Table of Contents
- Introduction to internet law and why these cases matter
- United States v. Warshak
- National Cable & Telecommunications Association v. Brand X Internet Services
- Gil v. Winn-Dixie Stores, Inc.
- Feldman v. Google, Inc.
- Berkson v. Gogo LLC
- A.V. et al v. iParadigms, LLC
- Elonis v. United States
- Mahanoy Area School District v. B.L.
- People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals v. Doughney
- A&M Records, Inc. v. Napster, Inc.
- How internet law cases shape modern business operations
- Frequently asked questions about internet law cases
Key takeaways:
Design your clickwrap agreements with clear, conspicuous terms that require affirmative user consent, as courts have ruled that buried hyperlinks without scroll-through requirements are not enforceable.
Recognize that emails stored on third-party servers have Fourth Amendment privacy protections, requiring law enforcement to obtain warrants before accessing them and obligating businesses to communicate these protections in privacy policies.
Understand that despite courts ruling websites are not “places of public accommodation” under the ADA, over 4,000 web accessibility lawsuits were filed in 2024, making digital accessibility a significant business risk worth addressing proactively.
Apply fair use principles carefully when handling copyrighted digital content, distinguishing between transformative uses that serve different purposes and simple redistribution of protected works.
Internet law cases establish the legal framework that governs how businesses operate online today. These landmark rulings shape everything from digital contracts to data privacy, determining what you can and cannot do on the web.
The internet has been available to the general public since the early 1990s. Those early days were both rudimentary and fascinating—dial-up modems, Netscape Navigator, and AOL dominated the landscape. As technology advanced rapidly, the evolution of the World Wide Web brought new legal questions that courts had to answer through precedent-setting cases.
Internet law is the body of legal precedents that governs digital activities, from free speech to contract enforcement. Early cases like the 1997 Reno v. American Civil Liberties Union decision protected online freedom of speech, while Zeran v. America Online, Inc. (1998) cleared the way for website owners to host content from users and other outside sources without liability.
These foundational cases created clarity around digital rights and responsibilities. However, new challenges continue to emerge—social media speech, content moderation, and platform liability remain actively contested legal issues.
The 10 internet law cases we’re covering today, all decided since 2000, define how businesses operate online. Understanding them helps you navigate digital contracts, protect privacy, and avoid legal pitfalls.
What you’ll learn from these cases:
- How email privacy protections affect business communications
- When clickwrap agreements hold up in court
- What social media speech protections mean for your company
- How copyright law applies to digital content
- Whether websites must comply with accessibility standards
Introduction to internet law and why these cases matter
When you hear “internet law,” it’s easy to think of it as some dusty legal textbook. But it’s not a single, static thing. It’s a constantly evolving area shaped by court decisions that respond to new technology. These cases aren’t just for law students—they have a direct impact on how you run your business, write your contracts, and manage risk.
For you, this isn’t just legal history. It’s about understanding the rules of the road for digital business. The precedents set by these cases determine the enforceability of your online terms, your liability for user content, and your obligations for data privacy. Getting this wrong means real-world consequences. As we move into an era where AI is layered on top of everything—and considering that 69% of legal professionals use AI for legal work according to The State of AI in Legal 2025 Report—these foundational principles become even more critical. The next wave of internet law cases will build on the rulings we’re about to discuss.
United States v. Warshak
Email privacy and Fourth Amendment protections
United States v. Warshak established that emails stored on third-party servers have Fourth Amendment protection. This was the first case to rule that there is a reasonable expectation of privacy for email content, even when stored by internet service providers.
It all started with a criminal investigation into defendant Steve Warshak’s fraudulent business practices, in which he and his mother, who helped run the business, were double- and triple-charging customer accounts and providing false information to banks to obtain loans and credit products.
The government seized approximately 27,000 private emails from Warshak’s ISP without a warrant. They justified this action by relying on the Stored Communications Act.
The seized emails helped convict the defendants on the majority of 112 counts. However, Warshak appealed based on the warrantless seizure.
The court of appeals ruled that the government violated Warshak’s Fourth Amendment rights. Compelling an ISP to turn over emails without a warrant is unconstitutional.
What this means for businesses: Emails stored on third-party servers have privacy protections. Law enforcement needs a warrant to access employee or customer emails, and businesses should inform users about these protections in privacy policies.
National Cable & Telecommunications Association v. Brand X Internet Services
Net neutrality became a household phrase thanks to this case, which established that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) had the authority to classify internet service as either an information service or a telecommunications service—a distinction that would reshape how ISPs operate.
The case started in 2002 when cable and telephone operators pushed the FCC to exempt them from the competitive requirements of the Telecommunications Act. Under that act, telecommunications services must sell access to their networks to competitors. The FCC obliged, ruling that internet access was not a telecommunications service. This opened the door for telephone companies to gain pricing advantages over outside competitors and freed them from having to share their data lines with rivals.
Multiple parties challenged the FCC’s ruling in court, arguing that these policies would be illegal if telephone companies were forced to act as common carriers. Ultimately, the courts decided that the FCC does have the authority to make this classification. As a result, cable companies are free to refuse to share their networks with competing ISPs—a decision that continues to influence net neutrality debates today.
Gil v. Winn-Dixie Stores, Inc.
Juan Carlos Gil, who was legally blind and a longtime customer of the Winn-Dixie grocery store chain, in 2017 filed a lawsuit against the company under Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). Gil alleged that Winn-Dixie’s website, which let customers refill prescriptions online for in-store pickup, did not meet the requirements of businesses set forth by the ADA. The central issue was that Winn-Dixie’s website was incompatible with Gil’s screen reader software, and therefore “ha[d] not provided full and equal enjoyment of the services, facilities, privileges, advantages, and accommodations provided by and through its website.”
In the suit, Gil requested that Winn-Dixie be ordered to update the website to allow access by individuals with visual impairments to the full extent required by Title III of the ADA. Winn-Dixie successfully argued that its website is not a public place requiring accommodation.
The district court initially agreed with Gil, requiring Winn-Dixie to make its site accessible. However, an appellate court later reversed that decision. It ruled that websites are not “places of public accommodation” and therefore do not have to meet the same ADA requirements as physical stores.
Feldman v. Google, Inc.
The case of Feldman v. Google, Inc. was filed by Lawrence Feldman, an attorney who purchased advertising through Google, Inc.’s AdWords program. That program placed his ads at the top of the search results page and charged him each time an internet searcher clicked on one of them.
According to Feldman, this led to competitors or pranksters intentionally clicking on his ads to drive up his costs until they reached a total of more than $100,000 over a three-year period. Feldman argued that the clickwrap agreement was not binding because he never had proper notice of or gave his consent to the terms, meaning there was no true agreement between the parties.
The courts disagreed, siding with Google on the basis that these agreements are printable and storable, and that they are written contracts.
Berkson v. Gogo LLC
In Berkson v. Gogo LLC, customers of the in-flight Wi-Fi provider alleged they were misled into a service that automatically renewed without their consent. The case centered on whether Gogo’s sign-up process gave users adequate notice of its terms.
As with the case of Feldman v. Google, a clickwrap was used by Gogo to solicit the agreement from users, whose cards were charged each month for an ongoing service after signing the clickwrap agreement for the service. Unlike the Feldman v. Google, Inc. case, however, the courts did not side with Gogo, ruling instead that Gogo did not do enough during the sign-up process to draw users’ attention to the terms and conditions hyperlink that contained the arbitration clause—and was further problematic because it did not require users to scroll through the terms and conditions before accepting them.
The court ruling meant Gogo could not fairly bind users to its terms and helped to make clear what factors must be present to make a clickwrap agreement legally binding.
A.V. et al v. iParadigms, LLC
The case of A.V. et al v. iParadigms, LLC provided important clarifications for both copyright law and clickwrap agreements. In this case, several plaintiffs were suing iParadigms over alleged copyright violations that occurred from using Turnitin, a system used to detect plagiarism in written works submitted by students.
As with a handful of other lawsuits on this list, the agreement with defendant iParadigms was electronically entered into via a clickwrap agreement. The agreement included a clause allowing Turnitin to archive a student’s work upon submission to the system—something done on a regular basis. However, only the schools using the software—not the students—had entered into the agreement permissions for archiving students’ work, leading to a lawsuit against iParadigms alleging copyright infringement based on the archiving of essays and other papers they’d turned in via the plagiarism detection software.
The courts ruled in favor of the defendants, using the four fair use factors to conclude that the website’s archiving of students’ papers was a fair use because it was aimed at detecting and discouraging plagiarism rather than being used in a creative capacity, which is what you’d typically see in a copyright infringement case.
Elonis v. United States
The case of Elonis v. United States had a significant impact on what is perceived as threatening on social media—an extremely important but tricky subject for online speech. In this case, defendant Anthony Elonis was federally charged with threatening his ex-wife, co-workers, a kindergarten class, the local police, and an FBI agent on social media after his wife left him and he lost his job at an amusement park.
At his criminal trial, Elonis asked the court to dismiss the charges against him based on the argument that his Facebook comments were not “true threats,” and that, as an aspiring rapper, the posts were a form of artistic expression and a therapeutic release for him. The court refused to dismiss the case against Elonis, and the jury convicted him despite his defense.
Elonis appealed the conviction, arguing that “true threats” require a subjective intent to threaten. The appeals court affirmed Elonis’ earlier conviction, reiterating that the law does not require proof of a subjective intent to convict someone of threatening someone else on social media.
Mahanoy Area School District v. B.L.
The case of Mahanoy Area School District v. B.L. revolves around the fallout over social media comments made by a high school student and cheerleader. That individual, known only as B.L., failed to make her high school’s varsity cheerleading team and then posted a picture of herself with an expletive-filled caption to Snapchat the following weekend. School administrators saw the post and suspended B.L. from the junior varsity team for a year. B.L. sued her school in federal court, with the plaintiff claiming her suspension from the JV team had not only violated her First Amendment rights but that the rules of the school and team were overbroad, viewpoint-discriminatory, and unconstitutionally vague.
In a surprise move, the district court ruled in B.L.’s favor, noting that the school violated B.L.’s First Amendment rights by punishing her for off-campus speech. The school appealed, but the appeals court held the original judgment, making it clear that similar posts made to social media while off-campus are protected by the First Amendment.
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals v. Doughney
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) sued defendant Michael Doughney after Doughney registered the domain name Peta.org and created a website entitled People Eating Tasty Animals, which was described as “a resource for those who enjoy eating meat, wearing fur and leather, hunting, and the fruits of scientific research”—a clear spoof or parody of the animal rights organization. At the bottom of the website was a text box: “Feeling lost? Offended? Perhaps you should, like, exit immediately,” which included a link to PETA’s actual website.
In the lawsuit, PETA alleged that Doughney had infringed on its trademark with the creation of the site, which used the PETA acronym and was also diluting its trademark and cybersquatting. The district court that heard the case sided with PETA, making it clear that there can be legal consequences for those who intend to profit from using the parodied domain name if the domain name is identical or confusingly similar to the more famous name or mark.
Doughney later appealed the ruling to the circuit court, but the earlier ruling was affirmed.
A&M Records, Inc. v. Napster, Inc.
The case of A&M Records, Inc. v. Napster, Inc. was the first major case to address the issue of copyright law as it relates to peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing—and it fundamentally changed how music was shared online. Napster, a peer-to-peer music-sharing platform, was started in 1999 to allow users to access and download digital MP3s from other users’ machines.
Unlike other music-sharing platforms, however, Napster’s central server was built to index its users’ music files and created a list of music that was available for download for free on the platform, removing the need for music fans to purchase MP3s of the music offered on the Napster platform. This led A&M Records to sue Napster for copyright infringement related to its role in distributing copyrighted works.
Napster’s defense was that it offered users a way to sample the music before making a purchase and that the users already owned the music, which it received via authorized distributions of the copyrighted works. The court agreed with A&M Records, ruling in part that Napster’s P2P file-sharing service was not a fair use of copyrighted works—making it much more difficult for copyrighted music files to be shared by using these types of platforms online.
How internet law cases shape modern business operations
So, what does this all mean for your day-to-day? These cases aren’t just interesting stories; they are practical guides for how to operate online. They draw the lines for everything from contract design to data privacy.
The clickwrap cases, for example, tell us we need to be deliberate about how we design our online terms. It’s not enough to just have a link buried in a footer—Pew Research found that 56% of Americans routinely click “agree” without reading privacy policies—so you need clear, affirmative consent if you want your terms to hold up. The privacy cases show that the expectation of privacy is real, even for data on third-party servers—and 72% of Americans want more regulation of how companies handle personal data. This directly impacts your data processing agreements and how you handle customer information. And the accessibility cases are a clear signal that your digital presence is an extension of your business, with real-world compliance obligations—over 4,000 ADA web accessibility lawsuits were filed in 2024 alone.
This is where having the right tools becomes essential, especially since 92% of errors in contract management are human errors, as noted in The 2025 Legal Operations Field Guide. A good contract lifecycle management (CLM) platform with AI capabilities can help you scan your agreements to ensure your privacy clauses are up to snuff or that your online terms are presented in an enforceable way. It turns these legal lessons into an operational checklist, helping you stay ahead of risk instead of reacting to it. If you’re ready to see how a modern CLM can help you navigate these challenges, request a demo today.
Frequently asked questions about internet law cases
Are there specific federal laws that govern the internet?
There isn’t one single “internet law.” Instead, it’s a patchwork of federal acts like the Stored Communications Act (SCA) and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), state laws like the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), and the court cases that interpret how these laws apply to online activities. Think of it less as a rulebook and more as a collection of precedents that are constantly being updated.
How do these internet law cases affect my company’s contracts?
They have a huge impact. Cases like Feldman v. Google and Berkson v. Gogo directly influence how your online terms of service and clickwrap agreements must be designed to be enforceable. Privacy cases like United States v. Warshak shape the data privacy and security clauses you need in your vendor agreements and data processing agreements (DPAs). Essentially, these rulings provide the blueprint for creating compliant and defensible contracts in a digital world.
What’s the difference between a clickwrap and a browsewrap agreement?
This is a critical distinction that comes up a lot. A clickwrap agreement requires a user to take an affirmative action, like checking a box that says “I agree,” to accept the terms. Courts generally find these to be much more enforceable. A browsewrap agreement, on the other hand, states that by simply using the website, the user agrees to the terms. These are much harder to defend in court because it’s difficult to prove the user ever saw or consented to the terms.
Ironclad is not a law firm, and this post does not constitute or contain legal advice. To evaluate the accuracy, sufficiency, or reliability of the ideas and guidance reflected here, or the applicability of these materials to your business, you should consult with a licensed attorney. Use of and access to any of the resources contained within Ironclad’s site do not create an attorney-client relationship between the user and Ironclad.
