Justia U.S. Supreme Court Opinion Summaries

Several major music copyright owners, including a leading entertainment company, sought to hold an Internet service provider responsible for copyright infringement committed by its subscribers. The service provider, which serves millions of customers, was notified by a monitoring company of over 160,000 instances where its subscribers’ IP addresses were linked to alleged copyright violations such as illegal music file sharing. Although the provider had policies prohibiting infringement and took steps such as issuing warnings and suspending service, the copyright holders argued these measures were inadequate and brought suit seeking to impose liability on the provider for continuing to serve known infringers.The case was tried in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. There, the jury found in favor of the copyright owners on both contributory and vicarious liability, and determined the provider’s infringement was willful, awarding $1 billion in statutory damages. After the District Court denied the provider’s post-trial motion, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit affirmed the finding of contributory liability, reasoning that supplying a service with knowledge it would be used for infringement was sufficient. The Fourth Circuit, however, reversed as to vicarious liability and remanded for a new determination of damages.The Supreme Court of the United States reviewed the case concerning contributory liability. The Court held that a service provider is contributorily liable for a user’s infringement only if it either induced the infringement or provided a service tailored for infringement. Because the provider neither encouraged infringement nor offered a service primarily designed for infringement—since Internet access has substantial lawful uses—the provider was not contributorily liable. The Supreme Court reversed the Fourth Circuit’s judgment on contributory liability and remanded the case for further proceedings. View "Cox Communications, Inc. v. Sony Music Entertainment" on Justia Law

In 2021, Florida and Texas enacted statutes regulating large social-media companies and other internet platforms. The laws curtailed the platforms' ability to engage in content moderation and required them to provide reasons to a user if they removed or altered her posts. NetChoice LLC, a trade association whose members include Facebook and YouTube, brought First Amendment challenges against the two laws. District courts in both states entered preliminary injunctions.The Eleventh Circuit upheld the injunction of Florida’s law, holding that the state's restrictions on content moderation trigger First Amendment scrutiny. The court concluded that the content-moderation provisions are unlikely to survive heightened scrutiny. The Fifth Circuit, however, disagreed and reversed the preliminary injunction of the Texas law. The court held that the platforms’ content-moderation activities are “not speech” at all, and so do not implicate the First Amendment.The Supreme Court of the United States vacated the judgments and remanded the cases, stating that neither the Eleventh Circuit nor the Fifth Circuit conducted a proper analysis of the facial First Amendment challenges to Florida and Texas laws regulating large internet platforms. The Court held that the laws interfere with protected speech, as they prevent the platforms from compiling the third-party speech they want in the way they want, thus producing their own distinctive compilations of expression. The Court also held that Texas's asserted interest in correcting the mix of viewpoints that major platforms present is not valid under the First Amendment. View "Moody v. NetChoice, LLC" on Justia Law

In a case involving a city manager's personal social media account, a citizen sued the city manager under 42 U.S.C. §1983, alleging that his First Amendment rights were violated when the manager deleted his comments and blocked him from commenting further. The city manager argued that he operated his social media account in his private capacity, thus not constituting state action required for §1983 liability. The District Court and the Sixth Circuit affirmed this view, determining that the city manager's social media conduct did not constitute state action.The Supreme Court of the United States vacated the Sixth Circuit's decision, remanding the case for further proceedings. The court held that a public official's social media activity constitutes state action under §1983 only if the official both (1) possessed actual authority to speak on the State's behalf on a particular matter, and (2) purported to exercise that authority when speaking in the relevant social-media posts. The court emphasized that the first prong is grounded in the requirement that the conduct causing the deprivation of a federal right be fairly attributable to the State. The second prong requires that the official must purport to use that authority. The court noted that the nature of the technology matters to the state-action analysis and that the state-action doctrine requires a fact-intensive inquiry. View "Lindke v. Freed" on Justia Law

A 2017 terrorist attack on an Istanbul nightclub, committed on behalf of ISIS, killed Alassaf and 38 others. Alassaf’s family sued Facebook, Twitter, and Google (which owns YouTube) under 18 U.S.C. 2333, which permits U.S. nationals who have been injured by an act of international terrorism to sue for damages. They alleged that the companies knowingly allowed ISIS and its supporters to use their platforms and “recommendation” algorithms for recruiting, fundraising, and spreading propaganda and have profited from the advertisements placed on ISIS content. The Ninth Circuit reversed the dismissal of the complaint.A unanimous Supreme Court reversed. The 2016 Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act, section 2333(d)(2), imposes secondary civil liability on anyone “who aids and abets, by knowingly providing substantial assistance, or who conspires with the person who committed such an act of international terrorism.” The Court concluded that it is not enough for a defendant to have given substantial assistance to a transcendent enterprise. A defendant must have knowingly provided substantial assistance in the commission of the actionable wrong—here, an act of international terrorism. The allegations do not show that the defendants gave ISIS such knowing and substantial assistance that they culpably participated in the attack. There are no allegations that the platforms were used to plan the attack; that the defendants gave ISIS special treatment; nor that the defendants carefully screened content before allowing users to upload it. The mere creation of media platforms is no more culpable than the creation of email, cell phones, or the internet generally.The allegations rest primarily on passive nonfeasance. The plaintiffs identify no duty that would require communication-providing services to terminate customers after discovering that the customers were using the service for illicit ends. The expansive scope of the claims would necessarily hold the defendants liable for aiding and abetting every ISIS terrorist act committed anywhere in the world. The Ninth Circuit improperly focused primarily on the value of the platforms to ISIS, rather than whether the defendants culpably associated themselves with the attack. View "Twitter, Inc. v. Taamneh" on Justia Law

In 2015, ISIS terrorists unleashed coordinated attacks across Paris, killing 130 victims, including Gonzalez, a 23-year-old U.S. citizen. Gonzalez’s family sued Google under 18 U.S.C. 2333(a), (d)(2). They alleged that Google was directly and secondarily liable for the terrorist attack that killed Gonzalez, citing the use of YouTube, which Google owns and operates, by ISIS and ISIS supporters.The Ninth Circuit affirmed the dismissal of the suit, finding most of the claims were barred by the Communications Decency Act of 1996, 47 U.S.C. 230(c)(1). The sole exceptions were claims based on allegations that Google approved ISIS videos for advertisements and then shared proceeds with ISIS through YouTube’s revenue-sharing system. The court held that these potential claims were not barred by section 230, but that the allegations nonetheless failed to state a viable claim. The complaint neither plausibly alleged that “Google reached an agreement with ISIS,” as required for conspiracy liability, nor that Google’s acts were “intended to intimidate or coerce a civilian population, or to influence or affect a government,” as required for a direct-liability claim.The Supreme Court vacated. The complaint. independent of section 230, states little if any claim for relief. The Court noted its contemporaneously-issued “Twitter” decision and held that the complaint fails to state a claim for aiding and abetting. The Court remanded the case for consideration in light of the Twitter decision. View "Gonzalez v. Google LLC" on Justia Law

Former Georgia police sergeant Van Buren used his credentials on a patrol-car computer to access a law enforcement database to retrieve license plate information in exchange for money. His conduct violated a department policy against obtaining database information for non-law-enforcement purposes. The Eleventh Circuit upheld Van Buren's conviction for a felony violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1986 (CFAA), which covers anyone who “intentionally accesses a computer without authorization or exceeds authorized access,” 18 U.S.C. 1030(a)(2), defined to mean “to access a computer with authorization and to use such access to obtain or alter information in the computer that the accesser is not entitled so to obtain or alter.”The Supreme Court reversed. An individual “exceeds authorized access” when he accesses a computer with authorization but then obtains information located in particular areas of the computer (files, folders, databases) that are off-limits to him. Van Buren “access[ed] a computer with authorization” and “obtain[ed] . . . information in the computer.” The phrase “is not entitled so to obtain” refers to information one is not allowed to obtain by using a computer that he is authorized to access.“Without authorization” protects computers themselves from outside hackers; the “exceeds authorized access” clause protects certain information within computers from "inside hackers." One either can or cannot access a computer system, and one either can or cannot access certain areas within the system. The Act’s precursor to the “exceeds authorized access” language covered any person who, “having accessed a computer with authorization, uses the opportunity such access provides for purposes to which such authorization does not extend.” Congress removed any reference to “purpose” in the CFAA. On the government’s reading, an employee who sends a personal e-mail or reads the news using a work computer may have violated the CFAA. View "Van Buren v. United States" on Justia Law

The Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991 (TCPA) restricts communications made with an “automatic telephone dialing system,” defined as equipment with the capacity both “to store or produce telephone numbers to be called, using a random or sequential number generator,” and to dial those numbers, 47 U.S.C. 227(a)(1). Facebook’s social media platform allows users to elect to receive text messages when someone attempts to log in to the user’s account from a new device. Facebook sent such texts to Duguid, alerting him to login activity on a Facebook account linked to his telephone number, but Duguid never created any Facebook account. Duguid tried, unsuccessfully, to stop the unwanted messages. He brought a putative class action, alleging that Facebook violated the TCPA by maintaining a database that stored phone numbers and programming its equipment to send automated text messages. The Ninth Circuit ruled in Duguid’s favor.The Supreme Court reversed: To qualify as an “automatic telephone dialing system” under the TCPA, a device must have the capacity either to store a telephone number using a random or sequential number generator or to produce a telephone number using a random or sequential number generator. The statutory context confirms that the TCPA’s autodialer definition excludes equipment that does not use a random or sequential number generator. Congress found autodialer technology harmful because autodialers can dial emergency lines randomly or tie up all of an entity's sequentially numbered phone lines. Duguid’s interpretation would encompass any equipment that stores and dials telephone numbers. View "Facebook, Inc. v. Duguid" on Justia Law

A generic name—the name of a class of products or services—is ineligible for federal trademark registration. Booking.com, a travel-reservation website, sought federal registration of marks including the term “Booking.com.” Concluding that “Booking.com” was a generic name for online hotel-reservation services, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) refused registration. The Fourth Circuit affirmed the District Court decision that “Booking.com”—unlike the term “booking” standing alone—is not generic.The Supreme Court affirmed. A term styled “generic.com” is a generic name for a class of goods or services only if the term has that meaning to consumers. Whether a compound term is generic turns on whether that term, taken as a whole, signifies to consumers a class of goods or services. Consumers do not perceive the term “Booking.com” that way. Only one entity can occupy a particular Internet domain name at a time, so a “generic.com” term could convey to consumers an association with a particular website. An unyielding legal rule disregarding consumer perception would be incompatible with a bedrock principle of the Lanham Act. The PTO’s policy concerns do not support a categorical rule against the registration of “generic.com” terms. Several doctrines ensure that registration of “Booking.com” would not yield its holder a monopoly on the term “booking.” View "Patent and Trademark Office v. Booking.com B.V." on Justia Law

In 2013, federal agents obtained an 18 U.S.C. 2703 warrant requiring Microsoft to disclose all e-mails and other information associated with a customer's account that was believed to be involved in illegal drug trafficking. Microsoft determined that the account’s e-mail contents were all stored in Microsoft’s Dublin, Ireland datacenter and moved, unsuccessfully, to quash the warrant with respect to that information. The court held Microsoft in civil contempt. The Second Circuit reversed, holding that requiring Microsoft to disclose the electronic communications in question would be an unauthorized extraterritorial application of section 2703. In March 2018, Congress enacted and the President signed the Clarifying Lawful Overseas Use of Data Act (CLOUD Act), Pub. L. 115–141, amending the Stored Communications Act, 18 U.S.C. 2701, to add: “A [service provider] shall comply with the obligations of this chapter to preserve, backup, or disclose the contents of a wire or electronic communication and any record or other information pertaining to a customer or subscriber within such provider’s possession, custody, or control, regardless of whether such communication, record, or other information is located within or outside of the United States.” The Supreme Court vacated, finding the case moot. No live dispute remains between the parties over the issue with respect to which certiorari was granted; a new warrant replaced the original warrant. View "United States v. Microsoft Corp." on Justia Law

Musacchio resigned as president of ETS in 2004, but with help from the former head of ETS’s information-technology department, he accessed ETS’s computer system without authorization through early 2006. In 2010, Musacchio was indicted under 18 U.S.C. 1030(a)(2)(C), which makes it a crime if a person “intentionally accesses a computer without authorization or exceeds authorized access” and thereby “obtains . . . information from any protected computer.” A 2012 superseding indictment changed the access date to “[o]n or about” November 23–25, 2005. Musacchio never raised the 5-year statute of limitations. The government did not object to jury instructions referring to: “intentionally access a computer without authorization and exceed authorized access” although the conjunction “and” added an additional element. The jury found Musacchio guilty. In affirming his conviction, the Fifth Circuit assessed Musacchio’s sufficiency challenge against the charged elements of the conspiracy count rather than against the heightened jury instruction, and concluded that he had waived his statute-of-limitations defense. The Supreme Court affirmed. A sufficiency challenge should be assessed against the elements of the charged crime, not against the elements set forth in an erroneous jury instruction. Sufficiency review essentially addresses whether the case was strong enough to reach the jury. Musacchio did not dispute that he was properly charged with conspiracy to obtain unauthorized access or that the evidence was sufficient to convict him of the charged crime. A defendant cannot successfully raise section 3282(a)’s statute-of-limitations bar for the first time on appeal. The history of section 3282(a)’s limitations bar confirms that the provision does not impose a jurisdictional limit. View "Musacchio v. United States" on Justia Law