internetcases

Two members of the Rohingya community, a persecuted ethnic minority in Myanmar, sued Meta in California federal court, alleging that Facebook’s algorithmic design amplified anti-Rohingya hate speech, incited violence against their villages, and contributed to genocide. Plaintiffs argued that defendant built Facebook in a way that deliberately rewarded toxic and inflam...

Plaintiff, a professional videographer, sued defendant, an operator of an online hip-hop news publication, for copyright infringement. Plaintiff had recorded two videos: a short clip of Michael Jordan breaking up a fight, and an interview with rapper Melle Mel in which Melle Mel criticized rapper Eminem. Defendant republished plaintiff’s Jordan video in full by embedd...

A Washington psychiatrist sued a competing nurse practitioner and her clinic for trademark infringement and misappropriation of his name and identity. Plaintiff David Penner, owner of the Olympia Center for TMS & Psychiatry in Thurston County, Washington, claimed that defendant Diana Wilcox and her competing clinic, Clear TMS+, used his registered OLYMPIA TMS trad...

Plaintiff record companies sued defendant Udio, an AI music generation platform that allows users to create songs from text prompts and audio inputs. Plaintiffs alleged violations of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act based on assertions that defendant – by using stream ripping tools such as YT-DLP – circumvented technological protections to copy copyrighted music f...

Since the mid-90s, Section 230 (47 U.S.C. §230) has functioned as a kind of legal safety net for internet platforms, shielding them from lawsuits and liability tied to user-generated content. Many companies have built entire business models with that protection in ...