CraigsList Lawsuit against 3Taps and Padmapper; trespass to chattels.

By YLH

Last year CraigsList sued 3Taps and Padmapper  to ensure that it is not deintermediated by these two aggregators. The court has since maintained the suit despite legal challenge, on grounds of trespass to chattels.  It is important to bear in mind that this was rejected in California's decision in Intel Corp v. Hamidi. Internet is largely dependent on use of many computers and the trespass to chattels argument is a very dangerous one.

Communications Decency Act (CDA) and Reno v. ACLU

Communications Decency Act (CDA)- a US law designed and enacted to protect minors from indecent and obscene communications - was addressed in Reno v. ACLU 521 US 844 (1997) when the US Supreme Court in a unanimous opinion declared CDA's anti-obscenity and anti-indecency provisions to be unconstitutional, as these affected the rights of adults in addition to curbing obscenity and indecency.

International Case Law on Web/Internet Blocking

BEFORE LAHORE HIGH COURT LAHORE

WP: 958/2013

Bytes for All

v.

Federation of Pakistan etc

A Brief Overview of the Case Law Available On Blocking of Websites Internationally

Respectfully Sheweth:-

That Your Lordship had instructed me to collect existing case law internationally that pertains to our case. The following case law is instructive:-

1.      Yildrim v. Turkey (December 2012)

-        In this case European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) decided that a Court order blocking access to “Google Sites” in Turkey was a violation of Article 10 of the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR Law).

-        In 2009 the Denizli Criminal Court ordered the blocking of an Internet site whose owner had been accused of insulting the memory of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder of Modern Turkey. The order was issued as a preventive measure in the context of criminal proceedings against the site’s owner.

-        The blocking order was submitted for execution to the Telecommunications Directorate (“TİB”). Shortly afterwards, the TİB asked the court to extend the scope of the order by blocking access to Google Sites, which hosted not only the site in question but also the applicant’s site. The TİB stated that this was the only technical means of blocking the offending site, as its owner lived abroad.