Eric Goldman (born April 15, 1968) is a professor at Santa Clara University School of Law, where he co-directs the High Tech Law Institute and co-supervises the Privacy Law Certificate (Source: en.wikipedia.org). His scholarship covers internet law, intermediary liability, intellectual property, and advertising law.
Background
Goldman received his undergraduate degree from UCLA in 1988 and a JD from UCLA School of Law together with a degree from the UCLA Anderson School of Management in 1994. Before entering full-time academia he was a technology transactions attorney at Cooley Godward and general counsel of Epinions.com, and taught as an assistant professor at Marquette University Law School. He was among the first cohort of law professors to teach internet law, offering his first course in the 1995–96 academic year (Source: en.wikipedia.org).
He publishes the Technology & Marketing Law Blog, which was named to the ABA Journal's Blawg 100 Hall of Fame, and has co-authored with Rebecca Tushnet the Advertising & Marketing Law: Cases and Materials casebook, along with an Internet Law: Cases & Materials casebook issued in successive annual editions (Source: en.wikipedia.org).
Positions and testimony
Goldman has testified before Congress on the Consumer Review Fairness Act, the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act (SESTA), and the Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (FOSTA), and has written on sex-trafficking exceptions to Section 230 and on balancing Section 230 against anti-trafficking initiatives (Source: en.wikipedia.org). He serves on the board of the Public Participation Project, which advocates for federal anti-SLAPP legislation, and oversees DoctoredReviews.com, a site directed at physician efforts to suppress patient reviews (Source: en.wikipedia.org).
Section 230 primer
Goldman's introductory primer on Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, dated October 15, 2022, sets out the pre-Section 230 liability landscape, the statutory change the provision introduced, and its role in the open-platform architecture of the internet (An Introduction to Section 230 — Eric Goldman (Section 230 Primer, 2022)). The primer is the doctrinal reference point for disputes over whether Section 230 extends to AI outputs, including the May 2025 ruling in Garcia v. Character Technologies, Inc. rejecting categorical Section 230 protection for chatbot outputs, and the contested immunity question in Raine v. OpenAI, Inc. (An Introduction to Section 230 — Eric Goldman (Section 230 Primer, 2022); see Section 230 (47 U.S.C. § 230)).
Relationships
- author-of: An Introduction to Section 230 — Eric Goldman (Section 230 Primer, 2022)
- supports: Section 230 (47 U.S.C. § 230)
- related: Garcia v. Character Technologies, Inc., Raine v. OpenAI, Inc., TAKE IT DOWN Act, Orin S. Kerr — companion internet-law and computer-crime scholarship