Paul Alan Levy 's Techdirt Comments

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  • On the post: Parler Forced To Explain The First Amendment To Its Users After They Complain About Parler Turning Over Info To The FBI

    Paul Alan Levy ( profile ), 30 Mar, 2021 @ 10:24am

    Letting Parler off tooo easily?

    Mike, I wonder whether you might be letting Parler off too easily for its compromises with the "system."

    Speech that incites violence does not lose its First Amendment protection unless the violence is imminent and likely. At least, that is the current standard under Brandenburg v. Ohio. Has each and every one of the incitements provided to the FBI met that standard?

    To be sure, some people have called for loosening those requirements. But it is my sense that Parler is turning information over to the FBI, or at least not fighting requests for information, because it is conforming to real world pressures from the government and from hosting services, however “pure” they may claim themselves to be

    Related question: is Parler voluntarily providing information to the FBI, or is it responding to search warrants?

  • On the post: Not Easy, Not Unreasonable, Not Censorship: The Decision To Ban Trump From Twitter

    Paul Alan Levy ( profile ), 09 Jan, 2021 @ 05:05am

    Re: Re: Re: Why bother explaining if what you say is so foolishl

    Kinda like the Peter Parker principle -- with great power comes great responsibility. It applies to Trump but it also applied to Twitter.

  • On the post: Not Easy, Not Unreasonable, Not Censorship: The Decision To Ban Trump From Twitter

    Paul Alan Levy ( profile ), 09 Jan, 2021 @ 05:03am

    Re: Re: Why bother explaining if what you say is so foolishly re

    Mike, I completely accept your response to my second point -- it was a somewhat rhetorical point, but I agree in retrospect that it was an ill-considered one (although I WOULD say that platforms ought to allow some sort of right of reply to a ban). And I agree that if Twitter had given the reasons that you articulate, the explanation for its decision would have been coherent. But for those platforms that are as broadly used as Twitter and Facebook are, it does seem to me that there is a moral or social obligation, certainly not a legal obligation, to be transparent about their decisions to remove users. Reasoned explanations are a form of accountability. We all praise companies for their transparency reports, for example, when they describe censorship decisions that have been forced on them by governments. Issuing a plainly fallacious statement is not consistent with that moral obligation and it is an evasion of accountability.

  • On the post: Not Easy, Not Unreasonable, Not Censorship: The Decision To Ban Trump From Twitter

    Paul Alan Levy ( profile ), 09 Jan, 2021 @ 03:57am

    Re: Re: Why bother explaining if what you say is so foolishly re

    Had they simply given your explanation it would have been honest. But the explanation they gave was basically dishonest. As for your second point, I rarely use Twitter anymore. But the question was a tad rhetorical.

  • On the post: Not Easy, Not Unreasonable, Not Censorship: The Decision To Ban Trump From Twitter

    Paul Alan Levy ( profile ), 08 Jan, 2021 @ 06:39pm

    Why bother explaining if what you say is so foolishly reasoned

    Yes, Twitter has every right to decide who will use its platform. And yes, there is every risk that, in the future, Trump will again misbehave in violation of its ever-shifting rules.

    But for this litigator who detests Trump, and took vacation time at work to spend twenty pre-election days in 2016 and 2020 opposing him in swing states, the explanation they gave is a silly one. On a law school exam, it would get an F for poor reasoning.

    The mischaracterizations of the facts, and the conspiracy-mindedness that the blog post reflects, resemble, for me, the briefs that the Trump lawyers and their copycats have filed in their various frivolous lawsuits attacking the elections

    The two posts they quoted do nothing to "glorify" violence. What this comes down to is that Twitter says Trump has been banned because some of his supporters (in unspecified instances) are reading what he said in various ways. And MISreading what he said, I might add.

    Sure he praises his supporters --- the 7500000 voters who supported him. He calls them patriots. He says they should be respected. So what's wrong with that?

    He says he won't be at the inauguration. Yes, a break with tradition, but good riddance!

    Twitter says there are plans for armed protests and another attack on the Capitol. THAT is very bad. But Twitter does NOT say that Trump is involved in that planning OR that he tweeted anything about them. I did see a report that Trump had retweeted some of those statements. But the report also said that Twitter had cited those retweets in its decision and plainly it has not. And, because the Twitter account has been deleted in its entirety, I can;t verify that (does anyone have any screenshots?)

    When Twitter justifies its decisions by posting this kind of mindless blather, it just tends to suggest that what it has done is arbitrary. And THAT is not useful.

    AND its enforcement is even worse. CNN reports that @POTUS contained a statement that Twitter's ban on his account was "coordinated with the Democrats and the Radical Left in removing my account from their platform, to silence me."

    Is criticizing Twitter now banned on Twitter?

  • On the post: Costco Gets Trademark Judgement Overturned, Defeating Tiffany And Co.

    Paul Alan Levy ( profile ), 20 Aug, 2020 @ 09:28am

    Jacob Jacoby as an expert

    As I read the Court of Appeals opinion, I found myself shocked ot learn that Tiffany had introduced an expert opinion by Jacob Jacoby. I rather thought that after the pair of opinions slamming his fundamentally dishonest his expert reports in Smith v. WalMart https://www.citizen.org/litigation/smith-v-wal-mart-stores-inc/ and Louis Vuitton v Dooney & Burke, https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/1692273/malletier-v-dooney-bourke-inc/, he would have become unemployable as an expert.

    But certainly knowing that Tiffany had hired him as an expert predisposed me to assume that Tiffany knew it had problems and that only by hiring a dishonest expert could it prevail

  • On the post: Techdirt Gear: New Masks, Old Favorites

    Paul Alan Levy ( profile ), 01 Jul, 2020 @ 12:53pm

    Nice!

  • On the post: The Great Pizza Arbitrage Scheme Of 2020 Is Spotlighting The Strangeness Of Food Delivery Services

    Paul Alan Levy ( profile ), 26 May, 2020 @ 05:30am

    Re: Trademark issue?

    If I but Coty perfume, put it in a new bottle, and sell it for a profit, stating truthfully that the bottles contain Coty perfume, trademark law does not entitle Coty to prevent me from doing so. The 1924 Supreme Court decision to this effect, Prestonettes v. Coty, is the foundational precedent for the doctrine of fair use in trademark law. If Door Dash is advertising that you can, for the price of $24, buy an Aj NY Pizza from Door Dash and have it delivered to your door for $24, I don't see trademark as a barrier. We see companies trying to use trademark law all the time to quash secondary resellers or non-authorized dealers, and although they sometimes succeed, they should not.

  • On the post: EPIC Offers Its Support Of The EARN IT Act; Thinks It Can Separate Undermining Section 230 From Undermining Encryption

    Paul Alan Levy ( profile ), 18 Mar, 2020 @ 12:00pm

    EPIC is NOT a supporter of Section 230

    The assumption in this piece is that EPIC supports section 230, but you would not think that if you went back to read its amicus brief supporting Herrick against Grindr

    An excerpt:

    "The question is whether Section 230 allows internet platforms, such as Grindr, to ignore rampant abuse, harassment, and impersonation directed toward the users of its services. The § 230 immunity provision targets defamation claims against a “publisher or speaker,” not abuse or harassment claims against a service provider.4 Without an ability to force platforms to take down malicious fake profiles, victims may be subjected to ongoing psychological, social, and financial harm. In the physical world, potential liability and injunctive actions require
    businesses and individuals to prevent abusive behavior. There is no justification for treating online platforms differently."

  • On the post: Society Of Professional Journalists Makes Itself Look Foolish In Strange Attempt To Trademark 'Fake News'

    Paul Alan Levy ( profile ), 23 Oct, 2019 @ 10:51am

    Re: SCF?

    Correction: My disappointment should have been directed to Tim, not Mike

  • On the post: Society Of Professional Journalists Makes Itself Look Foolish In Strange Attempt To Trademark 'Fake News'

    Paul Alan Levy ( profile ), 23 Oct, 2019 @ 10:49am

    SCF?

    With respect, Mike, that headline is inaccurate. The Society did not do this. Perhaps you can argument that the Society looks foolish for something one of its chapters did.

  • On the post: Liverpool FC Also Apparently Attempted To Trademark Widely Used Chant By Football Fans

    Paul Alan Levy ( profile ), 01 Aug, 2019 @ 09:56am

    Liverpool WILL have to walk alone

    Seems to be it would be a supporters group that would have had the potential for a trademark, IF it had been using the song commercially

  • On the post: Thomas Goolnik Again Convinces Google To Forget Our Story About Thomas Goolnik Getting Google To Forget Our Story About Thomas Goolnik

    Paul Alan Levy ( profile ), 27 Mar, 2019 @ 01:41pm

    Let me point out for those wanting to have some fun, that goolnick.com, and plenty of other related domain names, remain available

  • On the post: The Supreme Court Makes A Federal Case Out Of South Dakota's Inability To Collect Taxes From Its Residents And Thus A Big Mess

    Paul Alan Levy ( profile ), 25 Jun, 2018 @ 12:34pm

    NOT a federal case, actually

    Forgive me, but the headline here is somewhat misleading. It was Wayfair that claimed that collection of sales taxes by South Dakota was a violation of the federal constitution (namely, the Commerce Clause), and the Supreme Court rejected that constitutional claim. So the shorthand would be that the Supreme Court REFUSED to make a federal case out of Wayfair's objection.

  • On the post: Copyright, Censorship, Pepe & Infowars

    Paul Alan Levy ( profile ), 08 Mar, 2018 @ 03:02pm

    Just because many people think it's OK doesn't make it fair u

    Certainly there is a widespread view among many Internet users that once a copyrighted work becomes pervasive, it is fair use to use that copyrighted work free of charge and without permission to communicate your own message.

    But the fair use argument is a hard one, even if the use is a political one, so long as the purpose of the use is not to comment on the copyrighted work. And the fact that Furie is willing to have his copyrighted work used in some contexts but not others does not weaken his copyright claim as, for example, in might weaken a trademark claim.

    Cautious IP lawyers counsel their clients not to put themsleves at risk this way. Infowars might well back down, but it will be because loss in litigation is likely.

  • On the post: Judge Tosses Woman's Lawsuit Brought Against Google Because A Blogger Said Mean Things About Her

    Paul Alan Levy ( profile ), 05 Jul, 2017 @ 01:09pm

    Short of a court order...

    Although you say, "Short of a court order, Google has no responsibility to kill off a blog simply because someone else doesn't like its contents," Google has no obligation even if the court issues an order against the blogger, because section 230 makes it immune even from injunctive relief.

    Although Google typically responds in that sort of situation, that is a matter of its discretion. At least for now: that is the issue before the California Supreme Court in Hassell v. Bird

  • On the post: Oil Company Files Bogus Libel Lawsuit Over 'Substantially True' Facebook Comment By Local Activist

    Paul Alan Levy ( profile ), 12 Mar, 2017 @ 06:19am

    Anti-SLAPP in COlorado

    Although Colorado does not have an anti-SLAPP statute, it was a Colorado Supreme Court decision, Protect Our Mountain Environment, Inc. v. The District Court In and For the County of Jefferson, 677 P.2d 1361, 1368 (Colo. 1984), as well as the efforts of two law professors at the University of Denver, George William Pring and Penelope Canan, that provided the inspiration for the movements in other states that resulted in the adoption of anti-SLAPP statutes,

  • On the post: The NBA Announces Plan To Start Its Own eSports NBA League

    Paul Alan Levy ( profile ), 14 Feb, 2017 @ 08:13am

    Impact on IP

    Query whether the NBA, and indeed all sports, will use this development as a basis for claiming that esports is a market that they are entitled to control, so no other esport use of the names of teams is permitted

  • On the post: HowStuffWorks Attempts To Explain Why Advertisers Use Super Bowl Euphemisms, But I Have A Simpler Explanation

    Paul Alan Levy ( profile ), 04 Feb, 2017 @ 03:11pm

    Re: "The Big Game" is NOT a registered trademark too

    There have been a large number of APPLICATIONS to register "The Big Game" but none of them are live.

  • On the post: Google Apparently No Longer Humoring Court Orders To Delist Defamatory Content

    Paul Alan Levy ( profile ), 11 Jan, 2017 @ 12:17am

    The author's self-interest

    What struck me on reading the Search Engine Land article is that the author's perspective might well be influenced by the apparent fact that the author is involved in obtaining delisting for clients. He never says this directly, but I noted this passing mentioned near the end of the article, "Those of us who work on these sorts of cases are aware that everyone is vulnerable to significant damage from misrepresentation."

    Now, there is nothing wrong with interesting parties blogging on policy issues, but a somewhat more forthright disclaimer, in the normal place for such disclaimers, might have been better.

    I note the back and forth between Matthew Chan and the author of the article, and a rejoinder from Danny Sullivan. I am glad that this issue is now getting thwe attention that it deserves, and I am not concerned about whether credit is being given to me for writing (or litigating) on the subject,

    I have been pretty much out of pocket for the past three weeks, on vacation with my family in Southeast Asia (getting to lots of my bucket list!) and with limited Internet access for substantial periods. I hope to write about these issues soon after getting back to DC in a couple of days.

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