Every week there’s a veritable plague of new lawsuits, hearings, appeals, and Congressional bills. How is anyone supposed to keep up with what’s happening in cyberlaw? With a GIF summary of course.
A GIF Got an ISIS Fan Arrested
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A 25-year-old in Ohio reblogged a GIF on Tumblr and got arrested for it. To be fair, the GIF did contain “the banner ‘Islamic State Hacking Division,’ followed by ‘Target: United States Military’ and ‘Leak: Addresses of 100 US Military Personnel.’” Sooooooo…. yeah.
The rest of the Tumblr had other posts supporting ISIS, along with Simpsons memes and pics of cute animals. In conclusion, never tumbl’.
Monkey Selfie Lawsuit Is Gift That Won’t Stop Giving*
PETA’s lawsuit on behalf of a selfie-taking monkey against nature photographer David Slater and a self-publishing book company is getting even sillier. The litigation has now spawned a very funny motion to dismiss—even funnier than one would expect out of a legal filing in a case where a monkey is suing for copyright infringement.
The motion is written by a lawyer who wear a Chippendales costume in his LinkedIn profile.
How does this case keep getting better? We can’t wait to see more.
Image: Anonymous/Giphy
* GIF that won’t stop GIFing?
Judge Orders NSA to Stop Collecting Americans’ Phone Records Immediately
The judge in Klayman v. Obama already ruled in 2013 that NSA bulk collection of phone records was likely illegal, and ordered that the program be stopped—although he stayed his order pending an appeal. That was in 2013. Fed up with how slowly the process was moving, he un-stayed it on Monday.
Lol have fun with that, NSA.
Image: Anonymous/Giphy
US Cops Are Asking Facebook to Wiretap More Chats Than Ever Before
Related to Klayman: Facebook is receiving more wiretapping requests from law enforcement than ever before (like an increase of over 2000 percent). No one knows why! This sure feels weird!
Image: Anonymous/Giphy
Invisible Braces Nearly Broke the Internet (But Don’t Worry, We’re All Good)
The Federal Circuit reversed the International Trade Commission’s decision in ClearCorrect v. Align Technologies, a bizarre case in which rights-holders were seeking a precedent that would allow them to get SOPA-esque court orders to block sites at the ISP-level. Anyways, that’s all over, we can all go home now.
Image: Anonymous/Giphy
Happy Birthday Heir Crawls out of Woodwork
Hey, remember how I wrote about how “Happy Birthday” isn’t in the public domain despite being widely reported as such? That’s because there was always the theoretical possibility that some secret heir would crawl out of the woodwork to claim copyright. But, haha, no one thought that would actually happen or anything.
On Monday, a secret heir to “Happy Birthday” crawled out of the woodwork. Congratulations, we’re on for more years of litigation!
Image: Anonymous/Giphy
Fight. Fight For Your Right. To Leave Bad Yelp Reviews.
People get sued for leaving bad Yelp reviews all the time. There’s now a proposed bill that could stymie the endless tide of weird Yelp lawsuits.
Image: Anonymous/Giphy
Some Judge Sure Likes Taylor Swift
A judge concluded an order to dismiss a copyright suit against Taylor Swift with a bunch of Taylor Swift references.
Experts say the lawsuit was dumb as heck so this response was probably warranted.
Image: Anonymous/Giphy
