Marquette University Law School Faculty Blog

Whoa, you like to think that you’re immune to the stuff, oh yeah
It’s closer to the truth to say you can’t get enough
You know you’re gonna have to face it, you’re addicted to [the Internet].

Robert Palmer, Addicted to Love (1986) (more recently covered by Florence & The Machine (2010))

This morning, I awoke and reached for my smartphone to turn off the alarm. Because I already had the phone in my hand, I checked the day’s weather (for both the Madison area, where I live, and Milwaukee, where I work). Then, of course, I had to check email, to see what had come in during the night. And, while I was at it, I took my turn in the eight concurrent games with three different people that I have going on Words with Friends. After that, I finally got out of bed.

According to an article by Tony Dokoupil in the July 16, 2012 issue of Newsweek, that kind of morning makes me just like more than one-third of smartphone users. We are the ones who check our phones before we even get out of bed. Really? Only one-third of us do that? 

Technology has allowed us to be continuously connected to a wider world, and too many of us are tethered to those portals. Read more »

A big part of why I am so intrigued by social media and employment law is because of the extent of information people are willing to share with others about themselves through these mediums. One way this can be accomplished is through the “like” feature on Facebook. Facebook describes the “like” feature as “a way to give positive feedback or to connect with things you care about on Facebook.” Once someone hits the “like” button, a caption to the content indicates his or her positive affirmation.

Consumer Reports (p. 28, June 2012) recently featured the extent to which people “like” things on Facebook. A national survey of active Facebook adults revealed that over the previous 12 months, 4.7 million “liked” a page pertaining to health conditions or treatments, 2.3 million “liked” a page regarding sexual orientation, 7.7 million “liked” a page relating to religious affiliation, and 1.6 million “liked” a page pertaining to a racial or ethnic affiliation. I raise these statistics with employers when I talk about social media because  these all relate to protected class statuses under the Wisconsin Fair Employment Act, Wis. Stat. § 111.31 et seq. Taking an adverse employment action after learning an individual liked such things as these may open the door to a charge of unlawful discrimination.

A recent decision out of the Eastern District of Virginia is bringing front and center questions concerning the significance of a “like” in a First Amendment context. In Bland  v. Roberts, 11CV0045 (E.D. Va. Apr. 24, 2012), several deputy sheriffs claimed they were unlawfully fired for supporting the sheriff’s election opponents in an election the incumbent sheriff ultimately won. Two of the plaintiffs claimed that the retaliation was due, in part, to the fact that they expressed support on the election opponent’s Facebook page. The court found the only evidence of a “statement of support” was through each individual “liking” the challenger’s Facebook page. The court found that a “like” was not sufficient speech to support the plaintiffs’ freedom of speech retaliation claim. The court explained: Read more »

On August 1, 2012, Illinois Governor Pat Quinn signed into law a bill that prohibits employers from requesting or requiring employees or prospective employees from providing “any password or other related account information” to gain access to the individual’s social networking account. Ill. Public Act 097-0875. By enacting the legislation, Illinois joins Maryland as states that prohibit employers from obtaining social media account password information. The law amends the Illinois Right to Privacy in the Workplace Act, 820 ILCS 55, and is effective January 1, 2013.

Illinois’ new social media legislation confirms that employers maintain the right to create lawful workplace policies that regulate the use of computer equipment, e-mail, and internet use. Moreover, the law also allows employers to monitor employee use of the employer’s electronic equipment and e-mail. Employers also may still obtain publicly available information concerning employees or prospective employees under the new law.

As part of the Right to Privacy in the Workplace Act, the law is subject to investigation and enforcement by the Illinois Department of Labor. Potential damages under the law include reasonable attorney’s fees if the violation is found to be willful and knowing.

This legislation comes in response to public criticism of reported incidences of employers seeking social media account password information for purposes of evaluating position applicants. Illinois employers who currently engage in such practices should be aware that any hiring policy or practice that requires applicants or employees to reveal such information will be a violation of Illinois law after the end of the calendar year.

Cross-posted to General Counselor.

An individual is involved in a civil lawsuit against someone — a tort suit, an employment discrimination suit, a civil rights suit — and the opposing party requests production of everything in his or her Facebook account during discovery. The individual refuses, or produces some material but not others, and the requesting party moves to compel. How should the court respond?

This situation is coming up increasingly frequently, and it appears to be confounding in many cases for everyone involved — judges, attorneys, and the parties themselves. Many individual litigants are no doubt surprised by such requests; not being familiar with the ordinary rules of discovery, they may not have realized that suing someone, or being sued, means that all relevant documents must be turned over — which might include every half-witted Facebook post or photograph pertaining to some issue germane to the lawsuit (such as, e.g., the plaintiff’s emotional well-being). Businesses have lived for years with the knowledge that a single wayward email from the CEO can sink a lawsuit; now individuals are experiencing the litigation effects when every decision or even fleeting thought is permanently recorded and archived. And destroying relevant material after the prospect of litigation becomes clear just makes matters worse.

But individual parties are not the only ones surprised by the interaction between civil discovery rules and social networking materials. Judges and attorneys often seem not to know exactly how to categorize the materials on a site like Facebook: is it all one relevant document? Multiple documents? How should the material be produced? Can the material be sought directly from the site via subpoena? Is the material shielded from discovery in any way? This confusion has led in some instances to court orders I’ve criticized as requiring overly broad production of social networking materials, with parties unnecessarily compelled to turn over entire accounts or even, in some cases, passwords to those accounts so opposing counsel can peruse them at will.

By and large most of those cases have been state cases, but federal courts are starting to issue opinions on social networking discovery as well. Over at Eric Goldman’s Technology & Marketing Law Blog, Venkat Balasubramani points to a recent decision from a magistrate judge in the District of Nevada, Thompson v. Autoliv ASP, Inc., No. 09-cv-01375, 2012 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 85143 (D. Nev. June 20, 2012). In Thompson, the judge ordered production of 5 years’ worth of Facebook and MySpace posts, photographs, and other materials to opposing counsel for its review. On a quick read Thompson might appear to fit into the category of overbroad decisions, but, despite an insufficient number of caveats in the opinion for my taste, I don’t believe it is.

I want to spend this post detailing exactly what’s wrong with an order compelling production of an entire social networking account, and why I think courts issuing such orders are going off the rails. Read more »

On Friday I mentioned Tim Wu’s op-ed last week, which asked if machines “have a constitutional right to free speech”? The question is posed in such a way that the obvious answer seems to be “no,” so it naturally drew responses which simply pose the question the other way: Timothy Lee at Ars Technica asks, “Do you lose free speech rights if you speak using a computer?”, and Julian Sanchez suggests that Wu’s argument would effectively remove First Amendment protection from any speech communicated via a machine. Paul Levy and Eugene Volokh similarly argue that while machines obviously don’t have speech rights, the people using the machines do, and Wu’s examples (e.g., Google’s search results) are the speech of the humans who designed the algorithm behind it.

I think the distinctions here are trickier than any of these pieces, including Wu’s, let on. (Frank Pasquale appears to agree.) My own view, as suggested in my previous post, is that at least for copyright purposes, the more the machine contributes to the substance of the content, the less it is the speech of the humans behind it. But the distinction both First Amendment law and copyright impose is binary: something is either your speech or not your speech. Trying to figure out exactly where that transition occurs — even in principle — is difficult.

Let’s set up a spectrum of possibilities. So here’s the spectrum (click to enlarge):

Read more »

Tim Wu had an interesting op-ed column in Wednesday’s New York Times: Free Speech for Computers? Wu’s op-ed is in part a response to a paper co-authored by Eugene Volokh, entitled “First Amendment Protection for Search Engine Search Results.” (See also Volokh’s response; criticism by Tim Lee and Julian Sanchez.) Volokh and his co-author, Donald Falk of Mayer Brown, argue that search results, for example those produced by Google (which commissioned the paper), should be treated as speech worthy of First Amendment protection. (Hail, Search King!) Wu argues that this argument threatens to “elevate our machines above ourselves” by “giv[ing] computers . . . rights intended for humans.” The purpose of the First Amendment, Wu writes, is “to protect actual humans against the evil of state censorship.” But computers don’t need that protection: “Socrates was a man who died for his views; computer programs are utilitarian instruments meant to serve us.” Wu concludes: “The line can be easily drawn: as a general rule, nonhuman or automated choices should not be granted the full protection of the First Amendment, and often should not be considered “speech” at all.”

This debate intrigues me, not so much for how it applies to Google (although that is interesting too), but for how it applies to video games. Read more »

Criminal law aficionados might want to check out two new blogs with Marquette connections.  First, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit Updates tracks new decisions by the Seventh Circuit in criminal cases. The authors are Amelia Bizzaro ’03, Tony Cotton ’05, Chris Donovan ’05, Josh Uller ’05, and your truly.

Second, Cybercrime Review explores “new technology, recent legal developments, and interesting arguments at the intersection of computers and the law.”  The authors are a current Marquette student, Justin Webb, and Jeffrey Brown, a student at the University of Mississippi School of Law.  In addition to being law students, both Justin and Jeffrey have impressive professional credentials in the IT field.  Justin’s comment on GPS tracking and the Fourth Amendment appeared in the most recent issue of the Marquette Law Review.

One hundred years ago this weekend, the RMS Titanic hit an iceberg off the coast of Newfoundland and sank. The event was big news then and has remained so for a century, due in no small part to the number of wealthy people who died or were aboard: John Jacob Astor IV; Lucy, Lady Duff-Gordon; Molly Brown; Benjamin Guggenheim; and Isidor Straus. It was a bit as if the Kodak Theatre caught fire during the Academy Awards. (Compare the Titanic to the RMS Empress of Ireland, which sank in the mouth of the St. Lawrence two years later with a loss of more passengers, although considerably fewer crew. Celine Dion sings no songs about the Empress of Ireland.)

There are many fascinating aspects of the story, including the recently uncovered evidence of what exactly caused the ship to sink — not a massive gash in its hull, as had long been supposed, but rather a buckling of the plates over five compartments, due in part to the failure of potentially substandard rivets. For want of a rivet, the Titanic was lost. And there’s also the interesting question of why there was so little panic among the passengers as the ship went down. But I want to focus on one that I’m fairly sure is not going to get covered this week: the connection between the sinking of the Titanic and our modern Electronic Communications Privacy Act, the federal law that makes it a crime to intercept communications without either a court order or the consent of one of the parties.

The connection stems from the role of “wireless telegraphy” — radio, as it’s now known — in the Titanic disaster. Read more »

I’ve been remiss in posting on the recent stories about potential employers requesting social networking login information in job interviews, but I see that noted cybercrime expert Orin Kerr, a law professor at George Washington University, was on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal this morning, and his comments in the first few minutes of this recording basically sum up what I had to say on this issue: it’s unclear, but such activity may be prohibited by federal law. I just have one additional point to add: although the specific policy result here may seem obvious, the larger question of when use of a dodgily-obtained password violates unauthorized access statutes is actually a much more difficult one.

The civil case Orin refers to in the recording is Pietrylo v. Hillstone Restaurant Group, No. 06-5754 (FSH), 2009 WL 3128420, 2009 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 88702 (D.N.J. Sept. 25, 2009). In Pietrylo, the District of New Jersey upheld a jury verdict against the defendant employer under the Stored Communications Act, 18 U.S.C. § 2701, which prohibits any person from “intentionally access[ing] without authorization a facility through which an electronic communication service is provided . . . and thereby obtain[ing], alter[ing], or prevent[ing] authorized access to a wire or electronic communication while it is in electronic storage in such system.” Pietrylo and other employees participated in a private chat group on MySpace in which they were critical of Hillstone management. One of the managers requested that one of the participants give him her password, which she did, on the reasonable supposition that she “felt that [she] probably would have gotten in trouble” if she refused. Read more »

This week, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a California law banning the sale of violent video games to children.  In Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association, 564 U.S. 1 (2011), the Court held that the First Amendment right to free speech protects the video games.  As I predicted last November in a blog post on the oral argument in this case, Justice Scalia did not favor upholding the law, and indeed he wrote the majority opinion, which was joined by Justices Kennedy, Ginsburg, Sotomayor, and Kagan.  Justice Alito and Chief Justice Roberts wrote a separate opinion, concurring in the judgment, while only Justices Thomas and Breyer dissented.

So what’s to like – or at least protect – about violent video games?  The opinion is clear that video games are protected by the First Amendment.  Although the Court notes that the Free Speech Clause exists primarily “to protect discourse on public matters,” it has long been “recognized that it is difficult to distinguish politics from entertainment, and dangerous to try.”  The Court notes that there are plenty of examples of political commentary or even propaganda to be found in fiction.  The Court goes on to state that last term’s opinion in United States v. Stevens controls.  Stevens struck down a statute that criminalized the creation, sale, or possession of specified types of depiction of animal cruelty, and Scalia summarized the holding thusly: “new categories of unprotected speech may not be added to the list by a legislature that concludes certain speech is too harmful to be tolerated.” (564 U.S. at 3)  Here, the California legislature tried to characterize the regulation of violent video games as dealing with a type of obscenity, and the majority states that violence is different from obscenity, and therefore it is irrelevant that Ginsberg v. New York allowed the state to apply an age-adjusted standard for its restriction on the sale of obscene materials to minors.  The Court says that California tried “to create a wholly new category of content-based regulation that is permissible only for speech directed at children.”  “That,” says the Court “is unprecedented and mistaken.” (564 U.S. at 7)

Read more »

Quick, which service do you think has the most strict password requirements I’ve ever encountered? My bank? Mutual funds? My law firm network login? Credit cards? Paypal? Email providers? Configuring my home server for remote access? Electronics sites like newegg.com and amazon.com? Westlaw and Lexis?

No. Not any of those. There is a service that, judging by its password requirements, contains either information far more sensitive or capabilities far more powerful than any of these. It’s… Read more »

Now available online, the recently published student comments in the Marquette Law Review cover a wide range of topics.  They include Nathan Petrashek’s comment on the impact of online social networking on Fourth Amendment privacy.  Since social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace attract both criminals (e.g., sexual predators, identity thieves) and the police who investigate them, the question whether users have a reasonable expectation of privacy in their voluntary disclosures under the well-established Katz test is poised to become a significant issue in the near future.  Petrashek relies on Fourth Amendment doctrine, as well as the First Amendment right of association and good public policy, to argue that user content should be shielded from police scrutiny in the absence of a warrant.

Meanwhile, Marvin Bynum’s Golden Quill-winning comment addresses the feasibility of establishing offshore wind farms in Lakes Michigan and Superior.  Read more »