In November 2020, California voters passed Proposition 24, the California Privacy Rights Act (“Prop 24”). The CPRA amends and extends the California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018 (“CCPA”). To implement the law, the CPRA established the California Privacy Protection Agency (“Agency”) and vested it with the full administrative power, authority and jurisdiction to implement and…

House Energy & Commerce Committee Chairman Frank Pallone (D-NJ), along with Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA) the ranking Republican on the Committee, and Senator Roger Wicker (R-MS) who is the ranking Republican on the Senate Commerce Committee, released a discussion draft of the American Data Privacy and Protection Act which is a comprehensive national data…

The Federal Trade Commission’s Dot Com Disclosure guidelines, first issued in 2000 and updated in March 2013, have explained how to make consumer disclaimers on various digital platforms. The FTC has just announced that it is seeking to modernize the guidelines and its press release says it all – FTC Looks to Modernize Its Guidance…

In 2017, the federal district court for the Northern District of California enjoined LinkedIn from blocking workplace analytics company hiQ from its site, finding that data scraping from public-facing websites did not violate the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (“CFAA”). LinkedIn appealed and in 2020 the Ninth Circuit affirmed: [The CFAA’s] prohibition on accessing a…

Last year there were a number of reports of how women, women politicians, and women journalists were disproportionately targeted for abuse on online platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. See LA Times, The Hill Highlight Online Abuse of Women Politicians and Journalists. One of those reports was a Wilson Center report entitled Malign Creativity:…

When the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) actually has guidelines concerning the use of a particular word, that would suggest caution in using that word. In this case, the word is “Free” and the FTC has guidelines concerning its usage which boils down to one sentence – “free” should mean “free”. Anyone watching this year’s exciting…

Fashion Nova, an online fashion retailer, agreed to pay $4.2 million as part of a consent decree with the Federal Trade Commission (“FTC”) in which it will be prohibited from suppressing customer reviews of its products. The FTC alleged in a complaint that Fashion Nova misrepresented that the product reviews on its website reflected the views of…

In 2013, California became one of the first states to outlaw revenge porn (also known as cyber exploitation or digital rape) in enacting Penal Code § 647(j)(4). Shortly thereafter, the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative published a study finding that: (i) 93% of victims suffered significant emotional distress as a result of their victimization; (ii) 82%…

In August 2020, Alexei Navalny, the jailed Russian opposition leader and anti-corruption activist whom the Wall Street Journal calls “the man Vladimir Putin fears most”, was medically evacuated to Berlin after being poisoned by a nerve agent that was linked to Russia’s Federal Security Service. He returned to Russia in January 2021 and was arrested…