Weekly International Law ReviewEditor: Dr Harry Melkonian, Adjunct Fellow, Macquarie Law School
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Preview: Wills and Estates: The Need for Uniform Laws
with Pam McEwin and Alan Conolly |
| Our legal editor has commented in relation to this discussion that it is robust. I hope you find it worthwhile - I much admire Pam McEwin.
Subscribers can watch the full episode at: Bench TV CPD
If you wish to subscribe you can do so here: Register here |
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Executive Summary and Podcast (One Minute Read)
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| X Corp v Bright Data Ltd (USDCNDCA) - X Corp (Twitter) failed to establish tort and contract claims against data scraping firm as pre-empted by United States copyright law
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| I Buy Beauty LLC v Dong (SCBC) - In internet defamation action, Court awarded substantial compensatory, aggravated and punitive damages, noting that defamation carried out over the internet may be more damaging than defamation carried out by other means
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HABEAS CANEM
Man and loyal dog
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Summaries With Link (Five Minute Read)
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X Corp v Bright Data Ltd, Case No C23-03698
United States District Court for the Northern District of California
Alsup J
X Corp brought suit against Bright Data Ltd on numerous grounds, all of which related to defendant's scraping and sale of data gathered from plaintiff's Twitter internet platform. The Twitter Terms of Service prohibited data scraping. Data scraping consists of extracting data from a website and copying it into a structured format, allowing for data manipulation or analysis. Here, plaintiff contended that Bright Data was unlawfully accessing Twitter and scraping public data for commercial purposes. X Corp asserted numerous claims based on improper access to X's systems and unlawful scraping and sale of data. With respect to improper access to X's systems, the claims included trespass to chattels, unfair competition, tortious interference with contract and breach of contract. However, the Court found that these claims could not be sustained in the absence of actual injury. With respect to claims based on scraping and sale of data, the claims failed because of Federal copyright law pre-emption. The Terms of Service clearly provided that Twitter users owned their own content and only extended a non-exclusive license to Twitter to make the content publicly available. Under established precedent, a non-exclusive license does not give the licensee the right to exclude others from using the licensed material. The Court noted that X Corp avoided ownership of X users' content because to do so would extinguish X Corp's safe harbors from civil liability provided under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. Under Section 230, social media companies are immune from claims based on the publication of material on their websites that has been provided by another information content provider. Further, under Section 512(a) of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, social media companies can avoid liability for copyright infringements when they act only as conduits for the transmission of information. The Court found that X Corp was trying to have it both ways by disclaiming ownership of the content to take advantage of the safe harbours and then trying to exert ownership rights to the content pursuant to Terms of Service that prohibited scraping of website content. To the extent that X Corp was trying to exert control over content while disclaiming copyright ownership, the Court held that X's common law claims were pre-empted by the Copyright Act of the United States. The Court dismissed the complaint but allowed X Corp to seek leave to amend if the amended complaint corrected the deficiencies addressed by the Court. To facilitate further proceedings, plaintiff was ordered to supply a red-lined copy of the proposed amended complaint showing all proposed changes. Failing that, judgment in favour of defendant would be entered.
X Corp |
I Buy Beauty LLC v Dong 2024 BCSC 815
Supreme Court of British Columbia
Francis J
Plaintiff Vuong Pham, the CEO of plaintiff I Buy Beauty, resides in Houston, Texas. The defendant Phil Dong resides in British Columbia. Plaintiffs contended that Mr Dong, acting through YouTube channels that he operates, persistently and repeatedly made false accusations against Mr Pham and I Buy Beauty. The unsupported accusations included that Mr Pham was a communist, a Viet Cong, and that the company engaged in money laundering, and was involved in other criminal activity. In 2022, an interlocutory order was entered enjoining Mr Dong from making specific statements on the internet that were defamatory of the plaintiffs. That order was ignored, and Mr Dong was arrested and placed in custody. After his release, Mr Dong complied with the injunction. At trial, the Court noted the enormous volume of defamatory statements spread over YouTube and LinkedIn. In the words of the Court, Mr Dong's campaign against the plaintiffs was 'relentless'. The Court found that the statements alleging money laundering, human trafficking, fraud, and theft were defamatory and that accusations that plaintiff Pham was a communist and Viet Cong would also tend to lower the plaintiff's reputation in the eyes of reasonable people. The defendant was not represented by counsel and did not pursue possible legal defences such as justification or fair comment. Given the extent of the publication, together with the absence of an apology, the Court awarded plaintiffs CDN$350,00 in general damages, together with $50,000 in aggravated damages based on a finding of actual malice and $50,000 in punitive damages. The aggravated damages were based on defendant's unjustifiable intention to injure the plaintiff. Punitive damages were based on the outrageousness of the conduct and that defendant was profiting by the defamation as it could help him attract more subscribers to his YouTube channels. Relying on the Supreme Court decision Google v Equustek Solutions, Inc 2017 SCC 34, the Court noted that, because the internet has no borders and its natural habitat is global, compared to other forms of defamation, internet defamation is much wider in scope and has more potential to damage reputations. Further, defamation carried out over the internet may be more damaging than defamation carried out by other means because the publication may be viewed by a larger audience.
I Buy Beauty LLC |
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Poem for Friday
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From The Tempest, Act 4 Scene 1
By: William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
Our revels now are ended. These our actors, As I foretold you, were all spirits and Are melted into air, into thin air: And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces, The solemn temples, the great globe itself, Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff As dreams are made on, and our little life Is rounded with a sleep.
Recitation by Patricia Conolly. With seven decades experience as a professional actress in three
continents, Patricia Conolly has credits from most of the western world’s leading theatrical centres. She has worked extensively in her native
Australia, in London’s West End, at The Royal Shakespeare Company, on Broadway, off
Broadway, and widely in the USA and Canada.
Her professional life includes noted productions with some of the
greatest names in English speaking theatre, a partial list would include: Sir Peter Hall, Peter Brook, Sir Laurence Olivier, Dame Maggie Smith,
Rex Harrison, Dame Judi Dench, Tennessee Williams, Lauren Bacall, Rosemary
Harris, Tony Randall, Marthe Keller, Wal Cherry, Alan Seymour, and Michael Blakemore.
She has played some 16 Shakespearean leading roles, including both
Merry Wives, both Viola and Olivia, Regan (with Sir Peter Ustinov as Lear), and The Fool (with Hal Holbrook as Lear), a partial list of other classical work includes: various
works of Moliere, Sheridan, Congreve, Farquar, Ibsen, and Shaw, as well as
roles such as, Jocasta in Oedipus, The Princess of France in Love’s Labour’s Lost, and Yelena in Uncle Vanya (directed by Sir Tyrone Guthrie), not to mention three Blanche du Bois and one Stella in A Streetcar
Named Desire.
Patricia has also made a significant contribution as a guest speaker,
teacher and director, she has taught at The Julliard School of the Arts, Boston
University, Florida Atlantic University, The North Carolina School of the Arts,
University of Southern California, University of San Diego, and been a guest
speaker at NIDA, and the Delaware MFA program.
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