Category: Internet Law

On May 9, 2024, Maryland passed a comprehensive consumer data privacy statute called the Maryland Online Data Privacy Act (“MODPA”). The nominal effective date for MODPA is October 1, 2025. However, section 14-6414, Sec. 2 states that MODPA will not “have any effect on or application to any personal data processing activities before April 1, […]

The Federal Trade Commission (“FTC”) has taken some steps recently to tackle the problem of companies that hijack their own customer product reviews when selling products on online platforms like Amazon. Review hijacking is one of many deceptive methods of manipulating consumer reviews to increase the chances of selling a new product. Essentially, review hijacking […]

The California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018 (“CCPA”) was amended by the California Privacy Rights Act of 2020 (“CPRA”). Both statutes deal with the same issue: protecting the online data privacy of consumers in California. In practice, there is no difference between the two statutes since, as noted, the CPRA is the statute that amended […]

To begin, let’s distinguish “kill fees” in social media influencer contracts and “kill fees” in writing/publishing contracts. “Kill fees” in publishing relate to fees paid by publishers to writers/content creators if the content is not published through no fault of the writer/creator. The “kill fee” is often 25% of the fee that would have been […]

On May 9, 2024, Maryland became the latest U.S. State to enact a comprehensive consumer data privacy statute called the Maryland Online Data Privacy Act (“MODPA”). Technically, MODPA goes into effect on October 1, 2025. However, the true effective date of the statute is April 1, 2026. From a review of MODPA and comparison to […]

“Unavoidable” disclosure is a confusing concept. On the one hand, a social media influencer might think: “Well, yes, disclosures are unavoidable since I am required to make disclosures.” However, the concept of “unavoidable” disclosure is not about providing disclosures. Rather, “unavoidable” disclosures are evaluated from the viewpoint of the person consuming the content of a […]

With respect to consumer and personal data collected by online businesses, sites, and sales platforms, the European Union (“EU”) and the United States have different statutory and regulatory regimes. There are many similarities, but there are also significant differences. However, given that so much business is global and cross-border, enormous flows of personal and consumer […]

On April 4, 2024, Kentucky became the sixteenth State to enact a consumer data privacy statute — the Kentucky Consumer Data Protection Act (“KCDPA”). Since then, both Maryland and Nebraska have enacted data privacy statutes (and New Hampshire enacted a similar statute earlier in 2024). Eighteen States now have enacted some version of a consumer […]

In 2018, California became the first State in the United States to enact a consumer data privacy statute. The statute became effective on June 1, 2020. The California statute has been amended and expanded a couple of times since being passed and is deemed one of the strongest and most protective consumer data privacy statutes. […]

The legal debate concerning website and app accessibility for those who are visually and hearing impaired has been ongoing for at least a decade. Accessibility is accomplished with software coding embedded in the base structure of a website/app providing an audio description of visual content and a visual explanation of audio content. The software and […]