Richie and Dirty World were neither creators nor developers of the challenged content. Jones’s tort claims are grounded on the statements of another content provider, but sought to impose liability on Dirty World and Richie as if they were the publishers or speakers of those statements. Section 230(c)(1) bars those claims.
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United States v. Daoud
Court: U.S. 7th Circuit Court of Appeals
| Docket: 14-1284 | Opinion Date: June 16, 2014 |
Judge: Posner
Areas of Law: Aerospace/Defense, Communications Law, Constitutional Law, Criminal Law, Government & Administrative Law, Internet Law
Daoud, an 18-year-old American citizen, had an email conversation with undercover FBI employees posing as terrorists who responded to messages that he had posted online. Daoud planned “violent jihad” and discussed his interest in committing attacks in the U.S, using bomb-making instructions that he had read in Inspire magazine, an English-language organ of Al Qaeda, and online. Daoud selected a Chicago bar as the target of a bomb that the agent would supply. The agent told him the bomb would destroy the building and would kill “hundreds” of people. Daoud replied: “that’s the point.” On September 14, 2012, Daoud parked a Jeep containing the fake bomb in front of the bar. In an alley, in the presence of the agent, he tried to detonate the fake bomb and was arrested. In jail, he tried to solicit someone to murder the undercover agent with whom he had dealt. The government notified Daoud, under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), 50 U.S.C. 1801, that it intended to present evidence derived from electronic surveillance conducted under the Act. His attorney sought access to the classified materials submitted in support of the government’s FISA warrant applications. The government supplied a heavily redacted, unclassified response and a classified version, accessible only to the court with a statement that disclosure “would harm the national security.” The harm was detailed in a classified affidavit signed by the FBI’s Acting Assistant Director for Counterterrorism. The district judge ordered the materials sought by defense counsel turned over. In an interlocutory appeal, the Seventh Circuit reversed, stating that in addition to having the requisite security clearance the seeker of such information must establish need to know.
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United States v. Serrapio, Jr.
Court: U.S. 11th Circuit Court of Appeals
| Docket: 12-14897 | Opinion Date: June 18, 2014 |
Judge: Jordan
Areas of Law: Civil Rights, Constitutional Law, Criminal Law, Internet Law
Defendant was sentenced to three years probation for threatening to shoot President Obama on defendant's Facebook page. Afterwards, defendant spoke to a reporter for his college newspaper, saying that his ordeal was "pretty funny," that he could not be imprisoned in his "own house," and that a lot of good had come out of his case, including his rock band because a "lot of people showed up [to one of his shows] to see the kid who threatened to kill the [P]resident." The district court, upon learning of these comments, modified the conditions of probation to include 45 days in a halfway house and one year of home confinement with electronic monitoring. Defendant appealed. The court concluded that defendant's appeal was moot to the extent that it challenged the district court's modification of the conditions of probation to include a 45-day term in a halfway house; the appeal was not moot with respect to the district court's modification of the conditions of probation to include an additional eight months in home confinement with electronic monitoring; where 18 U.S.C. 3563(c) permits modification when a defendant's post-sentencing conduct shows that the original conditions were not sufficient to accomplish the purposes of probation, the home confinement modification did not violate defendant's rights under the Double Jeopardy Clause; the home confinement modification did not violate the Due Process Clause where, assuming there was any error, it did not seriously affect the fairness of the proceedings; and the home confinement modification did not violate the First Amendment where defendant's post-sentencing comments were relevant to the conditions of probation because they indicated that defendant did not grasp the seriousness of his conduct and did not think much of the probationary sentence he had received, and defendant was not punished for any abstract beliefs. Accordingly, the court dismissed in part and affirmed in part.
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Klayman v. Zuckerberg, et al.
Court: U.S. D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals
| Docket: 13-7017 | Opinion Date: June 13, 2014 |
Judge: Millet
Areas of Law: Communications Law, Injury Law, Internet Law
Plaintiff filed suit against Facebook and its founder, alleging that their delay in removing a page entitled "Third Palestinian Intifada," and related pages, which called for Muslims to rise up and kill the Jewish people, constituted intentional assault and negligence. The court affirmed the district court's holding that the Communications Decency Act of 1996, 47 U.S.C. 230, shielded Facebook and its founder from suit where Facebook qualified as an interactive computer service; the complaint acknowledges that the objected-to information was provided by third party users, not Facebook itself; and the complaint seeks to hold Facebook liable as the "publisher or speaker" of that information.
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