Porn Copyright Trolls Receive Punitive Sanctions
President Donald Trump has signed the TAKE IT DOWN Act, a new federal law aimed at curbing the spread of non-consensual AI-generated pornography. The law makes it a criminal offense to create or share explicit deepfake images...more
Strike 3 Holdings is an adult pornography company located in California that has literally filed over 10,000 federal court copyright infringement cases across the United States for nearly a decade now. No company files more...more
As a leading technology hub, it is no shock that California is at the forefront of technology regulation, including regulation of Artificial Intelligence (AI). In the past year, California lawmakers have introduced numerous...more
Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost’s office asked a federal judge on Thursday to intervene in a lawsuit filed by the Cleveland Browns to test the “Modell Law,” a state law designed to stop teams from leaving cities that...more
California Governor Gavin Newsom recently faced a wave of AI-related legislation, with 38 bills reaching his desk. Despite rejecting the much-debated SB-1047, Governor Newsom signed more than a dozen other AI-focused bills...more
On September 29, California Governor Gavin Newsom vetoed SB 1047, one of the most ambitious efforts yet to establish a comprehensive artificial intelligence (AI) regulatory framework in the United States. But for all of the...more
In a rare example of bipartisan agreement, the dramatically named DEFIANCE (Disrupt Explicit Forged Images and Non-Consensual Edits) Act unanimously passed the Senate. The bill allows victims of AI-generated deepfake...more
On July 1, 2024, the last day of the 2023-2024 term, the Supreme Court of the United States issued four decisions: Trump v. United States, No. 23-939: This case concerns the scope of former President Donald J. Trump’s...more
Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (the “CDA” or “Section 230”), known prolifically as “the 26 words that created the internet,” remains the subject of ongoing controversy. As extensively reported on this blog, the...more
Sports betting stocks were jolted in early action on Tuesday after the Illinois State Senate passed a bill on Sunday proposing higher taxes on online sports betting operations. Under the new proposal, online sports betting...more
We have been talking about it since last year: the bill to secure and regulate the digital space ("SREN") has now been passed. The legislative process leading up to the enactment of the SREN bill has been slow (as a reminder:...more
Maintaining your anonymous status when you are a John Doe defendant in a strike 3 holding porn litigation just got a bit trickier, at least in the 3rd Circuit. In this jurisdiction, a defendant may have to prove to the...more
In an era where digital privacy is increasingly under threat, the recent deepfake incident involving the globally renowned artist, Taylor Swift, has catapulted the issue of nonconsensual pornography to center stage. This...more
The first person charged for violating a 2020 law that forbids conspiracies to taint international sports events through performance-enhancing drugs received a three-month prison sentence. Federal prosecutors used the...more
On 5 December 2023, the UK Office of Communications (Ofcom) published for consultation its draft guidance on age assurance (and other Part 5 duties) for service providers publishing pornographic content on online services,...more
The rapid advancement of artificial intelligence (AI) technology has created new challenges that significantly disrupts established legal principles. One facet of AI, with a large potential for abuse, is its seamless...more
Taking and sharing pictures and videos is easier than ever. With a cell phone, tablet, or computer, we can connect with others near and far in an instant and highly personal moments can be preserved and shared from the...more
Strike 3 Holding, LLC is a prolific filer of federal copyright infringement actions. They have filed thousands of lawsuits across the United States in states like Illinois, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, Florida, Texas...more
An employee in Luxembourg was fired when another employee inadvertently found sexually explicit photos stored on a work computer. The Luxembourg Court of Appeal has now provided guidance employers should bear in mind when...more
At a hearing on 6 September 2022, lawyers acting for MG Freesites Ltd. (operators of the Pornhub website), raised a constitutional challenge against a recent law that permits France’s online content regulator (ARCOM) to seek...more
After reading an earlier IP/Decode post about hashing, my friend Jenny Rossman reached out to explain how law enforcement was using hash values to fight the spread of child pornography. For over a decade, Jenny had been a sex...more
What do obscenity and data minimization have in common? As Justice Potter Stewart famously wrote in his concurring opinion to the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in the 1964 free speech case Jacobellis v. Ohio, “I know it...more
The UK government has introduced its Online Safety Bill to Parliament. The new Bill was amended at the last minute to include new online offences and greater obligations on technology providers to do more to prevent “harmful...more
A pair of recent rulings—one in the U.S. and another in Australia—hint at a future in which internet companies may not enjoy the immunity they currently hold for content created by others that appears on their sites....more
Private citizens have a right to remove significant falsehoods from the public record. The law of defamation clearly allows for retractions and damage payments if provable lies are published....more