Intellectual Property Law
Electronic Freedom Foundation - Deep Links 
Explores topics of interest to EFF including intellectual property, privacy, free speech on the Net, technology and Internet architecture fro the perspective of how particular developments affect individual rights and will impact the future.
Post Frequency: 4.1/day Last Entry: November 19, 2009 at 23:03:18 Recent Entries: 648
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Stopping the ACTA Juggernaut
Posted on November 19, 2009The ACTA juggernaut continues to roll ahead, despite public indignation about an agreement supposedly about counterfeiting that has turned into a regime for global Internet regulation. The Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) has already announced that the next round of Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) negotiations will take place in January — with the aim of concluding the deal "as soon as possible in 2010...
Google Books Settlement 2.0: Evaluating Competition
Posted on November 19, 2009This is the third in a series of posts about the proposed Google Book Search settlement. Now that we've described the proposed settlement agreement's biggest potential upside for the public—expanded online access to books, particularly out-of-print books—that benefit must be weighed against the potential down-sides...
UK Alert: Stop the Pirate-Finder General!
Posted on November 19, 2009In the UK, the Labour administration's impatience to pass its "Digital Economy" agenda risks throwing balanced, deliberate reform of copyright law utterly out of the window. In less than 12 hours, the draft Digital Economy Bill will be released. It will apparently include a provision granting the Secretary of State — currently Lord Peter Mandelson — the power to make statutory instruments that can re-write Britain's Copyright, Design and Patents Act with almost no Parliamentary debate...
A Pirate-Finder General for the UK?
Posted on November 19, 2009Copyright law involves a delicate balance, made all the more fragile by the number of people who now find their every day actions affected by it. Some people benefit, others find ordinary behaviors made illegal. Reforming copyright in the face of new technology is a vital process, but it needs to be performed carefully, with all affected parties considered in the debate...
EFF Tackles Bogus Podcasting Patent - And We Need Your Help
Posted on November 19, 2009Patenting podcasting? You've got to be kidding. Yet a company called Volomedia just got the Patent Office to grant them such exclusive rights. EFF and the law firm of Howrey, LLP aren?t willing to just sit by and watch. This patent could threaten the vibrant community of podcasters and millions of podcast listeners...
ACLU of Northern California Launches dotRights Privacy Campaign
Posted on November 18, 2009We're excited to share the news that our friends at the ACLU of Northern California have just launched their dotRights privacy campaign, an impressive effort to spread the word about how online services collect and share reams of personal information about internet users...
Google Books Settlement 2.0: Evaluating Access
Posted on November 17, 2009This is the second in a series of posts about the proposed Google Book Search settlement. The Potential Upside: Enhanced Public Access From the public's point of view, unprecedented public access to books is the chief benefit promised by the revised proposed settlement (aka Settlement 2...
Google Books Settlement 2.0: Evaluating the Pros and Cons
Posted on November 16, 2009This is the first in a series of posts evaluating the proposed Google Book Search settlement. When it announced its Book Search project in 2004, Google set for itself an inspiring and noble goal. In the words of Google CEO Eric Schmidt, "Imagine yourself at your computer and, in less than a second, searching the full text of every book ever written...
Google Book Search Settlement Revised: No Reader Privacy Added
Posted on November 14, 2009Late Friday night the parties to the Google Book Search class action submitted a revised settlement agreement to the federal court in New York that is hearing the case. Unfortunately, the parties did not add any reader privacy protections. The only nominal change was that they formally confirmed a position they had long taken privately that information will not be freely shared between Google and the Registry...
Keeping a Global Eye on Copyright Law
Posted on November 13, 2009We spend a lot of our time at EFF trying to spot new proposals in copyright across the world, and understanding whether they're good or bad for civil liberties. We're not the only ones: our understanding depends on the work of hundreds of researchers worldwide who are constantly sifting through new drafts and consolidating older reforms in hundreds of nations...
International Activists Launch New Website to Gather and Share Copyright Knowledge
Posted on November 13, 2009San Francisco - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), Electronic Information for Libraries (eIFL.net), and other international copyright experts joined together today to launch Copyright Watch -- a public website created to centralize resources on national copyright laws at www...
More Freedom Necessary as Top Developers Abandon iPhone
Posted on November 13, 2009Apple's ridiculous iPhone app approval process has hit a new low, with rejections for ?ridiculing public figures" and using Apple's own APIs to access Apple icons. These are just the latest reasons why the U.S. Copyright Office should approve EFF's effort to legalize jailbreaking of the iPhone?customers and developers shouldn't need Apple's approval before using the software they want...
EFF Obtains Records from Behind-the-Scenes Negotiations on Telecom Immunity
Posted on November 12, 2009San Francisco, CA - Today the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) posted thousands of pages of records detailing behind-the-scenes negotiations between government agencies and Congress about providing immunity for telecoms involved in illegal government surveillance...
Coalition Calls for Restoration of Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board
Posted on November 12, 2009As we watch Congress wrangle with much-needed reforms to the PATRIOT Act -- particularly attempts to address the misuse of National Security Letters -- it's clear that there are important voices missing from the fray. One notable void stems from the empty Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB)...
Become a Google Policy Fellow and Work with EFF Next Summer
Posted on November 12, 2009If you're a student or researcher who is passionate about improving technology policy and you're interested in working with EFF, consider applying for the Google Policy Fellowship — a 10-week, summer program that gives students the chance to work alongside a public interest organization on topics of Internet and technology policy...
EFF to Represent Yes Men in Court Battle Over Chamber of Commerce Action
Posted on November 11, 2009San Francisco - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and Davis Wright Tremaine, LLP, will defend the Yes Men and other activists in a lawsuit filed against them by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce over political criticism of the Chamber's stance on climate change legislation...
From EFF's Secret Files: Anatomy of a Bogus Subpoena
Posted on November 10, 2009Can the U.S. government secretly subpoena the IP address of every visitor to a political website? No, but that didn't stop it from trying. In a report released today, EFF Senior Staff Attorney Kevin Bankston tells the story of a bogus federal subpoena issued to independent news site Indymedia...
Convicted Murderer To Wikipedia: Shhh!
Posted on November 10, 2009In 1990, Bavarian actor Walter Sedlmayr was brutally murdered. Two of his business associates were convicted, imprisoned for the crime, and recently paroled. Who killed Sedlmayr? Its a matter of public record, but if one of the men and his German law firm gets their way, Wikipedia (and EFF) will not be allowed to tell you...
Reining in ACTA: Update and Call to Action
Posted on November 10, 2009Last week saw the latest round of secret negotiations on ACTA, on criminal enforcement of IP, enforcement in the digital environment, and, according to one of the few public documents on the negotiations, ACTA's own "transparency". It's hard to imagine a more controversial set of IP topics -- and underlying them all is the distinct lack of transparency attached to the entire process...
Big Win in Telecom Lobbying Documents Battle - Government to Turn Over Some Records This Week
Posted on November 09, 2009EFF has big news in our long-running Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) battle over telecom lobbying documents: the government will finally release some additional records this week. This
Two Battles Won: PATRIOT Reform AND State Secrets Reform Bills Pass House Committee
Posted on November 05, 2009After a long two days of legislative battle, the House Judiciary Committee just finished its second day of debate on Chairman Conyers' PATRIOT reform bill, HR 3845 (see our wrap-up of the first day). Thanks in no small part to those of you who used our action alert, the Committee rejected almost all amendments that would have weakened the bill's reforms and voted to recommend the bill to the House floor by a vote of 16 to 10...
House Committee Heads into Second Day of PATRIOT Reform Battle
Posted on November 05, 2009After an eventful day yesterday, the first day of the House Judiciary Committee's "mark-up" of Chairman Conyers' PATRIOT reform bill (HR 3845), the Committee is starting its second day of PATRIOT debate at 11 AM EST this morning. State secrets reform is also still on the Committee's schedule, so it's looking to be a big day...
House Committee Considers PATRIOT Reform (UPDATED)
Posted on November 04, 2009The House Judiciary Committee has recessed its meeting to "mark-up" Chairman Conyers' PATRIOT renewal and reform bill, the USA Patriot Amendments Act of 2009 (HR 3845), so that the committee members can attend a vote on the House floor. We don't know when they'll be back — we'll try to tweet via @EFF if and when they do return — but in the meantime, here are the major developments that you missed if you weren't watching the live webcast...
"The Future of DVD" Panel and Happy Hour
Posted on November 04, 2009San Francisco - Please join the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) for a panel discussion on "The Future of DVD" at the Varnish Gallery in San Francisco on Monday, November 9, at 5:30 p.m. Panelists include Kaleidescape CEO Michael Malcolm, Real Networks Vice President and General Counsel Bill Way, Redbox Senior Vice President of New Business Mark Achler, and EFF Senior Staff Attorney Fred von Lohmann...
Leaked ACTA Internet Provisions: Three Strikes and a Global DMCA
Posted on November 03, 2009Negotiations on the highly controversial Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement start in a few hours in Seoul, South Korea. This week?s closed negotiations will focus on ?enforcement in the digital environment.? Negotiators will be discussing the Internet provisions drafted by the US government...
As Congress Considers State Secrets Reform, Obama Admin Tries to Shut Down Yet Another Warrantless Wiretapping Lawsuit
Posted on November 02, 2009In a Court filing late Friday night, the Obama Administration attempted to dress up in new clothes its embrace of one of the worst Bush Administration positions — that courts cannot be allowed to review the National Security Agency's massive, well-documented program of warrantless surveillance...
New York Court Scores Over Oregon In Recent Email Privacy Opinions
Posted on November 02, 2009Last week, two new district court opinions took opposing views on the question of whether the Fourth Amendment protects stored email. One of the cases easily adopted the prevailing view that the Constitution protects electronic communications, while the other ignored existing U...
Important Committee Vote on Wednesday - Support PATRIOT & State Secrets Reform Now!
Posted on November 02, 2009DVR is TV's New BFF
Posted on November 02, 2009Digital Video Recorders, once considered a mortal threat by the entertainment industry, have now become its new best friend. It's just the latest example of how the industry's constant warnings of the dangers of "piracy" frequently turn out to be baseless hysteria...
Hey, Texas Instruments -- Stop Digging Holes
Posted on October 29, 2009Texas Instruments (TI) ultimately failed to stand behind their misguided claim that calculator hobbyists violated copyright law by having public, online discussions about techniques to get more functionality from TI calculators. Yet the company continues to dig itself into new holes by issuing more improper take-down letters...
UK and Three Strikes: What Not to Do in an Election Year
Posted on October 28, 2009The arbitrary termination of Internet access for repeated accusations of copyright infringement -- "three strikes" -- is as profoundly unpopular in the UK as it is elsewhere. National experts have generally come out against the idea, from government civil servants who previously omitted it from a public consultation document as too drastic, to the counter-intelligence MI5 unit, who apparently fear it will encourage an encrypted and unpoliceable darknet, to many of the artists it is supposed to protect...
'Hall of Shame' Calls Out Bogus Internet Censorship
Posted on October 27, 2009San Francisco - Websites like YouTube have ushered in a new era of creativity and free speech on the Internet, but not everyone is celebrating. Some of the web's most interesting content has been yanked from popular websites with bogus copyright claims or other spurious legal threats...
minilinks for 2009-10-27
Posted on October 27, 2009CIA Invests In Social Network Monitoring Watch what you tweet! Intelligence agencies are investing in new tech to monitor and archive public activity on blogs and social networks. NYT Op-Ed: A Win For Free Speech The Times Editorial Board on why the Craigslist win in federal court matters...
Prepaid Providers Seek to Put Locks On Your Phone and Their Hands In Your Pocket
Posted on October 23, 2009As the deadline nears for a decision from the Copyright Office on EFF's request for a renewal of the 2006 exemption from DMCA liability for handset unlocking, prepaid phone companies have opened a new front in the war on consumer choice with a bill called the Wireless Prepaid Access Device Enforcement Act of 2009...
EFF: Chamber of Commerce Takes Aim at Yes Men
Posted on October 22, 2009San Francisco - Attorneys for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce have issued a takedown notice in an attempt to silence a parody website that was posted in support of the Yes Men's embarrassing prank poking fun at the Chamber's stance on climate change legislation...
EFF Urges Court to Ensure Fairness in Google Book Search Amendment Process
Posted on October 22, 2009EFF today led a coalition of authors, publishers, companies and nonprofit organizations in sending a letter to the judge overseeing the Google Book Search settlement urging the Court to ensure that those concerned about the settlement receive adequate notice of, and have sufficient time to study and comment on, any amended settlement agreement that Google, the Authors Guild, and the Association of American Publishers present...
Is Net Neutrality a FCC Trojan Horse?
Posted on October 21, 2009On Thursday, Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Julius Genachowski is expected to unveil draft rules aimed at imposing network neutrality obligations on Internet Service Providers (ISPs). In the excitement surrounding the announcement, however, many have overlooked the fact that the this rulemaking is built on a shoddy and dangerous foundation ? the idea that the FCC has unlimited authority to regulate the Internet...
Ninth Circuit Grants Stay in EFF Case Seeking Telecom Lobbying Documents
Posted on October 21, 2009Today the Ninth Circuit postponed a court-ordered deadline for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Department of Justice to turn over documents concerning a legislative push to give telecom carriers legal immunity for their participation in the government's warrantless surveillance program...
Cook County Sheriff Loses Craigslist "Erotic Services" Ads Case
Posted on October 21, 2009Yesterday, a federal court tossed a lawsuit against craigslist over erotic advertisements. In March, Cook County Sheriff Thomas Dart alleged that craigslist was liable for the illegal ads posted by its users in its "erotic services" (now "adult services") category...
Breaking News: House of Representatives Enters PATRIOT Fray With Two New Surveillance Reform Bills
Posted on October 20, 2009This afternoon, leaders in the House of Representatives introduced their own USA PATRIOT Act reform bill, responding to the disappointing PATRIOT renewal bill approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee two weeks ago. The new bill — the USA Patriot Amendments Act of 2009 (HR 3845) — was introduced by House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, Jr...
UPDATED: Once Again, Government Moves to Delay Release of Telecom Lobbying Documents
Posted on October 15, 2009This evening, the Director of National Intelligence and the Department of Justice filed yet another emergency motion with the Ninth Circuit, asking for a stay of the deadline to release telecom immunity lobbying documents, less than 24 hours before the documents are due to be released to the public...
Hollywood Pressuring FCC on Selectable Output Control Again
Posted on October 15, 2009Our friends at Public Knowledge have been doing a great job in Washington, D.C., fighting against the MPAA's efforts to selectively disable the high-definition analog (i.e., "component" video) outputs on your cable box. In essence, Hollywood is telling the FCC that it won't give Americans early access to blockbuster movies unless the FCC lets it kill your analog outputs...
Court Rules That Phones Ringing in Public Don't Infringe Copyright
Posted on October 15, 2009As we reported in June, ASCAP believes that when your cell phone's musical ringtone sounds in a public place, you're infringing copyright. A federal court yesterday firmly rejected that argument, ruling that "when a ringtone plays on a cellular telephone, even when that occurs in public, the user is exempt from copyright liability, and [the cellular carrier] is not liable either secondarily or directly...
Got Any Questions for LinkedIn Founder Reid Hoffman?
Posted on October 14, 2009On Thursday, October 22, EFF hosts the 2009 Pioneer Awards in conjunction with the Web 2.0 Summit, and keynote speaker Reid Hoffman will be answering pre-submitted questions from EFF supporters. Wanna know how he came up with the idea for LinkedIn? Curious about what he thinks the Next Big Thing will be? Here's your chance to ask! Reid Hoffman is the Executive Chairman and co-founder of LinkedIn, the business-oriented social networking site...
Record 12-Million-Digit Prime Number Nets $100,000 Prize
Posted on October 14, 2009San Francisco - A worldwide volunteer computing project called the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search (GIMPS) has discovered a 12-million-digit prime number, netting $100,000 and a Cooperative Computing Award from the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) for discovering a prime number of over 10 million digits...
EFF Challenges Dangerous Patent on VoIP Systems
Posted on October 14, 2009San Francisco - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is challenging a dangerous patent on voice-over-Internet protocol (VoIP) that could cripple the adoption of new VoIP technologies. A communications company named Acceris was awarded this illegitimate patent for hardware, software, and processes for implementing VoIP using analog telephones as endpoints -- covering many telephone calls made over the Internet...
Federal Court Denies Government Attempt to Delay Release of Telecom Records. Again.
Posted on October 13, 2009Today a federal district court denied the government's latest emergency motion asking for a 30-day stay in last Friday's deadline to release records relating to telecom lobbying over last year's debate over immunity for corporate participation in government spying...
EFF Warns Texas Instruments to Stop Harassing Calculator Hobbyists
Posted on October 13, 2009San Francisco - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) warned Texas Instruments (TI) today not to pursue its baseless legal threats against calculator hobbyists who blogged about potential modifications to the company's programmable graphing calculators...
It's My Browser, and I'll Auto-Click if I Want To
Posted on October 09, 2009Free file hosting provider MediaFire seems to think that, when you follow a link to download a file from its service, it has the right to control your browser. This is yet another example of a web site owner forgetting that it's your computer, and it's none of their business how you choose to experience their web pages...
UPDATE: Appeals Court Denies Government Motion to Delay Release of Telecom Lobbying Documents
Posted on October 09, 2009Today, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals denied the government's emergency motion asking for a 30-day stay in today's deadline to release records relating to telecom lobbying over last year's debate over immunity for corporate participation in government spying...
Federal Court Partially Invalidates One of EFF Most Wanted Patents: Acacia Research Streaming Media
Posted on September 30, 2009Ten claims from the Acacia Research Streaming Media Patent have been invalidated by the U.S.District Court for the Northern District of California. The Court invalidated the remaining claims that had been asserted in the litigation, after several others had been dropped from the suit by Acacia...
PATRIOT Act Debate Must Include Reform of Last Year's FISA Amendments Act
Posted on September 30, 2009Today, the American Constitution Society's blog, ACSblog, was gracious enough to let EFF's Kevin Bankston guest blog about the current debate over renewal of the USA PATRIOT Act. Kevin took the opportunity to highlight the need for Congress to revisit the broad surveillance authority granted by last year's FISA Amendments Act (FAA) when it considers reforming the PATRIOT Act...
NYT: New Obama Policy on State Secrets isn't Enough; Reform by Congress is Needed
Posted on September 29, 2009Today's New York Times included an excellent editorial on the Obama Adminstration's new policy toward the state secrets privilege. Echoing EFF's disappointment in the new procedures, the editorial explains: The other day, Attorney General Eric Holder Jr...
Prompted by EFF Lawsuit, FBI (Partially) Releases Domestic Surveillance Guidelines
Posted on September 29, 2009The Federal Bureau of Investigation has released a heavily censored version of its controversial Domestic Investigations and Operations Guidelines (DIOG), which became effective on December 1, 2008. EFF requested public disclosure of the guidelines under the Freedom of Information Act in December and, after more than six months passed with no response, we filed suit against the Department of Justice in June 2009...
EFF Supports New Bill to Repeal Telco Immunity
Posted on September 29, 2009Yesterday, four US Senators led by Senator Chris Dodd announced plans to introduce "The Retroactive Immunity Repeal Act". That bill, endorsed by EFF, would repeal the law that Congress passed last summer granting immunity to phone companies that illegally assist in domestic spying by US intelligence agencies, and would revive EFF?s recently dismissed lawsuit against AT&T for its collaboration in the NSA?s warrantless wiretapping program...
Cops Can't Convert Car Into Tracking Device Without Court's OK
Posted on September 29, 2009The Supreme Court of Massachusetts recently held that officers may not place GPS tracking devices on cars without first getting a warrant. The case, Commonwealth v. Connolly, was decided under the state corollary to the Fourth Amendment, and its reasoning may influence pending GPS tracking cases, including United States v...
Reform the USA PATRIOT Act and Repeal Telco Immunity
Posted on September 28, 2009Last week, ten US Senators introduced the perfect vehicle for reform of the surveillance powers in the PATRIOT Act, as well as the much broader and more dangerous FISA Amendments Act (FAA), the warrantless surveillance law that was passed by Congress last summer...
Hey, TI, Leave Those Kids Alone
Posted on September 26, 2009Graphing calculators have long inspired geeks in remarkable ways. But, sadly, rather than celebrating the hobbyists that love their programmable calculators, Texas Instruments has set the lawyers loose on them, invoking the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA)...
You Bought It, You Own It: MDY v. Blizzard Appealed
Posted on September 25, 2009When you buy World of Warcraft (WoW) in a retail box, do you own the copy of the software you bought? That's the critical legal question facing the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in a pending appeal in MDY v. Blizzard, and the question that Public Knowledge took on in an excellent amicus brief filed with the court earlier this week...
Obama?s Disappointing State Secrets Procedures
Posted on September 24, 2009After months of internal review, the Obama Administration today announced a new policy on the use of the state secrets privilege. The state secrets privilege traditionally allows the government to withdraw particular pieces of evidence from a court case on the grounds that the evidence would reveal sensitive classified information...
EFF Wins Release of Telecom Lobbying Records
Posted on September 24, 2009San Francisco - A judge ordered the government Thursday to release more records about the lobbying campaign to provide immunity to the telecommunications giants that participated in the NSA's warrantless surveillance program. U.S. District Judge Jeffrey S...
PATRIOT Debate Round-Up: Dems Press Obama for Reforms; Leahy Bill a Good Start But Doesn't Stack Up to Last Week's JUSTICE Bill
Posted on September 24, 2009Following last week's introduction by Senators Feingold and Durbin of the JUSTICE Act bill, the debate over renewal and reform of the USA PATRIOT Act kicked into over-drive this week with a second bill introduced in the Senate and hearings in both the House and Senate...
How online tracking companies know most of what you do online (and what social networks are doing to help them)
Posted on September 22, 2009This post is Part 2 of a series on user tracking on the web today. You can read Part 1 here. 3rd party advertising and tracking firms are ubiquitous on the modern web. When you visit a webpage, there's a good chance that it contains tiny images or invisible javascript that exists for the sole purpose of tracking and recording your browsing habits...
Book Review: Bill Patry's Moral Panics and the Copyright Wars
Posted on September 22, 2009Bill Patry is widely regarded as one of the leading copyright law experts in the United States. For the past several years, moreover, he's been Senior Copyright Counsel at Google. Yet somehow he's found the time to write a book, too, Moral Panics and the Copyright Wars, which was published earlier this month...
Google Releases Complete Google Voice App FCC Response
Posted on September 18, 2009Today, recognizing pending FOIA requests by EFF and Wired News, Google dropped its claim of confidentiality and paved the way for the FCC to release the full text of its explanation of Apple's rejection of the Google Voice iPhone app. As we've reported previously, the FCC is investigating Apple's rejection of the Google Voice iPhone app from Apple's iPhone App Store...
RIAA Asks Schoolkids To Assist With Propaganda
Posted on September 17, 2009Last week, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) announced an update to Music-Rules!, its flagship "curriculum" for teaching copyright law to schoolkids. We wrote about Music-Rules! and similar industry propaganda efforts in May, outlining some of their falsehoods and biases...
UMG v. Veoh: Big Win for Online Video
Posted on September 17, 2009Earlier this week, a federal court in Los Angeles ruled that Veoh, an online video hosting service similar to YouTube, qualifies for a DMCA safe harbor that protects the service from monetary damages for copyright infringements committed by its users...
Ninth Circuit Holds Disloyal Computer Use Is Not A Crime
Posted on September 17, 2009Are employees who use their workplace computers contrary to the interests of their employers criminals under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act? Yesterday, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals said disloyal keyboarding is not a crime in LVRC Holdings v. Brekka...
EFF Supports JUSTICE Bill to Reform the USA PATRIOT Act and Repeal Telecom Immunity
Posted on September 17, 2009On December 31, three provisions of the USA PATRIOT Act that broadly expanded government surveillance authority in the wake of 9/11 are set to expire.1 The Obama Administration made clear in a letter this week to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy that although the Justice Department supports reauthorization of those provisions, it is also open to discussing modifications to the law ?to provide additional protection for the privacy of law abiding Americans...
Protect Your Privacy Rights
Posted on September 16, 2009When the Internet helped foster nationwide protests in Iran, EFF published a new international edition of our Surveillance Self-Defense guide, explaining how dissidents could avoid government eavesdropping and censorship. Google's new Book Search service will track everything you read, creating a dossier that's ripe for abusive government demands...
License to Kill Innovation: the Broadcast Flag for UK Digital TV?
Posted on September 15, 2009The British MP Tom Watson has highlighted a digital TV consultation by UK regulator Ofcom, held in response to an inquiry from the BBC (the consultation deadline is this Wednesday): The BBC has indicated that third party content owners are seeking to ensure that reception equipment will implement ...
New cookie technologies: harder to see and remove, widely used to track you
Posted on September 14, 2009This is part 1 of a three-part series on user tracking on the web today. Cookies are still a privacy problem for web users, many years after privacy advocates first raised concerns about their use to track web browsing. Today, cookies are one of the main mechanisms that advertising companies like Google use to track and profile users across sites and over time -- often building up a single gigantic profile for years and years...
What information is "personally identifiable"?
Posted on September 12, 2009Mr. X lives in ZIP code 02138 and was born July 31, 1945. These facts about him were included in an anonymized medical record released to the public. Sounds like Mr. X is pretty anonymous, right? Not if you're Latanya Sweeney, a Carnegie Mellon University computer science professor who showed in 1997 that this information was enough to pin down Mr...
EFF's Geek Reading: xkcd Webcomic Author Randall Munroe
Posted on September 10, 2009Monday, September 21st will be the second Geek Reading event to benefit EFF, at 111 Minna in downtown San Francisco. This time, the author in question is Randall Munroe, otherwise known as the writer and cartoonist behind the brilliant webcomic xkcd. For those not yet part of the xkcd cult, the cartoon with the strange name consistently brings some of the sharpest satire to the world of the Internet and digital culture...
Who Controls Data About Public Transportation?
Posted on September 10, 2009How should city transit authorities treat independent software developers who make use of public schedule data? What approach results in the best experience for their passengers and customers? Two models appear to be emerging to answer this question. One, typified by New York City's MTA and Washington, DC's WMATA, sees schedule and related data as valuable intellectual property, to be zealously protected, licensed and monetized...
Improving DMCA Takedowns at Blogger, Flickr
Posted on September 08, 2009In the past couple weeks, two major online service providers, Blogger and Flickr, announced improvements to their DMCA takedown policies. EFF had a hand in both: Blogger contacted us to discuss their improvements, and we contacted Flickr to raise some concerns we had...
National Coalition of Authors Urge Rejection of Google Book Search Deal
Posted on September 08, 2009New York - A coalition of authors and publishers?including best-sellers Michael Chabon, Jonathan Lethem, and technical author Bruce Schneier?is urging a federal judge to reject the proposed settlement in a lawsuit over Google Book Search, arguing that the sweeping agreement to digitize millions of books ignores critical privacy rights for readers and writers...
UK Musicians Oppose Draconian Disconnect Policy
Posted on September 04, 2009The UK government still seems unsure as to whether it's a good idea to punish those accused of illegal downloading by cutting off Internet access for entire households, saying it wants to "support" the music industry. But now it seems a coalition of the actual British musicians, songwriters and producers behind the music don't want "support" of this kind, and view this sort of draconian policy as "extraordinarily negative...
Google Book Privacy Policy: Good Start, Much More Needed
Posted on September 04, 2009Late yesterday afternoon, September 3, 2009, Google finally issued a privacy policy for Google Books, both the current service and the extensive new book-related services they hope to have a federal court approve in October. While there are some good things in the policy — many that EFF and its coalition partners the ACLU of Northern California and the Samuelson Clinic at Berkeley Law School have long been urging Google to do — it is still falls well short of the privacy protections that readers need, both substantively and in whether it will be permanent and readily enforceable by readers...
Cybersecurity Act Returns With a Fresh Coat of Paint
Posted on September 02, 2009In April, we voiced serious concerns about the Cybersecurity Act of 2009, a bill by Senators Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) and Olympia Snowe (R-ME), that sought to give the federal government unprecedented power over the Internet. For months, the bill has been redrafted behind closed doors and has recently been circulated, but by all accounts, the changes are cosmetic and it's sadly more of the same...
Grade the Obama Administration's Work on Consumer Privacy!
Posted on September 01, 2009The Privacy Coalition, a coalition of organizations committed to privacy issues, is inviting the public to give the Obama Administration a grade on its privacy work thus far: The Obama Administration can protect consumer privacy by supporting new laws, by safeguarding the personal information held by the federal government, and by strengthening the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), the chief agency responsible for protecting U...
NYT on Locational Privacy
Posted on September 01, 2009The New York Times today has a nice opinion piece by Adam Cohen that does a good job of laying out the concerns about locational privacy that EFF and other privacy advocates have raised: A little-appreciated downside of the technology revolution is that, mainly without thinking about it, we have given up ?locational privacy...
Privacy in Online Behavioral Tracking and Targeting - It's Time to Protect Consumers
Posted on September 01, 2009EFF and a coalition of other consumer and privacy groups called on Congress today to protect Americans' privacy from invasive online behavioral tracking and targeting. In letters sent to the House Energy and Commerce Committee and two subcommittees, the groups delivered a legislative primer: "Tracking people?s every move online is an invasion of privacy...
Promising SXSW Panel Proposals
Posted on August 28, 2009In the past few years, interesting conversations about new media and innovation have taken place at the South by Southwest (SXSW) conference and festival. Voting for the panels to be featured in 2010 is taking place until September 4 -- here are a few proposals that we think will yield interesting discussions: A panel titled "Reading ReInvented: Can You Steal this Book?" organized by Jason Schultz at the UC Berkeley School of Law seeks greater clarity on the future of the book -- a topic in serious need of attention from the smart and creative in light of Amazon's remote deletions on the Kindle, concerns with Google Book Search, and more...
The New York Times on Government Website Privacy
Posted on August 25, 2009Today's New York Times includes their editorial board's take on revising government web tracking policy. Their recommendations align closely with those we made in coordination with The Center for Democracy and Technology earlier this month: Officials say they recognize that people must be told that their use of Web sites is being tracked ? and be given a chance to opt out...
Op-Ed on Lawless Surveillance by Cindy Cohn
Posted on August 24, 2009EFF Legal Director Cindy Cohn has penned an opinion piece currently on the blog of the American Constitution Society. The piece points out that the Obama Administration has embraced two of the most radical positions taken by the Bush Administration — that the Executive Branch need not follow the law and that the courts should not be allowed to review the core constitutional questions that the Executive Branch wants hidden: The Bush administration's central view was that the executive branch was somehow above the niceties of the Constitution...
Chicago Development Critics Fight for Anonymity
Posted on August 21, 2009Chicago - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has asked an Illinois Circuit Court judge to quash subpoenas aimed at outing opponents of a controversial city project. In December, local residents filed a lawsuit in state court against the city of Chicago and local developers, challenging the legality of a development project in the city's Uptown neighborhood...
Stomping Grapes for EFF in Indiana
Posted on August 21, 2009Earlier this month, we received an exciting letter in the mail from the Vevay, Indiana Tourism Board. During our 38th Swiss Wine Festival (one of Indiana's Top 10 Festivals) held this August 27-30, we will be debuting a new event. Our First Annual "Media Celebrity Grape Stomp for Charity" will feature on-air celebrities from television and radio, newspaper columnists, professional bloggers and freelance writers...
PASS ID: REAL ID Reanimated
Posted on August 20, 2009In February, the opponents of REAL ID were given a bit of hope when Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said that she wanted to repeal the REAL ID Act, the federal government's failed plan to impose a national identification card through state driver's licenses...
Warrants Required: EFF and Google's Big Disagreement about Google Book Search
Posted on August 18, 2009The central question in the privacy debate that EFF and our partners at the ACLU of Northern California and the Samuelson Law, Technology & Public Policy Clinic at UC Berkeley have been having with Google about Google Book Search is whether this exciting new digital library/bookstore is going to maintain the strong protections for reader privacy that traditional libraries and bookstores have fought for and largely won...
More Seek Privacy from Google Book Search Settlement
Posted on August 14, 2009Concerns about Google Book Search and its potential effects on reader privacy are spreading widely in the wake of the joint action alert issued by EFF and the ACLU of Northern California. Copyright scholar Pam Samuelson recently investigated the scope of the settlement in an editorial titled "The Audacity of the Google Book Search Settlement," noting that "...
NPR Story on Google Books, Privacy and the Future of the Book
Posted on August 13, 2009NPR had a radio story yesterday on the Google Books settlement and the privacy concerns raised by EFF and many authors and publishers. It's short but does a great job of covering the basic points, and includes excellent commentary from author Jonathan Lethem, who has joined EFF in calling on Google to do more to commit to privacy protections for readers: Novelist Jonathan Lethem says Google should be "congratulated" for its effort...
Judge Rules Against RealDVD
Posted on August 12, 2009Judge Patel (who also handled Napster and Bernstein cases) has granted a preliminary injunction in favor of the major motion picture studios and DVD-CCA in their legal battle with Real Networks over its RealDVD products. The case involves the legality of two products intended to allow DVD owners to make digital copies onto hard drives for later playback...
Snatching Rights On the Playa
Posted on August 12, 2009In a few weeks, tens of thousands of creative people will make their yearly pilgrimage to Nevada?s Black Rock desert for Burning Man, an annual art event and temporary community celebrating radical self expression, self-reliance, creativity and freedom...
The Onion: Google's New Opt-Out Privacy Protections
Posted on August 11, 2009There's good news today for privacy advocates ? the Onion reports that Google has developed an exciting new "opt out" program for those who don't want the search giant compiling vast amounts of their personal data: Those unsure about whether this opt out feature is right for them may want to take action now ? tell Google you want privacy protections built in to Google Book Search to ensure the right to read privately in the future...
Recommendations for Federal Web Privacy Policy
Posted on August 11, 2009Today, EFF and the Center for Democracy and Technology submitted comments to the Office of Management and Budget in response to the agency's review of the policies governing the federal government's use of cookies and other web technologies. The comments are an extension of recommendations we made in May, in which we suggested that the OMB permit cookie-based web analytics so long as the process was carefully overseen and met with specific strict safeguards...
The UK's Surveillance Society: Half A Million Intercepts of Communications Data in 2008
Posted on August 11, 2009This week, the United Kingdom's Interception of Communications commissioner, Sir Paul Kennedy, announced his latest statistics for Britain's phone and email surveillance systems, to generally shocked responses by the British Public. In 2008, law enforcement, local authorities and the secret services in that country demanded "communication data" — the "who, how, when and where", but not the actual content of messages — 504,073 times...
EFF and PK to Congress: U.S. Trade Advisory Committee Needs Technology Users' Input
Posted on August 06, 2009EFF and Public Knowledge this week urged Congress to give American technology users more input in international trade agreements that have broad ramifications for digital freedom. In written testimony submitted to the House Ways and Means Committee, the groups told lawmakers that the U...
Who Knows Where You Are, And Why?
Posted on August 05, 2009San Francisco - Innovative new technologies can make it easier to pay your bridge toll or bus fare, to search for nearby businesses from your cell phone, and to get in and out of secure areas with a card instead of a key. But these systems also pose a dramatic threat to locational privacy -- your ability to move in public spaces without the systematic recording of where you are and when you are there...
The Kindle Lawsuit: Protecting Readers From Future Abuses
Posted on August 05, 2009Not surprisingly, Amazon?s recent deletion of George Orwell?s 1984 and Animal Farm from its customers' Kindle e-book readers has sparked a class action lawsuit by Kindle users. After all, not only was the remote deletion ?stupid,? as CEO Jim Bezos admitted, it also appears to have been a violation of the terms of service for Kindle that Amazon itself drafted...
EFF Releases Interim Report on the Automated Targeting System
Posted on August 03, 2009EFF today released an Interim Report on the Automated Targeting System (ATS) through which the Department of Homeland Security monitors and assigns risk assessment scores to Americans and others who cross into or out of the United States. The data reviewed under the ATS system includes seven large government databases, plus the Passenger Name Record data from the airlines (which includes data like whether you've ordered a Muslim or Hindu or Jewish special meal)...
Cars.gov Terms of Service: What Glenn Beck Gets Right and Wrong
Posted on August 03, 2009There's an entertaining clip from Glenn Beck's Fox News program making the rounds on the Internet lately, featuring this language from the Terms of Service for the "Cash for Clunkers" program: This application provides access to the [Department of Transportation] DoT CARS system...
EFF Defends Wikipedian's Right to the Public Domain
Posted on August 03, 2009As has been widely reported, the National Portrait Gallery of London (NPG) recently sent a legal threat to an American Wikipedian, Derrick Coetzee, over his posting approximately 3,000 photos of public domain paintings to Wikipedia. Because of the importance of this issue for the public domain and the Internet generally, EFF has taken Mr...
FCC Opens Investigation on iPhone App Discrimination
Posted on August 03, 2009The FCC has sent a trio of letters to Apple, AT&T, and Google seeking information about Apple's recent decision to block Google Voice apps from Apple's iPhone App Store. We're pleased that Chairman Genachowski's FCC is taking wireless competition seriously, and hope that it also looks into similar discriminatory treatment that has affected iPhone apps from others, such as Skype, Mozilla, and Sling Media...
The Book vs. The Kindle
Posted on July 30, 2009San Francisco bookstore Green Apple Books has put together a series of humorous videos that point up the advantages of paper books over Amazon's Kindle e-book reader. Round 1 takes a look at how the Kindle fares for buyers who might want to resell their book (the so-called first sale doctrine): Round 2 compares the difference between buying a digital book and buying a paper book — it's all about the fine print: It's great to see a bookstore remind us of the advantages that paper books still have over digital ones...
The Future of Book Banning?
Posted on July 28, 2009Farhad Manjoo over at Slate has written the best summation to date on Amazon's 1984 scandal, in which digital versions of the Orwell classic were surreptitiously removed from users' Kindles without their permission. Amazon has apologized and promised never to delete books in this fashion in the future...
BayFF on August 3: Iranian Protests and Digital Media
Posted on July 27, 2009Iranians protesting the results of the recent election found an outlet and a means of organizing with the Internet, and showed that new digital media can help free speech and fight repression globally. But what happens now the headlines and the Twitter trends have died down? If you're in the California Bay Area, join us in San Francisco's PariSoMa on Monday, August 3, from 7pm - 9pm as we discuss the lessons of Iran and other global protests, what's happening now, and how to make the digital media we create serve netizens in authoritarian regimes...
Don't Let Google Close the Book on Reader Privacy!
Posted on July 23, 2009If you suspect you may have a serious disease, you can go into a bookstore and browse for books about your illness, find one that's useful, and buy it with cash. And you can rest assured that your insurance premiums won't increase as a result, because there is no way your insurance company can find out about your choice of reading material...
SF Chronicle: Obama Position on Wiretapping is "Mind-Boggling"
Posted on July 22, 2009Calling the Obama administration's position on warrantless wiretapping "mind-boggling," the San Francsico Chronicle ran an editorial Monday calling for a federalcourt not to dismiss EFF's Jewel v. NSA, which seeks to bring an end the illegal spying program...
Apple Withdraws Threats Against Wiki Site
Posted on July 22, 2009San Francisco - Apple has retracted its legal threats against public wiki hosting site Bluwiki, and, in response, EFF is dismissing its lawsuit against Apple over those threats. The skirmish involved a set of anonymously authored wiki pages in which hobbyists were discussing how to "sync" media to iPods and iPhones using music library playback software other than Apple's own iTunes...
Apple Backs Down On Bluwiki Threats
Posted on July 22, 2009Apple has retracted its legal threats against public wiki hosting site Bluwiki, and, in response, EFF is dismissing its lawsuit against Apple over those threats. The skirmish involved a set of anonymously authored wiki pages in which hobbyists were discussing how to enable recent-vintage iPods and iPhones to "sync" media with software other than Apple's own iTunes (e...
EFF Demands Intelligence Agencies' Reports About Possible Misconduct
Posted on July 22, 2009San Francisco - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) filed suit today against the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and a half-dozen other federal agencies involved in intelligence gathering, demanding the immediate release of reports about potential misconduct...
A Practical Guide to Internet Technology for Political Activists in Repressive Regimes
Posted on July 21, 2009San Francisco - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) released "Surveillance Self-Defense International" (SSDI) today, a practical guide to help activists from around the world use the Internet safely under repressive regimes. It is available at: http://www...
President Lula and the Brazilian Cybercrime Bill
Posted on July 17, 2009Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Da Silva, popularly known as Lula, announced during the recent Fórum Internacional de Software Livre (FISL) that "No one is more creative than we are. What we need is an opportunity. This law here... it doesn't aim to fix the abuse of the Internet...
Orwell in 2009: Dystopian Rights Management
Posted on July 17, 2009In George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, the protagonist Winston Smith labors in obscurity to make information appear and disappear at the whims of the Ministry of Truth: This process of continuous alteration was applied not only to newspapers, but to books, periodicals, pamphlets, posters, leaflets, films, sound-tracks, cartoons, photographs — to every kind of literature or documentation which might conceivably hold any political or ideological significance...
Nominate a Pioneer for EFF's 2009 Pioneer Awards!
Posted on July 16, 2009The EFF Pioneer Awards were established to recognize leaders on the electronic frontier who are extending freedom and innovation in the realm of information technology. Each year we field nominations from the EFF community ? now is your opportunity to nominate a deserving individual or group to receive a Pioneer Award for 2009! How to Nominate Someone for a 2009 Pioneer Award: You may send as many nominations as you wish, but please use one email per nomination...
minilinks for 2009-07-16
Posted on July 16, 2009NSA Cyber OverkillAn LA Times op-ed piece questions the Obama administration's plan to use the National Security Agency to screen government computer traffic on private-sector networks. Court: IP Addresses Are Not 'Personally Identifiable' InformationA federal judge in Seattle has ruled that Microsoft did not violate it's user agreement not to collect personally identifiable information when it collected IP addresses...
News Round-Up: Jewel v. NSA Hearing
Posted on July 16, 2009On Wednesday, EFF argued in federal court against the government's motion to dismiss Jewel v. NSA, EFF's case seeking to end the dragnet government surveillance of millions of ordinary Americans. EFF lawyers told federal judge Vaughn Walker that the lawsuit cannot be dismissed based on the government's blanket secrecy assertion, as made clear in previous court decisions concerning NSA spying and the CIA's special rendition program, and that the government is not immune against suit for violating federal wiretapping statutes...
Pay As You Drive ?Black Boxes? Threaten Driver Privacy
Posted on July 15, 2009The California Department of Insurance (DOI) is considering regulations that would enable insurance prices to depend on the precise number of miles a car is driven in a given billing period. But in implementing these "Pay As You Drive" regulations, the DOI appears poised to empower insurance companies to require customers' cars to be outfitted with "black-box" devices that could transmit back to the insurance companies all sorts of data about car motion (acceleration, braking, and so forth) as well as driver behavior (steering and seat-belt wearing)...
Facebook and the Phone Companies Try to Lock You In
Posted on July 15, 2009What does Facebook have in common with wireless phone companies like AT&T? Both companies try to lock customers in, even if we'd rather take our business elsewhere. Facebook is suing Power.com, a company that gives users a tool to pull copies of their own friends lists, postings and other information out of Facebook so that they can aggregate it with their other social networking platforms...
Wednesday Hearing in Government Fight to Silence Warrantless Wiretapping Case
Posted on July 13, 2009San Francisco - On Wednesday, July 15, at 10:30 a.m., a federal judge in San Francisco will hear arguments in the government's motion to dismiss Jewel v. NSA, a case from the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) challenging dragnet government surveillance of millions of ordinary Americans...
Inspectors General Report on Warrantless Wiretapping
Posted on July 10, 2009Today, the Inspectors General of five government agencies released the unclassified version of a report on the Bush Administration?s warrantless domestic surveillance program. The report was required by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) Amendments Act of 2008, which was signed into law one year ago today...
Unclassified Version of Report to Congress on NSA Program is Available Now
Posted on July 10, 2009A classified report to Congress on the National Security Agency's warrantless surveillance program was submitted today -- as required by the FISA Amendments Act, passed one year ago today -- by the Inspectors General of the Justice Department, the NSA, and other agencies involved in the program...
ASCAP Makes Outlandish Copyright Claims on Cell Phone Ringtones
Posted on July 02, 2009New York - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) urged a federal court Wednesday to reject bogus copyright claims in a ringtone royalty battle that could raise costs for consumers, jeopardize consumer rights, and curtail new technological innovation...
Judge Overturns Lori Drew Misdemeanor Convictions
Posted on July 02, 2009A federal district court judge today threw out the misdemeanor convictions of Lori Drew after the judge determined that the federal anti-hacking statute under which Drew was prosecuted was inapplicable to the allegation that she violated MySpace's terms of service...
Help Protesters in Iran: Run a Tor Bridge or a Tor Relay
Posted on June 29, 2009As turmoil over the disputed election in Iran continues, many techs are trying to find ways to help Iranian citizens safely communicate and receive information despite the barriers being established by Iranian authorities. One tactic that even moderately tech-savvy Internet users can employ is to set up a Tor relay or a Tor bridge...
miniLinks for 2009-06-26
Posted on June 26, 2009Surveillance in Iran vs. Surveillance in the US Iran has an Internet monitoring center built by Nokia and Siemens AG -- what kind of domestic spying is happening in the US? Data Shows Music Fans Are Willing to Buy TopSpin and Nettwerk have experimented with premium discs, free albums, and free shows, and have found that fans are still more than willing to pay...
Several Facts about Google and HTTPS
Posted on June 25, 2009Three simple facts about Google and HTTPS: One: as we posted last week, we're very pleased to hear that Google is trialling full HTTPS encryption of all Gmail pages. Two: if Google's trials are successful, and the company does indeed make HTTPS encryption the default protocol for reading and writing Gmail messages, it will have taken a two-step lead on its competitors in the free webmail and social networking spaces...
EFF Demands Public Release of FBI Surveillance Rules
Posted on June 24, 2009Washington, D.C. - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) filed suit against the Department of Justice today, demanding the public release of the surveillance guidelines that govern investigations of Americans by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)...
ASCAP and Copyright Doublespeak
Posted on June 23, 2009Just a few days ago, we pointed out that ASCAP is arguing in federal court that every time your musical ringtone rings in public, you're violating copyright law by "publicly performing" it without a license. Now ASCAP has fired up its spin control machinery and issued a statement to Billboard, including this talking point, doubtless meant to be reassuring: To be completely clear, ASCAP?s approach has always been to license these businesses ? not to charge listeners/end-users...
ASCAP Wants To Be Paid When Your Phone Rings
Posted on June 19, 2009ASCAP (the same folks who went after Girl Scouts for singing around a campfire) appears to believe that every time your musical ringtone rings in public, you're violating copyright law by "publicly performing" it without a license. At least that's the import of a brief [2...
miniLinks for 2009-06-19
Posted on June 19, 2009REAL ID Revival Bill Is Another Attempt at a National ID A new "PASS ID" bill seeks to create a privacy-invasive national ID, just like its antecedent, REAL ID. IP Colloquium Podcast Tackles Patent Damages Reform UCLA Law Professor Doug Lichtman and his guests explore the contentious issues around patent reform, including the difficulty of calculating damages and considering the many possible reforms...
Hear, Hear: New York Times Editorial Board Calls for Repeal of FISA Amendments Act
Posted on June 18, 2009Responding to repeated reports that the National Security Agency's surveillance dragnet is continuing to intercept Americans' purely domestic communications in the millions, the New York Times editorial board is calling on Congress to repeal the deeply-flawed FISA Amendments Act (FAA), which broadly expanded the government's spying powers while immunizing the phone companies that illegally cooperated with the NSA program...
Google Considering More HTTPS, Other Services to Follow?
Posted on June 18, 2009Earlier this week, privacy and security researchers urged Google to improve the security of Gmail, Google Docs, and Google Calendar by enabling the more secure HTTPS encryption by default. As it stands, all users currently log in to Google services over HTTPS...
Record Labels' $1.9 Million Win in Thomas Retrial Constitutional?
Posted on June 18, 2009The jury in the retrial of Ms. Jammie Thomas-Rasset deliberated only a few hours today before concluding that she had willfully infringed the copyrights of 24 songs and awarding $1.92 million in statutory damages ($80,000 per recording) to the record label plaintiffs...
More from the NYT on NSA's Domestic Spying: "Pinwale" Has Your Emails
Posted on June 17, 2009Following up on their report in April detailing the National Security Agency's systemic and significant "overcollection" ? that is, illegal interception ? of Americans' domestic communications, James Risen and Eric Lichbtblau of the New York Times have just published a new story with even more detail about the NSA's ongoing warrantless wiretapping and the concerns it is raising in Congress...
EFF and Public Knowledge Reluctantly Drop Lawsuit for Information About ACTA
Posted on June 17, 2009Washington, D.C. - The Obama Administration's decision to support Bush-era concealment policies has forced the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and Public Knowledge (PK) to drop their lawsuit about the proposed Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA)...
Trade Sanctions and Web 2.0: Are US Regulations Hurting Free Speech in Iran?
Posted on June 16, 2009For the past few days, Iranians have been taking advantage of US-hosted communication services like Twitter and Facebook to communicate with each other about their contested election, uncover and compare facts, and convey their experiences to the rest of the world...
EFF Busts Bogus Internet Subdomain Patent
Posted on June 16, 2009San Francisco - The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has announced that it will revoke an illegitimate patent on Internet subdomains as a result of the Electronic Frontier Foundation's (EFF) Patent Busting Project campaign. U.S. Patent No. 6,687,746, now held by Hoshiko, LLC, claimed to cover the method of automatically assigning Internet subdomains, like "action...
Amendments to Computer Crime Law Are a Dark Cloud with a Ray of Light
Posted on June 15, 2009In September of last year, Congress amended the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) as part of a larger bill dealing with identity theft. Unfortunately, the amendments broaden the already extensive reach of the law, and fail to clarify the most vexing question about the statute, the definition of ?unauthorized access?...
Into the DTV era, with no broadcast flag mandate
Posted on June 12, 2009Today (June 12, 2009) marks the completion of the U.S. transition to digital television, as TV stations switch off their analog transmitters. Just a few years ago, some broadcasters and movie studios argued that this transition couldn't happen without a DRM mandate -- a legal requirement for devices to obey the broadcast flag and apply DRM restrictions to free, over-the-air broadcasts...
EFF Challenges Government's 'Back Door Wiretap'
Posted on June 11, 2009Cincinnati - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and other civil liberties groups filed an amicus brief in Warshak v. United States urging the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Wednesday to hold that the government's seizure of email without a warrant violated the Fourth Amendment and federal privacy statutes, as well as the Justice Department's own surveillance manual...
Google Book Search Settlement: Foster Competition, Escrow the Scans
Posted on June 11, 2009There is mounting concern in some quarters that the Google Book Search settlement (see previous posts here, here, and here) could have anticompetitive effects. Everyone (including Google) seems to agree that, all else being equal, we shouldn't want a world where Google is the only entity that is scanning and providing online access to books, particularly the majority of out-of-print books whose owners can't be found (i...
Cookies Crumbling: YouTube Takes a Small Step to Increase Privacy of Whitehouse.gov Visitors
Posted on June 11, 2009After discussions with EFF, YouTube has implemented additional privacy protections for visitors to Whitehouse.gov viewing embedded videos hosted by YouTube. When the Whitehouse.gov website launched in January, including embedded videos from YouTube, privacy advocates raised concerns that without extra privacy measures, YouTube would be improperly tracking visitors to the government website, including recording which videos were watched and combining that information with the ever-growing amount of information that Google and YouTube have about internet users, through YouTube?s use of cookies...
Hollywood drives us into the "Analog Sunset"
Posted on June 10, 2009As Blu-ray.com reports, the AACS licensing authority has released the "Final Adopter Agreement" it plans to enforce against consumer electronics companies that make BluRay players (and any other AACS devices that come along). Buried inside that 188 page document is a plan to eliminate analog video...
France Declares Three Strikes Unconstitutional
Posted on June 10, 2009Before legislation becomes law in France, it must pass the muster of the Conseil Constitutionnel: a group of jurists who determine whether each new law is consistent with the principles and rules of France's constitution. For the passage of Sarkozy's unpopular "three strikes" HADOPI legislation, the approval of the Conseil was the final hurdle to cross...
China's Spy in the Home
Posted on June 09, 2009The Chinese Ministry of Industry and IT's announcement that all PCs sold in China must include government-approved filtering software is a profoundly worrying development for online privacy and free speech in that country. While the application, "Green Dam Youth Escort", claims to only block pornographic sites, the access to a home computer such filtering software requires means that it could also have the power to conduct all sorts of other surveillance and control — far more than China's current monitoring and blocking systems at the ISP level permits...
EFF comments on Child Safe Viewing Act
Posted on June 08, 2009Recently, EFF filed comments with the FCC in connection with the Child Safe Viewing Act of 2007, which requires the FCC to conduct a study of V-chip-like blocking technologies that might apply to media other than television ? such as Internet access, perhaps...
minilinks for 2009-05-08
Posted on June 08, 2009Craigslist Censorship Causes Uptick for NewspapersAfter Craigslist stopped accepting erotic ads due to pressure from law enforcement, newspapers are reporting significant gains in adult classified ad sales. Travel Documents Now Required to Exit U.S.Federal regulations effective June 1, 2009 require government-issued travel documents, frequently featuring RFIDs, for exit as well as entry to the U...
The Child Safe Viewing Act and another DMCA victim
Posted on June 08, 2009In an earlier post, we mentioned that EFF filed comments with the FCC in connection with the Child Safe Viewing Act of 2007. This process unexpectedly drew our attention to a copyright issue, which we discuss below. read more
EFF Launches TOSBack - A 'Terms of Service' Tracker for Facebook, Google, eBay, and More
Posted on June 04, 2009San Francisco - "Terms of Service" policies on websites define how Internet businesses interact with you and use your personal information. But most web users don't read these policies -- or understand that the terms are constantly changing. To track these ever-evolving documents, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is launching "TOSBack": a "terms of service" tracker for Facebook, Google, eBay, and other major websites...
EFF and ACLU Planning to Appeal Dismissal of Dozens of Spying Cases
Posted on June 03, 2009San Francisco - A federal judge today dismissed dozens of lawsuits over illegal domestic surveillance of American citizens, ruling that telecommunications companies had immunity from liability under the controversial FISA Amendments Act (FISAAA). The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) California and Illinois affiliates are planning to appeal the decision to the 9th U...
Why DRM on e-Books Will Fail
Posted on June 02, 2009They say a picture is worth a thousand words. Well, here's one that vividly illustrates why putting DRM on e-books is short-sighted, futile, and doomed. If you must have words, here are a few explaining this photo. And here are a few more wherein Microsoft security engineers explain in their 2002 "Darknet" paper why all DRM like this is doomed to fail...
Taking Copyright Education Seriously
Posted on June 01, 2009Last week, after months of work, EFF launched Teaching Copyright, a balanced, fact-based curriculum for high school educators looking to discuss copyright issues in the classroom. We decided the time was right to unveil the project after the debut of the Copyright Alliance Education Foundation (CAEF), which is offering a variety of educational materials assembled by the film, music and software industries...
Apple Rejects EFF Updates App, Claims Parody Content Is Objectionable
Posted on June 01, 2009Last month, EFF got an email from software developer Duane Fields of Exact Magic, asking if he could use our logo on an iPhone application that exclusively displays content from EFF's RSS feed. Sounded like a great idea to us, as long as it was clear that the app wasn't an EFF-sponsored product...
Enter Stage Right: The "Cyber Czar"
Posted on May 29, 2009This blog post appeared today in the ACSblog of the American Constitution Society. National commitment to cybersecurity is welcome, but government control of the internet is not. This morning's White House-issued cybersecurity proposals seem to recognize this distinction and are therefore vastly preferable to the Rockefeller-Snowe Cybersecurity Act introduced into Congress last month...
minilinks for 2009-05-28
Posted on May 28, 2009Sotomayor's Cyberlaw RecordPresident Obama's nomination to the Supreme Court, Sonia Sotomayor, is the first nominee with a cyberlaw record. FCC's New Deal for Rural InternetArsTechnica reviews the FCC's Rooseveltian proposal for how to deliver broadband to the rural public...
When Fair Use Is Fairly Difficult
Posted on May 28, 2009For years, it's been a notoriously popular internet meme to remix the "bunker scene" from the 2004 film "Downfall." In the original scene, actor Bruno Ganz portrays Adolf Hitler's ranting breakdown in the final days of the Third Reich. In the hands of internet remixers, the scene's English-language subtitles have been modified to transform it into commentary on everything from the subprime mortage crisis to breakfast theft...
EFF Launches 'Teaching Copyright' to Correct Entertainment Industry Misinformation
Posted on May 27, 2009San Francisco - As the entertainment industry promotes its new anti-copying educational program to the nation's teachers, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) today launched its own "Teaching Copyright" curriculum and website to help educators give students the real story about their digital rights and responsibilities on the Internet and beyond...
Two New Books On Innovation Colliding With Law
Posted on May 27, 2009We at EFF have long lamented that, too often, incumbent industry leaders use law as a weapon to quell disruptive innovators, to the detriment of competition, innovation, and the public. Here's how Larry Downes puts it in a recent Forbes interview about his forthcoming book due out in October, The Laws of Disruption: Where innovators must improve is anticipating legal challenges at the heart of their products and services...
Apple Says Public Domain Is Too Dirty for iPhone
Posted on May 22, 2009Eucalyptus is the name of an e-book reader app for the iPhone. It allows you to read public domain books that have been digitized by the volunteers at Project Gutenberg. Apple has rejected Eucalyptus for inclusion in the iTunes App Store because one of the books archived at Project Gutenberg, and thus readable in Eucalyptus, is a Victorian-era translation (just text!) of the Kama Sutra, the ancient Indian compendium of practical information about sex...
Judge Takes Government to Task in Al-Haramain Spying Case
Posted on May 22, 2009Today, United States District Court Chief Judge Vaughn Walker took the government to task for failing to obey his prior orders in Al-Haramain v. Obama (formerly known as Al-Haramain v. Bush), asking the government to explain why he should not sanction the government by holding that the plaintiffs win the warrantless wiretapping lawsuit...
Administration Introduces Open Government Initiative Websites
Posted on May 22, 2009The Obama Administration has launched several websites to further its commitment on the first full day of Obama's presidency to improving transparency and encouraging citizen participation in government. On the transparency side, the Administration launched the hotly anticipated data...
minilinks for 2009-05-22
Posted on May 22, 2009The FCC's Warrantless SearchesWired's Threat Level reports that the FCC claims the right to enter and inspect any wireless device. IBM Unveils Real-Time Datamining SoftwareThe new software does "stream processing," allowing researchers to combine data from various sources to find patterns...
Judge Rules Dorm Room Search for Evidence of Prank Email Illegal
Posted on May 22, 2009Boston - A justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court has ordered police to return a laptop and other property seized from a Boston College computer science student's dorm room after finding there was no probable cause to search the room in the first place...
Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court Tosses Out Warrant in Boston College Case, Says No Probable Cause Existed
Posted on May 22, 2009On May 21, 2009, Justice Botsford of the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts granted our client Riccardo Calixte's motion to quash the illegal search warrant with which it seized Calixte's computers, phones, ipods, camera and other personal property...
Right-to-Repair Law Proposed ... for Cars
Posted on May 20, 2009It's not often that you get former presidential candidates from the Green Party and the Libertarian Party to agree on legislation, but Bob Barr and Ralph Nader have done just that -- jointly supporting the Right-To-Repair Act of 2009 (H.R. 2057): This aptly named bill would allow independent repair shops to compete for the business now guaranteed only to dealer-controlled establishments...
Danger Mouse Releases a Blank CD-R
Posted on May 19, 2009For decades, recording artists have lived in fear of their albums ending up in limbo if a record label refused to release it. But no more? Danger Mouse, who broke into the public consciousness with his remarkable Grey Album remixing Jay-Z and The Beatles and went on to form Gnarls Barkley, is apparently counting on the fact that it's the fans, not record labels like EMI, who have the upper hand in the digital age...
Craigslist Demands Apology From South Carolina Attorney General
Posted on May 18, 2009Craigslist CEO Jim Buckmaster today posted a strongly-worded response to South Carolina Attorney General Henry McMaster's ongoing legally-baseless threats to bring criminal charges against him and founder Craig Newmark, culminating in a request for a long-overdue apology...
Six Simple Steps You Can Take To Protect Your Gripe or Parody Site
Posted on May 15, 2009Here?s a story we hear a lot at EFF: You think BadCo, Inc. is a bad actor and you?ve developed a really cool site to tell the world why. Maybe just by griping about them or maybe through a bit of parody. Fast forward two weeks: you?re basking in the pleasure of calling BadCo out when bam! You find out your site?s been shut down...
Apple vs. Blasphemy (and Innovation)
Posted on May 13, 2009Two more interesting applications have been blocked by Apple in its quixotic quest to police what users can think and do while using their iPhones. First, we have Me So Holy, an iPhone app that takes a snapshot of the user and cleverly pastes it over the faces of holy religious figures such as Jesus Christ and the Dalai Lama...
3 Strikes for Print: A Modest Proposal From Ed Felten
Posted on May 13, 2009In the tradition of Jonathan Swift's "A Modest Proposal," EFF board member and Princeton Computer Science Prof. Ed Felten has written an essay in response to the recently passed "3 strikes" legislation in France: Yesterday the French parliament adopted a proposal to create a "three-strikes" system that would kick people off the Internet if they are accused of copyright infringement three times...
AGs' Bogus Threats Hit Their Mark: Craigslist Gives In
Posted on May 13, 2009Disappointing news today out of San Francisco that craigslist has given in to pressure from law enforcement officials and agreed to remove the "erotic services" section from its site, establishing a rather dangerous incentive for law enforcement officials to bully website operators with baseless threats...
Victory For Location Privacy in New York GPS Tracking Case
Posted on May 12, 2009Today brings great news for location privacy, especially if you live in New York. The highest court for that state ruled today in People v. Weaver that police may not use a GPS device to track the movements of your vehicle without first getting a warrant...
White House Photos Update: Flickr Removes License from Gov't Photos
Posted on May 12, 2009The photos by official White House photographer Pete Souza are now available to the public on the White House Flickr stream under a new arrangement: in place of the Creative Commons Attribution license used previously, the photos are now identified as "United States Government Works," along with a link to the U...
Recommendations for Web Measurement on Government Websites
Posted on May 12, 2009Today, The Center for Democracy and Technology and EFF are releasing "Open Recommendations for the Use of Web Measurement Tools on Federal Government Web Sites." (Press Release. PDF.) The document recommends repairs to the federal guidelines that regulate the use of cookies and other "persistent tracking technologies" on government websites...
Why Video Remix Creators Need a DMCA Exemption
Posted on May 11, 2009If you are a vidder, a movie trailer mashup creator, YouTube movie critic, or anyone else who needs to take clips from DVDs in order to make an original remix video, you might be interested in the hearings held last week before the U.S. Copyright Office, where EFF and the Organization for Transformative Works squared off against the MPAA and DVD-CCA...
minilinks for 2009-05-08
Posted on May 08, 2009Justice Department Finds Flaws in FBI Terror ListSurprise! The exponential growth the terror watch list has led to errors ? including 24,000 names included on the basis of outdated or irrelevant information. Libraries Raise Concerns About Google BooksLibrarians submitted a letter to the court considering the Google Book Settlement raising concerns about how Google's plans for digital books will affect privacy and censorship...
YouTube Restores A Fair Use
Posted on May 07, 2009About a week ago, blogger Perez Hilton issued a DMCA takedown notice, asking YouTube to remove a video created by the National Organization of Marriage (NOM). The video used a clip from Hilton's blog in which he strongly criticized Miss California USA Carrie Prejean, in response to comments she made criticizing gay marriage...
AGs v. Craigslist: Putting the Bully Back Into Bully Pulpit
Posted on May 06, 2009Here we go again. On Tuesday, South Carolina Attorney General Henry McMaster notified craigslist CEO Jim Buckmaster that unless craigslist removes its erotic services section within 10 days, "craigslist management may be subject to criminal investigation and prosecution...
Government Still Blocking Information on Secret IP Enforcement Treaty
Posted on May 06, 2009Washington, D.C. - Two public interest groups today called on the government to stop blocking the release of information about a secret intellectual property trade agreement with broad implications for privacy and innovation around the world. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and Public Knowledge said that the April 30th release of 36 pages of material by the United States Trade Representative (USTR) was the second time the government had the opportunity to provide some public insight into the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), but declined to do so...
Apple's Censorship Makes the Case for DMCA Exemptions on "Jailbreaking"
Posted on May 05, 2009If we had tried to invent a scenario that would illustrate some of the reasons why we need DMCA exemptions for cell phone "jailbreaking," we could not have come up with a better story than Trent Reznor's recent troubles with Apple's iPhone app store. Reznor, front man for the band Nine Inch Nails and an innovator in the world of digital music, had the latest version of his Nine Inch Nails-themed application for the iPhone rejected by Apple on the grounds that it contained "objectionable content" — the content in this case being a streaming version of the song "The Downward Spiral," which includes Reznor's usual strong language...
Fight Government Secrecy and Reform the State Secrets Privilege
Posted on May 05, 2009This week presents another opportunity to begin to curb ongoing abuse of government power. For years, the state secrets privilege was a favorite tool of the Bush Administration. They used it to avoid accountability for both the NSA's warrantless wiretapping program and the CIA's "special rendition" program...
White House Photos ? Does the Public Need a License to Use?
Posted on May 01, 2009The White House has recently unveiled its Official White House Photostream on Flickr, posting dozens of stunning photos by official photographer Pete Souza. In posting the photos, the White House chose the least restrictive license available, a Creative Commons Attribution license — which means the public is free to download, copy, and re-mix freely, so long as the original photographer is credited...
minilinks for 2009-04-30
Posted on April 30, 2009Rep. Boucher Pushes Internet Privacy Legislation The Virginia congressman wants legislation that will protect the public against behavioral advertising and other new technologies. Obama's First 100 Days: High Marks for Science, Low for Privacy Wired's Threat Level blog grades the Obama administration on issues of copyright, cyber security, transparency and privacy...
Google Book Search Settlement: Recent Developments
Posted on April 29, 2009In recent weeks, there have been a number of important developments relating to the the Google Book Search settlement, currently awaiting approval before a court in New York. As we've written previously, this settlement would end the litigation that has pitting book publishers and authors against Google over Google's massive book scanning and indexing project...
DMCA Hearings on Phone Unlocking, Jailbreaking, and DVD Clipping at Stanford This Friday
Posted on April 29, 2009This Friday, May 1, the U.S. Copyright Office comes to Stanford Law School to hold hearings on proposed exemptions to the DMCA's prohibition on circumventing technical protection measures (i.e., DRM). The hearings will be open to the public, and are scheduled to run from 9a to 5p...
Massive FBI Data-Mining Project Needs Congressional Oversight
Posted on April 28, 2009Washington, D.C. - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) called on Congress today to examine the Investigative Data Warehouse (IDW) -- a massive FBI data-mining project that includes a billion records, many of which contain personal information on American citizens...
Ninth Circuit Issues State Secrets Opinion, Allows Rendition Case to Proceed
Posted on April 28, 2009Today, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the Government's expansive view of the state secrets privilege, allowing an "extraordinary rendition" case against Jeppesen Dataplan to proceed. In the case, which was brought by the ACLU, the plaintiffs allege that "Jeppesen provided flight planning and logistical support services to the aircraft and crew on all of the flights transporting the five plaintiffs among their various locations of detention and torture...
EFF Issues Report on FBI Investigative Data Warehouse
Posted on April 28, 2009Today EFF issued a report about the Investigative Data Warehouse, a gigantic billion-document storehouse of information maintained by the FBI. In addition, EFF wrote to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy and House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, asking Congress to examine the IDW...
Wiki Operator Sues Apple Over Bogus Legal Threats
Posted on April 27, 2009San Francisco - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) filed suit against Apple Inc. today to defend the First Amendment rights of an operator of a noncommercial, public Internet "wiki" site known as BluWiki. EFF and the San Francisco law firm of Keker & Van Nest represent OdioWorks LLC, which runs the BluWiki website...
RealDVD v. DVD-CCA: The Duel Begins In Earnest
Posted on April 25, 2009Opening shots were fired Friday in the RealNetworks v. DVD-CCA case. Unfortunately, the public was excluded from key parts of the battle, when the presiding judge, Marilyn Hall Patel, granted DVD-CCA's request to close the courtroom. Some quick background: In September 2008, the motion picture industry sued RealNetworks over its RealDVD software, which was designed to allow consumers to copy their DVDs to their computers for later playback...
minilinks for 2009-02-24
Posted on April 24, 2009EU Parliament Approves 70 Year Copyright for RecordingsSound recordings would be copyrighted for 70 years under a new proposal passed by the parliament -- not the 95 years that had been sought -- but the Council of Ministers have yet to agree. Dude, Where's My Downloadable Movie Service?The technology exists, the demand exists...
Scholarships Now Available for EFF Bootcamp on May 11: Apply Now!
Posted on April 24, 2009Thanks to the generosity of Google, we can now offer scholarships to individuals who wish to attend the EFF Bootcamp on User-Generated Content taught by EFF attorneys on May 11 at Golden Gate University School of Law in San Francisco. If you would like to attend the bootcamp, but cannot afford the fee, send us a short note at bootcamp@eff...
Wikipedia Threatens Artists for Fair Use
Posted on April 23, 2009Can a noncommercial critical website use the trademark of the entity it critiques in its domain name? Surprisingly, it appears that the usually open-minded folks at Wikipedia think not. Last February, a pair of artists, working with several collaborators, created a Wikipedia article and invited the general public to add to it, following Wikipedia?s standards of credibility and verifiability...
Testing YouTube's Audio Content ID System
Posted on April 23, 2009An enterprising YouTube user has completed a fascinating set of tests to figure out how sensitive the audio fingerprinting tools are in YouTube's Content ID system. (This is the system being used by Warner Music Group to do wholesale censorship of music, including clear fair uses, on YouTube...
LA Times on Latest Congressional P2P Witch Hunt
Posted on April 22, 2009The L.A. Times Technology Blog hits the nail on the head, responding to news that the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform has sent out letters asking for help investigating security breaches caused when government employees and contractors who use P2P software accidentally share information on networks like Lime Wire...
Rep. Jane Harman Changes Her Tune On Wiretapping
Posted on April 21, 2009Reports in Congressional Quarterly and the New York Times indicate that a National Security Agency (NSA) wiretap authorized by the FISA Court recorded Rep. Jane Harman trading political favors with a suspected Israeli agent. When the FBI attempted to open a criminal investigation into the matter, Attorney General Gonzales allegedly intervened because he "'needed Jane' to help support the administration's warrantless wiretapping program...
Doctorow's Law: Who Benefits from DRM?
Posted on April 20, 2009In a reprise of his famous argument against DRM delivered to Microsoft executives in 2004, Cory Doctorow recently appeared before book publishers at the O'Reilly Tools of Change for Publishing Conference to explain to leaders of the publishing industry why DRM on digital books is bad for customers, bad for authors, and bad for business...
EFF Urges Kentucky Judges to Uphold Block on Domain Name Seizure
Posted on April 20, 2009Frankfort, KY - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT), and the American Civil Liberties Union of Kentucky (ACLU of Kentucky) on Friday urged the Kentucky Supreme Court to uphold an appeals court ruling that blocked state officials from ordering out-of-state registrars to turn over control of over 100 overseas Internet domain names accused of violating state gambling laws...
Senator Specter: "The Need to Roll Back Presidential Power Grabs"
Posted on April 20, 2009Senator Arlen Specter (R-PA) published a detailed opinion column in the New York Review of Books today, proposing "legislation to keep the courts open to suits filed against several major telephone companies that allegedly facilitated the Bush administration's warrantless wiretapping program...
Obama's Transparency Promise: We're Still Waiting
Posted on April 19, 2009When President Obama ? in one of his first official acts ? committed his new administration to an "unprecedented" level of transparency, EFF applauded the change in policy. Likewise, when Attorney General Holder, at the President's direction, issued new guidelines liberalizing agency implementation of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), we welcomed it as a "particularly promising development...
US Government Rules that Use of Proxies Need Not Merit Extra Jail Time
Posted on April 17, 2009Last month, the US Sentencing Commission considered new sentencing guidelines that would classify the use of proxy servers as "sophisticated means" when used in the commission of a crime, thus requiring extra prison time. EFF spoke out against these guidelines, sending Staff Technologist Seth Schoen to appear before the Commission to argue (PDF) that the use of anonymizing technologies is a widespread practice that requires no special knowledge or skills...
minilinks for 2009-02-17
Posted on April 17, 2009Which Congressman Was Wiretapped?New reports that the NSA spied on a Congressman has people wondering which one it might be. Goldman Sachs v. BloggerGoldman Sachs is trying to silence a blogger that has criticized the bank. Lessons From the Privacy TrailA new book examines academic work on questions of privacy and identity in a networked society...
New Scholarship on Copyright Damages
Posted on April 16, 2009We have often observed that one of the most pernicious aspects of U.S. copyright law is the outrageously disproportionate statutory damages an infringer may have to pay--from $750 to $150,000 per work, no matter how minimal the actual harm caused by the infringement...
Remembering First Amendment Champion Judith Krug
Posted on April 16, 2009The free expression community lost a giant with the passing last weekend of Judith Krug, longtime director of the American Library Association's Office of Intellectual Freedom. Dating back to the late 1960s, Judith was one of the nation's fiercest defenders of the First Amendment, often provoking the ire of those who sought to remove material they didn't like ? for a variety of subjective (and usually narrow) reasons ? from the shelves of our libraries...
New Wiretapping Revelations Should Prompt New Action from Congress and the White House
Posted on April 16, 2009The New York Times story with new revelations of surveillance abuses under the NSA's warrantless wiretapping program is making big news today (Associated Press, Washington Post, Salon,) as well it should. Beyond the allegations of an out-of-control spying program, the story casts new light on last spring's surveillance battle in Congress...
Stanford Law School Machinima Conference, April 24-25
Posted on April 15, 2009The term "machinima" (machine + cinema) has been coined to describe movies made using video games. In addition to being an inspiring new "film" genre, it's also at the cutting edge of many important legal questions at the intersection of copyright, trademark, and contractual restrictions (i...
NY Times Reports New Revelations About Wiretapping Program
Posted on April 15, 2009The New York Times reported today that the National Security Agency (NSA) "had been engaged in 'over-collection' of domestic communications of Americans," by which the NSA would spy on "groups of Americans and collect their domestic communications without proper court authority...
Jewel v. NSA Roundup: The Media on Obama's Position on State Secrecy and Warrantless Wiretapping
Posted on April 15, 2009The Obama Administration?s shocking decision to assert Bush-era arguments in its motion to dismiss EFF?s case against the government for warrantless wiretapping, Jewel v. NSA, has been slowly working its way into the mainstream news. We?re still hoping for more coverage, but for now there are several examples of recent reporting that are worth pointing to...
Wanted: Your Stories of Disability Versus Copyright Law
Posted on April 15, 2009In preparation for WIPO's initiative on Exceptions & Limitations to Copyright, the US Copyright Office is currently soliciting comments on the topic of "facilitating access to copyrighted works for the blind or persons with other disabilities". Written comments are due next week (April 21st, 2009), and there will be a public meeting in Washington on May 18th...
Boston College Campus Police: "Using Prompt Commands" May Be a Sign of Criminal Activity
Posted on April 14, 2009On Friday, EFF and the law firm of Fish and Richardson filed an emergency motion to quash [pdf] and for the return of seized property on behalf of a Boston College computer science student whose computers, cell phone, and other property were seized as part of an investigation into who sent an e-mail to a school mailing list identifying another student as gay...
Computer Science Student Targeted for Criminal Investigation for Allegedly Sending Email
Posted on April 13, 2009Boston - A Boston College computer science student has asked a Massachusetts court to quash an invalid search warrant for his dorm room that resulted in campus police illegally seizing several computers, an iPod, a cell phone, and other technology. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is representing the student, who has petitioned the court for the immediate return of his property and is demanding that investigators be prohibited from any further searches or analysis of his digital data...
minilinks for 2009-04-10
Posted on April 10, 2009Social Network Sites "Monitored" in UKThe UK government proposed rules that would allow the use of social networking sites to monitor criminal activity. Freedom on the NetFreedom House takes a comprehensive look at government tactics for controlling communications around the world...
Federal Authority Over the Internet? The Cybersecurity Act of 2009
Posted on April 10, 2009There's a new bill working its way through Congress that is cause for some alarm: the Cybersecurity Act of 2009 (PDF summary here), introduced by Senators Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) and Olympia Snowe (D-ME). The bill as it exists now risks giving the federal government unprecedented power over the Internet without necessarily improving security in the ways that matter most...
The Return of Line Noise: National Security Letters, Three Strikes Laws, and Warrantless Wiretapping
Posted on April 09, 2009Tim Jones talks with Richard Esguerra about national security letters, with Danny O'Brien about "three-strikes" laws, and with Kevin Bankston about new developments in EFF's warrantless wiretapping litigation. read more
Keith Olbermann on Obama and Wiretapping
Posted on April 08, 2009Last night, Countdown With Keith Olbermann on MSNBC had excellent coverage of and commentary on the Obama DOJ's radical new arguments in Jewel v. NSA, the EFF's lawsuit against the NSA for illegal surveillance. Here are the videos: Olbermann's second guest, GWU Law Professor Jonathan Turley, aptly summarizes why the new ruling is so disappointing: "I think right now, the Bush people are bringing out their mission-accomplished sign, because they've not only gotten Obama to protect Bush and Cheney and others from any criminal investigation on torture, but he's now gone even further than they did in the protection of unlawful surveillance...
EFF's Kevin Bankston on MSNBC's "Countdown With Keith Olbermann"
Posted on April 08, 2009Wednesday evening, EFF Senior Staff Attorney Kevin Bankston was a guest on Countdown With Keith Olbermann. He spoke about the Obama Justice Department's recent disappointing arguments in Jewel v NSA. Also notable was House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's appearance on the same program, in which she suggested that Congress consider reforming the "sovereign immunity" provisions of the Patriot Act...
Disability Access Activists Gather to Protest Kindle DRM
Posted on April 08, 2009Yesterday, hundreds of people gathered in front of the headquarters of The Authors Guild in New York City to protest the removal of text-to-speech capabilities in Amazon's new Kindle 2 ebook device. You may remember a few months ago, when The Authors Guild claimed (falsely) that the text-to-speech feature violated copyright law, and forced Amazon to disable it...
Michigan Rep. Calls for RFID Review
Posted on April 07, 2009Why is Michigan set to issue new Enhanced Drivers' Licenses (EDLs) that include long-range RFID (Radio Frequency ID) technology? That's the question that Michigan Rep. Paul Opsommer wants answered. Michigan entering into a federal agreement to put unencrypted, long range RFID computer chips into our driver's licenses presents a huge privacy risk with very little benefit...
In Warrantless Wiretapping Case, Obama DOJ's New Arguments Are Worse Than Bush's
Posted on April 07, 2009We had hoped this would go differently. Friday evening, in a motion to dismiss Jewel v. NSA, EFF's litigation against the National Security Agency for the warrantless wiretapping of countless Americans, the Obama Administration's made two deeply troubling arguments...
Obama Administration Embraces Bush Position on Warrantless Wiretapping and Secrecy
Posted on April 06, 2009San Francisco - The Obama administration formally adopted the Bush administration's position that the courts cannot judge the legality of the National Security Agency's (NSA's) warrantless wiretapping program, filing a motion to dismiss Jewel v. NSA late Friday...
Warner Music Targeting More than YouTube
Posted on April 06, 2009In recent weeks, we've repeatedly covered Warner Music's (mis)use of YouTube's Content ID (i.e., audio fingerprinting) tools to remove lots of videos that are clearly fair uses. Now ZDNet columnist Jason Perlow reports that Warner Music came after his wife's video slideshow on Vimeo, another video hosting site: That Warner Music Group/Time Warner would actually care about some random slide show of 40-somethings getting drunk at a suburban New Jersey synagogue set to 15 and 20-year-old low-quality monaural rendered audio that they happen to have rights to is just extremely sad...
Second Circuit Expands Trademark Rights, Restricts Consumer Search Options
Posted on April 03, 2009In a what could be a potentially serious blow to Google's AdWords business, and to consumers? ability to find information about competing offerings on the Internet, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruled today that a trademark owner can sue Google for trademark infringement for selling its mark as a keyword as part of the AdWords program...
Broad Coalition Urges Obama to Diversify IP Appointments
Posted on April 02, 2009Washington, D.C. - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has joined a broad coalition of public interest groups and trade associations calling for President Obama to diversify future appointments to intellectual property policy positions and create new offices devoted to promoting innovation and free expression...
iPods, First Sale, President Obama, and the Queen of England
Posted on April 02, 2009President Obama reportedly gave an iPod, loaded with 40 show tunes, to England's Queen Elizabeth II as a gift. Did he violate the law when he did so? You know your copyright laws are broken when there is no easy answer to this question. Traditionally, it has been the job of the "first sale" doctrine to enable gift giving -- that's the provision of copyright law that entitles the owner of a CD, book, or other copyrighted work, to give it away (or resell it, for that matter), notwithstanding the copyright owner's exclusive right of distribution...
Stand Up for Your Right To Read
Posted on April 02, 2009Last month, a group called The Author's Guild raised loud objections to the text-to-speech feature in Amazon's new Kindle 2. They claimed that reading a book out-loud is a violation of US copyright law. We had hoped that Amazon would stand up to this legally baseless bullying and support their customers...
Every Vote Counts: the EU Copyright Term Extension Battle Heats Up
Posted on March 30, 2009The recording industry has been stridently preparing for victory in their battle to double the term of sound copyright in the EU. But their campaign has hit an unexpected hitch -- individual governments among the EU member states think their demands overstep the mark...
Observations from the Three-Strikes Rumor Storm
Posted on March 27, 2009Earlier this week, reports that ISPs were going to be cooperating with the RIAA's "three strikes" plans triggered alarm bells. Three-strikes proposals to kick customers off the Internet for alleged file-sharing have struggled to find acceptance across the world, so it seemed unusual for American ISPs to be contemplating plans that would result in the termination of paying customers...
Stating the Case Against DRM to the FTC
Posted on March 25, 2009Wednesday, EFF Staff Attorney Corynne McSherry will be testifying at the Federal Trade Commission's (FTC) town hall meeting on digital rights management technologies, or DRM. After years of observing DRM's development, suing Sony for its destructive SecuROM DRM, defending free speech for researchers and bloggers, and speaking out against DRM's use, EFF's stance is quite clear: DRM is harmful to consumers, it undermines competition and innovation, and unnecessarily preempts users' fair uses of copyrighted content -- all while making no appreciable dent in "digital piracy...
AP Invokes DMCA Against Obama "Hope" Poster Artist
Posted on March 23, 2009The lawsuits between Shepard Fairey (creator of the iconic tricolor Obama "Hope" poster) and the Associated Press have an interesting legal wrinkle that is worth examining: AP claims that Fairey violated the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) in the creation of the famous poster...
More on Choruss, Pro and Con
Posted on March 20, 2009As we've discussed previously, Choruss is the name of the new entity, backed by three major record labels, that is interested in granting blanket licenses to universities (and someday residential ISPs) to authorize the music swapping (on P2P and otherwise) that has become a fact of digital life...
Sunshine Week: Traffic Analysis of Fall 2004
Posted on March 20, 2009All this week we've been celebrating Sunshine Week by analyzing some of the secret documents from our list of missing NSA surveillance documents. For our final post of the week, we looking at the context of a series of documents from the fall of 2004, right around the time that the Bush Administration learned that the press had learned of the warrantless wiretapping program...
Sunshine Week: October 11, 2002 NSA Surveillance Memo
Posted on March 19, 2009Earlier this week, we published a list of missing documents related to the NSA warrantless surveillance program as part of EFF's celebration of Sunshine Week, and began to analyze what some of these missing documents might be. Today, we continue by examining the context surrounding an intriguing 2002 memo known as OLC 129...
Attorney General Sets New FOIA Policy; Its Impact Remains to be Seen
Posted on March 19, 2009Attorney General Eric Holder today issued new guidelines (PDF) on federal agency implementation of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). The guidelines were issued pursuant to a directive issued by President Obama on January 21, his first full day in office...
Sunshine Week: Commonsense Transparency from ReadTheBill.org
Posted on March 19, 2009Anyone that has attempted to keep a close eye on the work of Congress has experienced the frustration of seeing attempts to sneak new language into a bill hours before a vote, or, as we saw often in the fight against the FISA Amendments Act, seeing legislators disappear behind closed doors during critical moments of a debate...
Sunshine Week: February 8, 2002 NSA Surveillance Memo
Posted on March 18, 2009Yesterday, we published a list of missing documents related to the NSA warrantless surveillance program as part of EFF's celebration of Sunshine Week, and began to analyze what some of these missing documents might be. Today, we turn to a document known as OLC 62...
CNET Axes Blogger Who Exposed Whitehouse.gov Privacy Issue
Posted on March 18, 2009Former CNET blogger Chris Soghoian has produced some of the best coverage on the issue of privacy for users of government websites. His work on the use of YouTube cookies and other tracking technologies on whitehouse.gov brought public attention to the issue, and inspired EFF to get involved...
Sunshine Week: Missing Documents on NSA Surveillance
Posted on March 17, 2009As part of EFF's celebration of Sunshine Week, we're providing a list of missing documents related to the National Security Agency?s warrantless wiretapping program. As a result of various Freedom of Information Act lawsuits and Congressional investigations, the government has provided information about the existence of various memoranda and other documents that are responsive to requests for information about the NSA Program...
Anonymity and Privacy Should Not Add Up to Prison Time
Posted on March 17, 2009Washington, D.C. - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) today urged the United States Sentencing Commission to reject modifications to federal sentencing guidelines that would require extra prison time for people who use technology that hides one's identity or location...
DOJ Seeks Jail Time for Music Sharing
Posted on March 17, 2009The battle to control online music has taken a particularly outrageous turn. As if private censorship, fines, intimidation and blacklisting weren't enough, now the Department of Justice — for the first time we're aware of — is threatening to throw a man in jail for noncommercial music-sharing...
EFF Urges Court to Block Government's Ploy for Cell Phone Location Information
Posted on March 17, 2009Philadelphia - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) urged a U.S. appeals court Monday to block the government's repeated attempts to seize cell phone location information -- a record of where the cell phone user travels throughout each day -- without a warrant in violation of communications privacy statutes and the Constitution...
EFF Launches Search Tool for Uncovered Government Documents
Posted on March 16, 2009San Francisco - In celebration of Sunshine Week, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) today launched a sophisticated search tool that allows the public to closely examine thousands of pages of documents the organization has pried loose from secretive government agencies...
Help EFF Make Open Government a Reality
Posted on March 15, 2009On his first day in office, President Obama took the advice of EFF and other nonprofits, ordering federal agencies to share more information with the public — particularly emphasizing openness in response to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests...
Apple Adds Still More DRM to iPod Shuffle
Posted on March 13, 2009Even as it attacks DRM on music, Apple is continuing to add more DRM to its own hardware (we recently documented all of Apple's various hardware DRM restrictions). The latest example is the new iPod Shuffle. According to the careful reviewers at iLounge, third-party headphone makers will have to use yet-another Apple "authentication chip" if they want to interoperate with the new Shuffle...
Google Begins Behavioral Targeting Ad Program
Posted on March 12, 2009Today Google launched its behavioral targeting ad program, which it calls "interest-based advertising." This move has been widely expected once Google completed its $3.1 billion acquisition of DoubleClick one year ago today. The issues with behavioral advertising have been with us for over a decade (DoubleClick was founded in 1996, and privacy issues
minilinks for 2009-03-12
Posted on March 12, 2009Whitehouse.gov Continues YouTube UseThe White House appears to have ended its "experiment" with hosting its own videos, and has returned to using YouTube. Will user info be harvested for Google's targeted advertising? Court Tosses Gibson's Guitar Hero SuitGibson Guitar's patent infringement suit against the Guitar Hero game was thrown out of court as "frivolous...
The Fair Use Massacre Continues: Now Warner?s Going After the Babies
Posted on March 12, 2009First they came for the teenagers. Could toddlers be far behind? Nope. Thanks to the good folks at YouTomb, we?ve learned that Warner Music?s automated takedown net has now caught two videos of little kids being little kids. Of course we can?t show you the videos since they?re, well, censored, but the YouTomb snapshots tell most of the story...
Seer Systems Threatens EFF with Defamation Lawsuit
Posted on March 06, 2009Seer Systems, Inc. and Stanley Jungleib have issued a written litigation threat to EFF over statements made as part of EFF's Patent Busting Project. EFF responded today, noting that its discussions of Seer and Jungleib were protected by the First Amendment...
Ninth Circuit Appeals Court Denies Government Appeal in Al-Haramain Warrantless Wiretapping Case
Posted on February 27, 2009EFF's Two New Staff Members
Posted on February 26, 2009We've made two amazing additions to our staff with a new Systems Administrator and a new Membership Coordinator. Here's a quick introduction to our two newest staff members! Aaron Jue comes to us from the New England Aquarium, where he gained experience working as membership coordinator, and the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles, where the history of internment of Japanese citizens during WWII got him interested in civil liberties...
Hey, Warner, Leave those Kids Alone
Posted on February 26, 2009Last month we reported that Warner Music Group was using YouTube?s Content I.D. (aka Video I.D.) tool to effectively censor myriad fair uses. We asked people to contact us if they needed legal help and put up a YouTube removal primer to give folks information about their options...
"Open Access" Policies Threatened by Copyright Bill
Posted on February 25, 2009Scientists who receive funding from the National Institutes of Health are required to make their research publicly available within 12 months after the research is published. This "open access" policy not only promotes free scientific communication and innovation, it strikes many as fundamentally fair...
minilinks for 2009-02-23
Posted on February 23, 2009As Data Collecting Grows, Privacy ErodesThird party data collection is growing, making real privacy more and more elusive. NSA Offers Billions for Skype HackThe NSA has a bundle of cash for anyone that can design software that will allow eavesdropping on Skype communications...
EFFector #500!
Posted on February 20, 2009Since EFF was founded in 1990, we've seen digital technologies become increasingly central to our lives as citizens, consumers, creators, innovators and social beings. And over those nearly 19 years, EFF has been at the forefront of the fight to ensure that these new tools are used to enhance and extend our freedoms, rather than to restrict them...
global minilinks for 2009-02-20
Posted on February 20, 2009Italian Government to Research Skype InterceptionGrowing attempt by governments seeking to understand and perhaps undermine encrypted VOIP. Rightsholders Scold Canada, China & Sweden for Internet PiracyLatest report by media industries to US government highlighting their top targets for new copyright legislation...
Patent Office to Reissue Narrowed Version of NeoMedia Patent
Posted on February 20, 2009In April 2007, as part of our Patent Busting Project, we asked the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) to revisit its decision to grant NeoMedia a patent that broadly claimed to cover database lookups using things like barcodes. In October 2007, the PTO agreed to take another look, and last July, it issued an initial opinion that all 95 claims of the NeoMedia patent were invalid...
Facebook Battle Ends in Major Victory for Users, But the War Continues
Posted on February 19, 2009A David and Goliath-type battle erupted this weekend when the public realized that Facebook had changed the rules governing their use of the popular social networking site. In the end, the users prevailed in a victory that reflects the power of social networking as a tool for change...
Dazed and Confused: Do New Obama Policies Affect Bush Era Cases?
Posted on February 17, 2009Last week, we told you about our efforts to ensure the White House makes good on its commitment to a more transparent government. Among other things, we've asked courts to postpone or ?stay? several of our Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) cases until the Attorney General releases guidelines to implement a new presumption of disclosure in FOIA decisions, as required by the President on his first full day in office...
Another iPhone App Banned: Apple Deems South Park App "Potentially Offensive"
Posted on February 17, 2009In its filing with the Copyright Office a few days ago, Apple argued that restricting the iPhone to run only software from the iTunes App Store is great for application creators. Apparently, they didn't mean the creators of South Park, whose app has been rejected multiple times: We first announced our iPhone App back in October, after we submitted the Application to Apple for approval...
New Zealand Goes All Black Against Three Strikes
Posted on February 17, 2009Whether you're following a New Zealander on Twitter, or have friended a Kiwi on Facebook, you will not have missed Net users from that country protesting Section 92A in NZ's new Copyright Act. Thousands are turning their sites and their icons black to mourn the coming enforcement of the provision, which passed last year over the protests of ISPs and technology experts and activists...
Apple Says iPhone Jailbreaking is Illegal
Posted on February 13, 2009Jailbreaking an iPhone constitutes copyright infringement and a DMCA violation, says Apple in comments filed with the Copyright Office as part of the 2009 DMCA triennial rulemaking. This marks the first formal public statement by Apple about its legal stance on iPhone jailbreaking...
Poll: Majority Want Investigations on Warrantless Wiretapping
Posted on February 13, 2009A new USA Today/Gallup poll finds that a clear majority of Americans favor at least some kind of investigation into whether Bush administration officials and policies violated the law. Respondents were asked about whether there should be a criminal investigation, an investigation by independent panel — or neither — into questions of politicization of the Justice Department, torture and warrantless wiretapping...
EFF to Obama Administration: Time to Make Open Government a Reality
Posted on February 12, 2009When President Obama, in one of his first official acts, issued directives committing his new administration to creating ?an unprecedented level of openness in Government,? we joined with other transparency advocates in welcoming the announcement of a new direction...
Stimulus Roundup
Posted on February 12, 2009The massive stimulus bill being wrangled through Congress has been making headlines for days. Unfortunately, many have sought to make additions to the bill that raise serious concerns for privacy and free speech online. Because the final text has not yet been made public, we can't be certain what was and wasn't included...
Animal Welfare Advocates Settle Online Video Battle With Cowboy Group
Posted on February 12, 2009Animal Welfare Advocates Settle Online Video Battle With Cowboy Group Meritless Copyright Claims Won't Interfere With YouTube Rodeo Critiques For Immediate Release: Thursday, February 12, 2009 San Francisco - Animal welfare advocates and the world's largest rodeo-sanctioning organization have settled their copyright battle over YouTube videos, protecting the advocates' right to publicize their critiques of animal treatment at rodeos and creating a new model for handling takedown notices...
RAM, Litigation, and Battlestar Galactica
Posted on February 12, 2009Fans of the Sci Fi channel's "reimagined" version of Battlestar Galactica (BSG) all know that the only reason the human warship Galactica survived the initial attack by the Cylons was that it was an old ship using old technology. The Cylon attack crippled the modern systems of the rest of the colonial fleet, leaving them helpless...
minilinks for 2009-02-12
Posted on February 12, 2009An Influx of Big Content Lawyers at DoJ: Cause for Concern?Julian Sanchez takes a look at the IP backgrounds of Obama appointees to the Department of Justice. Judge to UMG: No, You Cannot Sue Veoh's InvestorsThe judge in Universal Music Group's case against Veoh ruled that UMG could not include Veoh's investors as part of the copyright infringement lawsuit...
CTIA: All Your Cell Phones are Belong To Us!
Posted on February 12, 2009Beware, iPhone unlockers who defected from AT&T to T-Mobile, because America's wireless phone giants think you're a copyright infringer, a DMCA circumventor, a contract breacher, and a trademark violator. You committed all these offenses simply because you want to use your phone (yes, the one you own) on another network or with other software applications...
EFF Re-Launches Legal Guide for Bloggers
Posted on February 12, 2009It has been almost four years since EFF first published our Legal Guide for Bloggers to help bloggers understand their rights and, when necessary, defend their freedom of expression. In that time, blogging has become more widespread, and more and more people need a better understanding of the laws surrounding blogging...
Judge Seeks Further Briefing on Constitutionality of Telecom Immunity
Posted on February 11, 2009Today Chief Judge Vaughn Walker of the Northern District of California federal court asked for further briefing on a key constitutional question in the litigations brought against AT&T and the other telecommunications carriers for their involvement in the NSA's warrantless wiretapping...
Does the Authors Guild Want to Sue You for Reading Aloud to Your Kids?
Posted on February 11, 2009The Wall Street Journal yesterday reported that the Authors Guild is up in arms over a feature of the new Amazon Kindle 2 that reads e-books aloud using a text-to-speech algorithm. According to Authors Guild executive director Paul Aiken, "They don't have the right to read a book out loud...
EFF Calls on Federal Regulators to Protect Consumers from DRM
Posted on February 09, 2009San Francisco - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) called on the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) today to mitigate the damage that digital rights management (DRM) technologies cause consumers. In public comments submitted to the FTC today, EFF explained how DRM, backed by the anti-circumvention provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), impedes innovation and thwarts consumers' rights to make full use of their digital music, movies, software, and videogames...
Court Orders County to Release Geographic Mapping Data
Posted on February 06, 2009A California appeals court issued a good decision [PDF] this afternoon in County of Santa Clara v. Superior Court of Santa Clara Country, a case raising unusual open government, homeland security, and copyright questions. In this case, the California First Amendment Coalition (CFAC) sued Santa Clara County under the California Public Records Act for a copy of the county's geographic information system basemap, which shows parcel boundaries, addresses, and other property data...
Privacy Advisers Tell Government to Improve REAL ID, Border Search Policies
Posted on February 06, 2009A committee of privacy advisers has recommended that the government add vital privacy protections to two high profile and controversial homeland security efforts. The Data Privacy and Integrity Advisory Committee made a host of recommendations to the new Department of Homeland Security (DHS) secretary and acting privacy officer in a February 2 draft letter February 5 final letter, which has been posted on the DHS web site...
minilinks for 2009-02-05
Posted on February 05, 2009Google Executives Face Jail Time for Italian VideoItalian prosecutors are holding Google executives accountable for the posting of an objectionable video. AP Alleges Copyright Infringement Over Obama ImageThe Associated Press says artist Shepard Fairey's remix of an AP photo is copyright infringement -- but Stanford's Fair Use project thinks otherwise...
RFID PASScards Easily Cloned
Posted on February 05, 2009On a recent afternoon, security researcher Chris Paget was able to capture the passport card information of several unsuspecting individuals while driving through San Francisco, using a device he built in his spare time for a total of $250. A video released by Paget shows just how easy it is to clone RFID (Radio Frequency ID) tags with this relatively simple technology...
global minilinks for 2009-02-04
Posted on February 04, 2009Google's Privacy Exec Charged in Italy over YouTube VideoGoogle's Peter Fleischer was served with the summons when attending a Turin conference. Google Paying out for Trademark KeywordsGoogle pays 350,000 euro for selling ads on searches that include the trademarks of competitors...
Act on ACTA: Tell the New Congress to Open the Secret IP Pact
Posted on February 04, 2009Despite the new administration's policy of openness, the Anti-Counterfeiting Copyright Agreement (ACTA) still remains shrouded in secrecy. But language leaked from the negotiations reveal that it will cover far more than just commercial piracy and fake consumer goods and medicines...
California Action Alert - Say No to Biometrics in California Driver's Licenses
Posted on February 03, 2009Last month the California DMV -- without notifying the public -- sent a letter to the state Joint Legislative Budget Committee requesting that biometric information be recorded for California driver's licenses and ID cards. Unless the committee actively rejects the DMV's request by February 11, the DMV will be free to begin implementing the biometric technology...
YouTube's January Fair Use Massacre
Posted on February 03, 2009This is what it's come to. Teenagers singing "Winter Wonderland" being censored off YouTube. Fair use has always been at risk on YouTube, thanks to abusive DMCA takedown notices sent by copyright owners (sometimes carelessly, sometimes not). But in the past several weeks, two things have made things much worse for those who want to sing a song, post an a capella tribute, or set machinima to music...
Parody Website Back Online After Settlement of Bogus IP Claims
Posted on February 02, 2009New York - An activist was able to relaunch her online campaign today after claims were settled out of court for the shutting down of her website challenging redevelopment efforts in New York City's historic Union Square. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) represented website creator Savitri Durkee, an activist concerned with preserving the character of Union Square and Union Square Park...
Google Book Search Settlement: Two Articles to Read
Posted on February 02, 2009We posted our initial thoughts about the proposed Google Book Search settlement when it was announced in October 2008. Since that time, the official notice to members of the class has been approved by the court (available online here). This is still probably the best introduction to the 130+ page settlement for those who own a copyright in a book and are wondering what this settlement will mean for his or her copyrights...
More Bad Law in WoW Glider Case
Posted on February 02, 2009Tim Lee over at Ars Technica has an update on latest chapter in the MDY v. Blizzard case, which pits the maker of World of Warcraft against the maker of Glider, software that lets your computer play WoW on auto-pilot for you. We reported on an earlier stage of the lawsuit in June 2008, but MDY recently suffered another defeat that threatens user rights more generally: Ars talked to two legal experts at Public Knowledge, a public interest organization that filed an amicus brief in the MDY case last year...
Thousands Sign Petition to Copyright Office Demanding Cell Phone Freedom
Posted on February 02, 2009San Francisco - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) submitted a petition to the U.S. Copyright Office today signed by more than 8200 people demanding that the office lift the legal cloud hanging over cell phone customers who modify their phones. The petition was part of EFF's reply comment in the 2009 Copyright Office rulemaking, convened every three years to consider exemptions to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act's (DMCA) ban on circumvention of digital rights management (DRM) restrictions...
MP3 Bloggers, Where Are Your Promo CDs?
Posted on January 29, 2009According to briefs filed last month by the RIAA and Universal Music Group, it's illegal to sell, give away, or even throw out "promo CDs." Of course, this is exactly the argument that UMG made, and lost, in court last year. Despite that loss, and despite the open secret that many music reviewers have been dumping promo CDs in used record stores for years, UMG has opted to appeal...
minilinks for 2009-01-28
Posted on January 29, 2009ACLU Requests Bush-era MemosIn a test of President Obama's commitment to transparency, the ACLU requested sensitive Bush administration memos on torture and wiretapping that have long been sought by privacy and human rights advocates. Patriot Act Used to Punish FliersConflicts with airline staff have led to fliers facing federal terrorism charges...
EFF Leads Call of Support for Live Webcast of RIAA Hearing
Posted on January 29, 2009Boston - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) urged a federal appeals court today to allow the live webcasting of a hearing in one of the thousands of lawsuits that have been brought against users of peer-to-peer file-sharing systems. The District Court granted defendant Joel Tenenbaum's request to allow an upcoming hearing to be webcast on the website of the Berkman Center at Harvard...
Government Blocks Release of Documents on Secret IP Enforcement Treaty
Posted on January 29, 2009Washington, D.C. - The Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) is withholding hundreds of documents about a secret intellectual property enforcement treaty currently under negotiation between the U.S. and more than a dozen other countries...
College Student Vindicated After Political Email Sparks Disciplinary Action
Posted on January 28, 2009East Lansing, MI - A Michigan State University (MSU) student government leader has been cleared of any charges of wrongdoing after the school falsely labeled her a spammer for sending out a political email to faculty members. MSU has also agreed to revise its Network Acceptable Use Policy to ensure that it is fair and constitutional...
Laboratories and Roadmaps for Network Testing
Posted on January 28, 2009Today, the New America Foundation, PlanetLab and Google announced the launch of the Measurement Lab project, an initiative to provide server resources for researchers interested in network neutrality and performance testing. This is good news for the community of academics and activists who are trying to map, measure and record the state of network management by ISPs as well as many other aspects of Internet performance...
Irish ISP Agrees to Three Strikes Against Its Customers
Posted on January 28, 2009While there were rumors today that Comcast and AT&T might be entering into an agreement with the RIAA in the United States, it was in Ireland where the recording industry made its latest "three strikes" subscriber termination deal with the telecom industry -- using the courts and the threat of mass Internet filtering obligations as the inducement...
EFF to White House Counsel: What Will You Do to Protect the Privacy of WhiteHouse.gov Users?
Posted on January 27, 2009As we noted last week, the new WhiteHouse.gov site uses embedded YouTube movies, raising concerns of privacy and open government advocates. Embedded video clips can place or add to a cookie on the user?s computer ? thus enabling tracking of users as they use the web...
GateHouse and the New York Times Settle
Posted on January 26, 2009With trial looming, GateHouse Media and the New York Times over the weekend settled their dispute over "hyper-local" news aggregation sites on the NYT-owned Boston.com website. The parties' joint press release pointed interested parties to the binding letter agreement [PDF] the parties signed over the weekend...
DRM in Microsoft UK's Mobile Music Service
Posted on January 26, 2009Late last week, Microsoft launched a mobile phone music downloading service in the UK, but the public has quickly focused its attention on Microsoft UK's mystifying choice to include digital rights management (DRM) on its music files. PC Pro reports that the restrictions prevent buyers from playing the music anywhere but on the mobile phone used to make the purchase, while tracks from the iTunes Music Store and Amazon's MP3 store are cheaper and DRM-free...
global minilinks for 2009-01-25
Posted on January 25, 2009Swedish Police want Personal Info from P2P usersCourt orders obtaining info on file-sharers would be easier under a proposed new Swedish law. China's Porn Crackdown may be Aimed at DissentObservers note that the Chinese arrests aimed at removing "vulgarity" from the Internet are part of a wider, political, dragnet...
GateHouse v. New York Times: Lawsuit Attacks Boston.com News Aggregation Site
Posted on January 23, 2009On December 11, 2008, Boston.com launched a "hyper-local" site for the town Newton, Massachusetts. The site heavily features links to news stories aggregated from around the web. Much like many blogs and news aggregation sites do, the site includes the headline and a snippet from these stories, attributed and linked through to the original article...
Government Computer News Pans Printer Dots
Posted on January 23, 2009In a recent review of the HP Color LaserJET CM3530 printer, the magazine Government Computer News called out the use of tracking codes -- which GCN referred to as "a secret spy program" -- as the biggest problem with that printer. GCN found that the yellow dots produced by this printer particularly degraded print quality and noted that some people would question the "logic or appropriateness" of having printers produce the dots at all; it concluded that even people who didn't object to the tracking codes in principle would regret the poor print quality they produced in this case...
Obama's Quick Response to Privacy Concerns
Posted on January 23, 2009The incoming Obama administration has impressed advocates of open government, first by making a clear commitment to answer FOIA requests with a presumption of openness, and now by responding quickly -- within 24 hours! -- to criticism from CNET blogger Chris Sogohian and others that the retooled WhiteHouse...
Whistleblower Reveals New Abuses of Wiretapping Power
Posted on January 22, 2009Last night, less than 48 hours after George Bush left office, whistleblower and former NSA analyst Russell Tice revealed new information about the NSA's warrantless wiretapping program: .msnbcLinks {font-size:11px; font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; color: #999; margin-top: 5px; background: transparent; text-align: center; width: 425px;} ...
minilinks for 2009-21-01
Posted on January 21, 2009Obama's AG on the Patriot ActEric Holder said at his confirmation hearing that he supports renewal of Patriot Act provisions that allow the government to access library and bookstore records. Report Finds Online Threat to Children OverblownMany parents fear the Internet may make their children vulnerable to sexual predators online, but 49 state attorneys general now say the Internet may be safe for kids after all...
U.S. Patent Office Rejects All Twenty Claims of Subdomain Patent
Posted on January 21, 2009More good news for EFF's Patent Busting Project! Last week, the United States Patent Office (PTO) rejected all twenty claims of the Internet subdomain patent [PDF] on the Project's Ten Most Wanted list. Based on a combination of prior art that EFF had supplied and similar Internet newsgroup postings, the PTO concluded that the ideas claimed by the patent were obvious and, therefore, unpatentable...
After 10 Years, an Infamous Internet-Censorship Act is Finally Dead
Posted on January 21, 2009In a victory for online free speech, the U.S. Supreme Court today refused to hear the government's appeal of a July 2008 ruling holding the Child Online Protection Act of 1998 (COPA) unconstitutional and enjoining COPA's enforcement. The case was brought by the ACLU, EFF, and a coalition of plaintiffs...
On Day One, Obama Demands Open Government
Posted on January 21, 2009It's only his first day in office, but President Obama has already signaled a serious commitment to transparency and accountability in government. The President ordered federal agencies in a memorandum released today to approach the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) "with a clear presumption: in the face of doubt, openness prevails...
Kentucky Court of Appeals Overturns Domain Name Seizure Order
Posted on January 20, 2009The Kentucky Court of Appeals today granted petitions by the Interactive Gaming Council (IGC) Interactive Media Entertainment and Gaming Association, Inc. (iMEGA) to overturn an earlier trial court ruling authorizing the seizure of domain names owned by operators of overseas gambling websites...
EU Copyright Extension: Help MEPs Hear the Other Side
Posted on January 20, 2009From reading the official European Commission documentation on its proposed Copyright Term Extension Directive, one might believe perpetuating performer copyrights from 50 to 95 years in Europe is a charitable policy with no ill effects at all. That's certainly how Commissioner Charlie McCreevy would like it to appear, as he pushes for the Parliament to vote on the Directive in March of this year...
global minilinks for 2009-01-16
Posted on January 16, 2009Online Gamers in China To Register with Real NamesNo anonymity, even in MMORPGs. South African IP Bill locks down innovationPublic sector innovators will have to hand over their ideas to be patented by the government. EU Privacy Watchdog: Protections Are Growing WeakerData retention laws have weakened European privacy, says Peter Hustinx, the European Data Protection Supervisor...
Global Net Censorship in 2009: For The Children, for the Rightsholders
Posted on January 15, 2009Across the world, politicians perennially declare their intention to purge or blacklist websites they fear are damaging to children or the public welfare. The call for censorship hasn't stopped, despite many years of evidence that pervasive Net censorship is invasive, infeasible, and economically damaging...
Free Your Phone
Posted on January 15, 2009Last month, EFF filed proposals with the Copyright Office seeking DMCA exemptions to cover mobile phone "unlocking" (allowing the phone to be used on any carrier's network) and "jailbreaking" (allowing the phone to run any software). Carriers like MetroPCS and Pocket Communications have also asked for an unlocking exemption, but the Copyright Office needs to hear from users, too...
EFF Kicks Off Campaign to Free Your Phone
Posted on January 15, 2009San Francisco - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is asking for the public's help in its new campaign to free cell phones from the software locks that stifle competition and cripple consumers. The campaign's website is FreeYourPhone.org. Hundreds of thousands of cell phone owners have modified their phones to connect to a new service provider or run the software of their choosing, and many more would like to...
Secret FISA Court Approves Specific Application of Expired Law For Warrantless Wiretapping
Posted on January 15, 2009The FISA Court of Review (FISCR) today released a public version of an opinion concerning warrantless wiretapping. An unnamed telecommunications carrier stood up for its customers' privacy by fighting the case through an initial decision by a FISA court and the appeal to the FISCR...
Community Organizations and Publishers Sue FBI and Other Agencies Over Illegal Computer Searches
Posted on January 14, 2009San Francisco - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and the ACLU of Northern California filed suit in federal court today to protect the privacy and free speech rights of two San Francisco Bay Area community organizations after the groups' computers were seized and the data copied by federal and local law enforcement...
@EFF is on Twitter
Posted on January 12, 2009We've just started an EFF account on Twitter, the popular social networking service. It's a bit of an experiment — we're not really sure how we'll wind up using it. But expect to see everything from breaking news to random trivialities to conversations between EFF members and supporters...
minilinks for 2009-1-12
Posted on January 12, 2009Mobile Phone Searches — Warrant Required?Courts are weighing the question of whether searches of handheld devices during arrests require a warrant. Inside a DHS Travel FileSean O'Neill made a FOIA request for his travel dossier kept by the Department of Homeland Security...
Year-end 2008, Darknet Assumptions = True
Posted on January 09, 20092008 was another tough year for proponents of digital rights management (DRM). As we have pointed out in years past, the infamous Darknet assumptions — three big reasons that DRM copy protection will never work, as set forth in 2002 by a team of Microsoft engineers — continue to be proven true by events...
Larry Lessig on The Colbert Report
Posted on January 09, 2009Last night, Larry Lessig, a close ally and former board member of EFF, chatted with Stephen Colbert about Lessig's new book Remix, and how America's broken copyright laws are criminalizing our kids: Colbert: You say our copyright laws are turning our kids into criminals, because they're keeping kids from doing all the remixing they want of pre-existing art and copywritten material, right? Isn't that like saying that arson laws are turning our kids into pyromaniacs?? They're breaking the law! You can't just throw the law out the window! Lessig: "Totally failed war...
Calling All iPhone Developers: Support EFF's DMCA Exemption for Jailbreaking
Posted on January 08, 2009iPhone application developers have until February 2, 2009 to submit comments to the Copyright Office in support of EFF's proposal for a DMCA exemption for iPhone owners who want to "jailbreak" their iPhones to gain the freedom to install applications of their choice...
Patent Office Grants EFF's Request for Reexamination of Patent on Internet Music Files
Posted on January 07, 2009San Francisco - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has won reexamination of an illegitimate music patent from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (PTO). This was the sixth reexamination request filed by EFF's Patent Busting Project and the sixth time the PTO has granted EFF's request...
Apple Shows Us DRM's True Colors
Posted on January 07, 2009At this week's Macworld Expo, Apple announced that by April, music from the iTunes Store will no longer be shackled by digital rights management (DRM). Finally, DRM is good and fully dead for digital music -- gone from CDs, gone from downloads, and largely dead for streaming...
Fox News Censors Political Expression
Posted on January 07, 2009In a scenario that has become depressingly familiar, a news organization has again used the Digital Millennium Copyright Act ("DMCA") to censor legitimate political speech. Citizen Media Law Project reports that YouTube cancelled Progress Illinois' YouTube channel after Fox News had sent three notices of copyright infringement demanding the takedown of Progress Illinois' videos...
UMG v. Veoh: Another Victory for Web 2.0
Posted on January 05, 2009Over the holidays, video hosting site Veoh won another victory under the DMCA safe harbors, this time against Universal Music Group (UMG). The ruling should put to rest the argument that transcoding and other activities necessary for making content accessible on the web are not covered by the DMCA's Section 512(c) safe harbor for storing material on behalf of users (i...
Al-Haramain Warrantless Spying Case Can Proceed
Posted on January 05, 2009Today, Chief Judge Vaughn Walker of the United States District Court in San Francisco denied the government's third motion to dismiss the Al-Haramain v. Bush litigation. The ruling means that the case can proceed and the court also set up a process to allow the Al Haramain plaintiffs to prosecute the case while protecting classified information...
EFF's 18th Birthday Party with DJ Spooky
Posted on December 26, 2008On Wednesday the 7th, EFF will be celebrating our 18th year of defending digital rights with our biggest bash yet! Special guest DJ Spooky will be rocking the DNA Lounge in San Francisco, with help from mashup party pioneers Bootie, copyfighter and Surya Dub DJ Kid Kameleon, and EFF's Tones and Qubitsu...
Keith Henson Appeal: Time to Undo an Injustice
Posted on December 24, 2008The well-known Scientology protester Keith Henson has filed an appeal to the Appellate Division of the Riverside County Superior Court of his criminal conviction in 2001 of misdemeanor "interfering with a religion" for picketing in front of a Scientology "base" in Hemet, CA...
minilinks for 2008-12-23
Posted on December 23, 2008Obama's Total Information AwarenessThe New Republic says no campaign in history has ever compiled more information on its supporters. FBI Turning Cell Phones Into Eavesdropping DevicesBy remotely activating the microphone in mobile phones, the FBI has been able to eavesdrop on suspects...
MBTA, MIT Students Join to Discuss Improvements to Automated Fare Collection System
Posted on December 22, 2008pBoston - Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority (MBTA) officials and three MIT student researchers announced today that, following the dismissal of a federal lawsuit brought by the MBTA against the MIT students, the parties agreed to work together to identify and help improve security in the MBTA's Automated Fare Collection System...
RIAA v. The People Turns from Lawsuits to 3 Strikes
Posted on December 19, 2008The lawsuits are ending. It's about time. According to the Wall Street Journal, the recording industry has halted its mass litigation campaign against music fans for Internet file-sharing, a campaign that has targeted more than 35,000 Americans over more than 5 years (for a complete history of the lawsuits, see our RIAA v...
Is it patentable?
Posted on December 19, 2008pTwo months ago, in iIn re Bilski/i, the Federal Circuit a href=http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2008/10/federal-circuit-limits-business-method-patentsrejected/a the notion that anything that produces a useful, concrete, and tangible result is potentially patentable...
Yahoo To Anonymize Logs After 90 Days, Compared to Google's 9 Months
Posted on December 17, 2008pToday, Yahoo upped the ante when it comes to protecting search engine users' privacy, a href=http://yhoo.client.shareholder.com/press/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=354703announcing a new data retention policy/a providing for anonymization of search queries mdash; as well as page views, page clicks, ad views and ad clicks mdash; after 90 days...
Reactions to Yahoo Data Retention Policy
Posted on December 17, 2008pEarlier today, Yahoo! a href=http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2008/12/yahoo-anonymize-logs-after-90-days-compared-googleannounced a new data retention policy/a providing for anonymization of search queries ? as well as page views, page clicks, ad views and ad clicks ? after 90 days...
First Interview with the NSA Whistleblower
Posted on December 17, 2008p Over the weekend, Newsweek a href=http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2008/12/whistleblower-who-kick-started-domestic-spying-revrevealed/a Thomas M. Tamm as the man who first blew the whistle on the Bush Administration's illegal warrantless wiretapping program...
EFF, FIRE and Others Urge Michigan State to Respect Student Speech in Spammer case
Posted on December 17, 2008pThe Electronic Frontier Foundation, FIRE (Foundation for Individual Rights in Education) and ten other civil liberties organizations today sent an a href=http://www.thefire.org/index.php/article/10045.htmlopen letter/a today to Michigan State University (MSU) President Lou Anna K...
The Twelve Days of EFF
Posted on December 16, 2008We'd like to share this animated holiday greeting titled the 12 Days of EFF to celebrate the season and thank our friends and supporters for a good year in the fight for digital rights. Thanks and happy holidays!
Second Circuit Rules Against National Security Letter Gag Orders
Posted on December 15, 2008Today, the federal Second Circuit Court of Appeals gave another setback to the Bush Administration's claims for sweeping new Executive powers. The court found the National Security Letter (NSL) statute's gag provision unconstitutional in Doe v. Mukasey...
The Whistleblower Who Kick-Started Domestic Spying Revelations
Posted on December 15, 2008Remember how shocked you were back in December of 2005 when you learned that the government was spying on Americans' phone calls and emails without warrants? The whistleblower who apparently kicked off that New York Times investigation has come forward, and his story is a timely lesson on how important -- and frightening -- it can be to do the right thing...
minilinks for 2008-12-15
Posted on December 15, 2008Obama May Keep CIA ChiefMichael Hayden, a major player in the Bush administration' wiretapping program, may stay on as head of the CIA under Obama. Panel to Call for Review of Wiretapping ScholarThe House Select Intelligence Oversight Panel plans to ask the NSA to open a formal investigation into whether NSA wiretaps were improperly used in the trial of Ali al-Timimi...
MPAA Asks Obama for More Copyright Surveillance of the Internet
Posted on December 11, 2008As part of their commitment to transparent and open government, the Obama Transition Team is posting the lobbying agendas of the groups it meets with for public review and comment. One of the more interesting documents to be found there is the Motion Picture Association of America's "international trade" agenda...
Labels Open to Collective Licensing on Campus
Posted on December 10, 2008Finally. The major record labels are coming around to voluntary collective licensing, as we've been urging (and predicting) since 2003. Last week, TechDirt posted a set of leaked slides suggesting that Warner Music Group has opened a discussion with several major U...
Internet Censors Must Be Accountable For The Things They Break
Posted on December 09, 2008Yesterday's scandal over the UK Internet Watch Foundation's attempt to censor a purportedly pedophiliac Wikipedia entry raises some important questions about unintended technical consequences of Internet censorship systems. The Wikipedia article was about a 1970s hard rock album called Virgin Killer [NSFW] by the German band Scorpions...
Obama's Transparent Transition
Posted on December 08, 2008The Obama-Biden Transition Project took a major step to increase transparency Friday, announcing that most policy documents from meetings with outside groups will be posted on the Web site Change.gov for review and comment. The new policy also invites the public to submit their own ideas and leave comments for the transition team...
Minilinks for 2008-12-05
Posted on December 05, 2008Obama's Attorney General Pick: Good on Privacy?Eric Holder has an unfortunate history of supporting schemes that broaden law enforcement powers at the cost of privacy and other civil liberties. Principles for an Open TransitionLeaders of the open government movement published three principles to guide President-elect Obama's transition team in fostering greater speech and participation...
Jewelry Company Quest to Expand Trademark Law Could Quash Internet Commerce
Posted on December 04, 2008San Francisco - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) along with Public Citizen and Public Knowledge urged a U.S. court of appeals Wednesday to reject jewelry-maker Tiffany's attempt to rewrite trademark law and create new barriers for online commerce and communication...
Remixers, Unlockers, Jailbreakers, Oh My!
Posted on December 03, 2008Yesterday, EFF filed petitions (1, 2) with the Copyright Office seeking DMCA exemptions for three categories of activities that do not violate copyright laws, but that are still jeopardized by the DMCA's ban on bypassing technical protection measures used to control access to copyrighted works (i...
Copyright Office Should Right DMCA Wrongs in Rulemaking
Posted on December 02, 2008San Francisco - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) filed three exemption requests with the U.S. Copyright Office today aimed at protecting the important work of video remix artists, iPhone owners, and cell phone recyclers from legal threats under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA)...
global minilinks for 2008-12-02
Posted on December 02, 2008Citizen Safeguards Struck Out in EU CouncilLa Quadrature Du Net analyse the latest moves in Europe's telecoms package - still a mixed bag for protecting rights online. Inside Italy's Net FiltersAn overview of the "P-Box" - the bespoke Debian install intended to filter content at Italian ISPs...
Change.gov Content Now Under Creative Commons License
Posted on December 01, 2008In the last few days, President-elect Obama's transition team took a significant stride towards a more open government by licensing the content of Change.gov under a Creative Commons Attribution license. Using that license essentially means that the transition team is allowing others to freely share and remix what's posted there, provided that reposts are attributed to Change...
EFF to Fight Against Telecom Immunity in Tuesday Hearing
Posted on December 01, 2008San Francisco - On Tuesday, December 2, at 10 a.m., the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) will challenge the constitutionality of a federal law aimed at granting immunity to telecommunications companies participating in illegal domestic surveillance...
Censorship in the 21st Century: Targeting Intermediaries
Posted on November 25, 2008On November 12, 2008, a group of artists and activists unveiled a brilliant spoof of the New York Times, widely distributed to readers in New York and Los Angeles. This "July 4, 2009" version of the Times — which the real New York Times described as a "Grade-A caper" — boldly announced the end of the Iraq War, the nationalization of major oil conglomerates, the elimination of tuition at public universities, and the indictment of soon-to-be-former president Bush on charges of high treason...
Apple Confuses Speech with a DMCA Violation
Posted on November 25, 2008Slashdot reports that Apple has sent a "cease and desist" email to bluwiki, a public wiki site, demanding the removal of postings there by those who are trying to figure out how to write software that can sync media to the latest versions of the iPhone and iPod Touch...
A "Grey Hat" Guide for Security Researchers
Posted on November 24, 2008In counseling computer security researchers, I have found the law to be a real obstacle to solving vulnerabilities. The muddy nature of the laws that regulate computers and code, coupled with a series of abusive lawsuits, gives researchers real reason to worry that they might be sued if they publish their research or go straight to the affected vendor...
Apple Downgrades Macbook Video with DRM
Posted on November 21, 2008Once again, thanks to DRM, a new product ends up less useful than the one it replaces. This time, it's the new family of Apple Macbook laptop computers that gets the downgrade. When it launched the new Macbooks, Apple announced that they would sport a new digital video output connector, known as Mini DisplayPort...
Google is Done Paying Silicon Valley's Legal Bills
Posted on November 20, 2008[I wrote the following op-ed, which appeared in the Nov. 14 issue of The Recorder. Because that publication's website is not publicly available, I'm posting a copy here, with their permission.] For most of the decade, Silicon Valley technology startups have assumed that Google would pay their legal bills...
Apply for the Summer Google Policy Fellowship and Work with EFF
Posted on November 20, 2008Students interested in technology law and policy may be interested in applying to work with EFF next summer through the Google Policy Fellowship, a program that gives students the chance to spend the summer working alongside host organizations on topics of Internet and technology policy...
What Obama Can and Should Do to Stop Telecom Immunity
Posted on November 19, 2008Yesterday, the New York Times ran the story "Early Test for Obama on Domestic Spying Views", describing the national security-related issues facing the incoming Obama Administration. Chief among them is the issue of immunity for telecoms that illegally assisted in the National Security Agency's warrantless wiretapping program: In perhaps the most critical test, civil liberties groups that are suing major phone companies that took part in the N...
EFF Joins with Coalition to Provide Policy Roadmap to Next President and Congress
Posted on November 19, 2008A coalition of more than 25 organizations, including EFF, yesterday released "Liberty and Security: Recommendations for the Next Administration and Congress", a comprehensive catalogue of policy recommendations on a range of critical civil liberties issues...
Bogus IP Claims Quash Debate Over Future of NYC Landmark
Posted on November 18, 2008New York - A New York City community organizer is fighting back in court after her parody website challenging redevelopment efforts in New York City's historic Union Square was shut down with bogus claims of copyright infringement and cybersquatting. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is representing Savitri Durkee, an activist concerned with preserving the character of Union Square and Union Square Park...
RIAA Wins, Campuses Lose as Tennessee Governor Signs Campus Network Filtering Law
Posted on November 17, 2008Last week, the RIAA celebrated the signing of a ridiculous new law in Tennessee that says: Each public and private institution of higher education in the state that has student residential computer networks shall: [...] [R]easonably attempt to prevent the infringement of copyrighted works over the institution's computer and network resources, if such institution receives fifty (50) or more legally valid notices of infringement as prescribed by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 within the preceding year...
Judge Allows Bogus Jones Day Trademark Claims to Go Forward
Posted on November 17, 2008In a decision that could have significant negative consequences for online speech and commerce, Judge John Darrah of the Northern District of Illinois has refused to dismiss some of the most preposterous trademark claims we've ever seen (and that's saying something)...
Court Must Vacate Kentucky Court's Baseless Domain Name Seizure
Posted on November 13, 2008Frankfort, KY - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT), and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) urged a Kentucky Court of Appeals Wednesday to vacate a lower court's order authorizing the seizure of more than 100 Internet domain names associated with websites operating around the globe...
FCC Unanimously Approves Use of Television "White Spaces"
Posted on November 13, 2008Advocates for the opening of the "white spaces" were rewarded with a resounding victory earlier this month when the FCC unanimously voted in favor of allowing unlicensed use of the unused spectrum between TV channels. (For a more complete explanation of white spaces, check out our earlier blog post...
A Transparency Agenda for the New Administration
Posted on November 12, 2008This is the final post in a three-part series outlining how the new leadership in Congress and the White House can restore some of the civil liberties we've lost over the past eight years. Today's post focuses on government transparency. Previously, we've written about surveillance and intellectual property...
An Innovation Agenda for the New Administration
Posted on November 11, 2008This is the second post in a three-part series outlining how the new leadership in Congress and the White House can restore some of the civil liberties we've lost over the past eight years. Today's post focuses on innovation, fair use and intellectual property...
The WIPO Broadcasting Treaty: Back from the Dead?
Posted on November 07, 2008Last year, we reported that WIPO Member States had decided to postpone holding an intergovernmental diplomatic conference to adopt the controversial Broadcasting Treaty. For us, and the many others who had expressed concern about the proposed treaty, this was welcome news...
A Privacy Agenda For The New Administration
Posted on November 07, 2008This is the first post in a three part series directed at restoring some of the civil liberties we've lost over the past eight years. Today's post is about our privacy rights. We'll follow this up early next week with our thoughts on intellectual property rights and government transparency...
global minilinks for 2008-11-06
Posted on November 06, 2008French Senate Votes for Three StrikesThe bill still has to pass the National Assembly, however — and faces a clash with developing European law. No Clean Feed - Stop Internet Censorship in AustraliaThe battle against the Australian goverment's plans to install compulsory filters on all Internet traffic grows in strength...
EFF's OurVoteLive.org Helps Over 86,000 Voters
Posted on November 05, 2008Yesterday, a year-long collaboration between EFF and the Election Protection Coalition came to fruition. OurVoteLive.org, powered by EFF's Total Election Awareness project, helped EP's thousands of hotline operators and legal response teams document and respond to over 86,000 calls to the 866-OUR-VOTE voter-assistance hotline on November 4th and during early voting...
Google Book Search Settlement: A Reader's Guide
Posted on October 31, 2008As we reported earlier this week, Google has settled the lawsuit brought in 2005 by authors and book publishers regarding its massive book scanning and indexing project. Although the settlement must still be approved by the court and is unlikely to go into effect until sometime late in 2009, commentary has already been flooding the blogosphere...
Federal Circuit Reins In Business Method Patents
Posted on October 31, 2008The Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit yesterday issued a decision that imposes firm limits on business method patents. The ruling effectively overturns a key part of the court?s decision in State Street Bank and Trust v. Signature Financial Group, which opened the door to an explosion of patents on "methods" of doing business so long as the methods involved use of a computer and produced a "useful, concrete, and tangible result...
Human Rights and Internet Companies: Google, Yahoo and Microsoft Agree to Principles
Posted on October 29, 2008For almost two years, EFF has been a participant in negotiations between human rights groups, investors, academics and Internet companies -- including Yahoo!, Google, and Microsoft -- aimed at improving how those businesses deal with free expression and privacy issues around the world...
The Two Best Books About the DMCA
Posted on October 29, 2008The blogosphere is doing a great job examining the legacy of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), which was enacted into law ten years ago this week. But people frequently ask me where they can turn for a more in-depth analysis of the DMCA, DRM, and their impact on digital culture...
DMCA: Ten Years of Unintended Consequences
Posted on October 28, 2008Today is the tenth anniversary of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), signed into law by President Bill Clinton on October 28, 1998. EFF is marking the occasion with the release of a 19-page report that focuses on the most notorious part of the law: the ban on "circumventing" digital rights management (DRM) and other "technological protection measures...
Google Reaches Settlement With Authors and Publishers Over Google Book Search
Posted on October 28, 2008Today, Google announced a settlement with authors and publishers in the class action lawsuits over Google Book Search. The settlement still needs to be approved by a New York federal court, but under the plan, Google will: pay authors and publishers $125 million, part of which will be used to create a Book Rights Registry allowing copyright owners to register their works and receive a share of subscriptions, book sales and ad revenues; allow users to purchase full books, saved to an "electronic bookshelf;" will offer institutional subscriptions, including a free online portal for public libraries; will point users to locations to buy or borrow searched books...
Monitor Election Problems Nationwide with OurVoteLive.org
Posted on October 27, 2008San Francisco - Reporters, bloggers, and voters across the country can monitor problems at the polls on Election Day on OurVoteLive.org, a project built and hosted by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) on behalf of Election Protection, the nation's largest nonpartisan voter protection coalition, and its toll-free voter-assistance hotline, 866-OUR-VOTE...
Hollywood Menaces DVD Rental Kiosks
Posted on October 27, 2008Hollywood's distaste for disruptive innovation isn't limited to software products like RealDVD. Now it is targeting DVD rental kiosks, like the Redbox kiosk pictured here. The idea couldn't be simpler, or the innovation more pro-consumer: Redbox makes DVD rental kiosks that rent authentic, Hollywood DVDs...
EFF Marks 10th Anniversary of DMCA with Report on Law's Unintended Consequences
Posted on October 27, 2008San Francisco - Ten years ago Tuesday, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) was signed into law. In a report released to mark the anniversary, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) documents the ways in which this controversial law has harmed fair use, free speech, scientific research, and legitimate competition...
minilinks for 2008-10-23
Posted on October 24, 2008Hollywood (Unintentionally) Agrees with EFFThe MPAA's response to an EFF blog post unwittingly validates our point -- that the MPAA's legal attack on RealDVD is about controlling innovation. Record Label 'Infringes' Own CopyrightA donation-based record label that distributes its music for free had its site taken down for copyright "infringement...
EFF's "Yellow Dots of Mystery" on Instructables
Posted on October 24, 2008Since late 2004, EFF has been warning the public about "printer dots" -- tiny yellow dots that appear on documents produced by many color laser printers and copiers. These yellow dots form a coded pattern on every page the printer produces and can be used to identify specific details about a document; for example, the brand, model, and serial number of the device that printed it and when it was printed...
EFF's New NSA Spying Shirts
Posted on October 23, 2008A few weeks back, we produced a new graphic to accompany our new case against the government, Jewel v. NSA, challenging the Bush administration's illegal spying program. The graphic is a retooling of the NSA's logo, featuring a glowering eagle using his talons to illegally plug into the nation's telecommunications system — with the help of telecom giant AT&T...
FCC Chair Supports Moving Forward on White Space Tech
Posted on October 22, 2008Last Wednesday, Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Kevin Martin spoke in favor of opening up "white spaces" at a press conference while the FCC's Office of Engineering and Technology (OET) published its much-anticipated report on white space technology trials...
TV Networks Must Stop Blocking Election Videos on YouTube
Posted on October 20, 2008San Francisco - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and a coalition of public interest groups called on four television networks today to stop stifling vibrant political debate on the Internet with overreaching copyright claims and proposed two measures to help YouTube protect online political speech in the final days before America's presidential election...
EFF Challenges Constitutionality of Telecom Immunity in Federal Court
Posted on October 17, 2008San Francisco - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) Thursday challenged the constitutionality of a law aimed at granting retroactive immunity to telecommunications companies that participated in the president's illegal domestic wiretapping program...
Bush Signs Intellectual Property Enforcement Bill
Posted on October 17, 2008On Monday, President Bushed signed a controversial intellectual property enforcement bill into law. This set of proposals for heightened intellectual property enforcement first appeared at the end of 2007 in the House's original PRO IP Act. The winding history of the bill not only sheds light on the agenda of the entertainment industry, but leads to an instructive conclusion -- that the vigilance of public interest groups and involved citizens is having a positive impact on copyright policy...
Do You Need An Exemption from the DMCA?
Posted on October 16, 2008Every three years, the U.S. Copyright Office undertakes a rule-making to consider whether the DMCA's ban on circumventing technological protection measures (e.g., DRM and other "access control" restrictions) is interfering with noninfringing uses of copyrighted materials...
Colbert on NSA Spying
Posted on October 16, 2008In his Word of the Day commentary yesterday, Stephen Colbert put forward a ringing defense of the NSA's spying program. Responding to reports that NSA employees are routinely listening in on the personal calls of US soldiers and aid workers stationed abroad, Colbert reminds viewers that "it's a lot easier to listen to Americans, they speak English...
YouTube Responds to McCain Campaign's Letter
Posted on October 15, 2008Yesterday, we wrote about the McCain-Palin campaign's letter to YouTube, highlighting how DMCA takedown notices can make online speech disappear from the Internet, even when the claims of infringement plainly lack any merit. Today, we bring you YouTube's response...
minilinks for 2008-10-15
Posted on October 14, 2008NSA Spying Overseas: Legal or Not?Marty Lederman asks whether NSA spying on Americans abroad — as described by new whistleblowers — is a violation of FISA or the 4th Amendment. Savage Sued for TakedownStanford's Fair Use Project says the radio host sent a bogus takedown notice to YouTube...
McCain Campaign Feels DMCA Sting
Posted on October 14, 2008Yesterday, the McCain-Palin campaign sent a letter to YouTube describing the troubles it has been having with bogus DMCA takedowns targeting its videos: [O]verreaching copyright claims have resulted in the removal of non-infringing campaign videos from YouTube, thus silencing political speech...
global minilinks for 2008-10-11
Posted on October 11, 2008A Contentious Meeting with New Zealand's Copyright MinisterColin Jackson hits a brick wall when he and others talk to New Zealand ministers about the new copyright act. Former Pink Floyd Manager: End the P2P LawsuitsPeter Jenner continues to advocate for collective licensing, this time in Berlin...
Why Hollywood Hates RealDVD
Posted on October 10, 2008Why does Hollywood hate RealDVD so much? Here's a hint: it has nothing to do with piracy and everything to do with controlling innovation. Earlier this week, a district court in San Francisco extended the temporary restraining order (TRO) blocking RealNetworks' distribution of its RealDVD software, at least until a full-dress preliminary injunction hearing can be held sometime in late November...
New NSA Whistleblowers Say NSA Spied on US Service Members and Aid Workers
Posted on October 10, 2008This has been a bad week for President Bush's warrantless wiretapping program. First, a government study reported that data-mining is actually a hindrance in the fight against terrorism. And now, two new whistleblowers have come forward with firsthand accounts of how innocent Americans' communications have been swept up in the NSA's dragnet...
Freedom Not Fear 2008
Posted on October 08, 2008Freedom Not Fear is the world's ongoing demonstration against the encroachment of civil liberties by anti-terrorist laws -- particularly in the online world. This year the protests take place this Saturday, October 11th in nearly thirty countries, including the very first events in the Americas...
Government Painfully Fuzzy on the Effects of Infringement
Posted on October 08, 2008Last week, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce urged President Bush to sign the PRO-IP Act, claiming that "counterfeiting and piracy of [intellectual property] is a growing problem that costs U.S. businesses nearly $250 billion in revenue each year [and] has already caused the loss of an estimated 750,000 American jobs...
EFF Challenges Bogus Patent on Internet Music Files
Posted on October 08, 2008San Francisco - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is challenging a bogus patent on Internet music files that could stifle new innovations in online music distribution. Seer Systems was awarded this illegitimate patent for a system and method for joining different musical data types together in a file, distributing them over the Internet, and then playing that file...
Robots for EFF: Artist Creates Robots and Monsters As a Benefit for EFF
Posted on October 06, 2008The artist Joe Alterio has just announced a fantastic benefit that we heartily support. He is re-launching his project, Robots and Monsters: A Charitable Menagerie, trading original, custom-made art for donations to EFF! Here's how it works: visit Joe's site, give him $50 along with three words or phrases to work from, and he'll send you an original work of art...
Chinese Skype Client Hands Confidential Communications to Eavesdroppers
Posted on October 03, 2008This Wednesday, Information Warfare Monitor published damning evidence showing that TOM-Skype, the version of the voice and chat program distributed in China not only blocks keywords from chat conversations, but also spies on and remotely reports the contents of Skype users' private text conversations...
minilinks for 2008-10-03
Posted on October 03, 2008Passport Hack Resurrects ElvisA hacker was able to access the personal data on an RFID passport, inserting the identity of Elvis Aaron Presley. House Limits Constituent EmailsA massive influx of public input on the bailout bill has led the House to limit emails in an attempt to prevent websites from crashing...
Book Review: ©ontent by Cory Doctorow
Posted on October 02, 2008A glowing review of Cory Doctorow's latest book on EFF's Deeplinks should come as no surprise. Not only is Cory is one of the loudest and most prominent promoters of EFF, tirelessly promoting the cause of digital freedom in his blog, his opinion pieces and even his novels, but Cory is also — full disclosure — a former employee, current Fellow and generous supporter of EFF...
Why MPAA Should Lose Against RealDVD
Posted on October 02, 2008Earlier this week, the motion picture industry sued RealNetworks over its RealDVD software. The MPAA companies also asked for an immediate temporary restraining order (TRO) to block Real from distributing the product, which allows consumers to copy their DVDs onto their personal computers for later playback...
California Governor Signs Off On New Protections for Free Speech
Posted on October 02, 2008California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger yesterday signed Assembly Bill 2433 and filled a significant gap in protection for anonymous speech online. Authored by Assemblymember Paul Krekorian and co-sponsored by EFF, the California Anti-SLAPP Project and the California Newspaper Publishers Association, the new law allows speakers who successfully oppose the use of bogus out-of-state litigation to obtain their identities to recover attorneys' fees...
RIAA Lawsuit Campaign Losing Credibility
Posted on October 01, 2008San Francisco - Five years after the Recording Industry of America (RIAA) began its massive litigation campaign against music fans suspected of sharing copyrighted music files over the Internet, the campaign has failed to get artists paid or reduce peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing...
And Walmart Makes Three: Another Music Service Plans to Shut Down DRM Support
Posted on September 29, 2008Following in the footsteps of MSN Music and Yahoo! Music, Walmart has notified customers that it will be shutting off its DRM servers in less than two weeks. Walmart's been selling DRM-free music since February, but anyone who bought music before that date will not be able to transfer those songs to ?unauthorized computers,? or access the songs after changing operating systems...
Court Protects Privacy of Satellite Receiver Owners
Posted on September 29, 2008Last month, EFF filed an amicus brief in Echostar v. Freetech, where Echostar sought the identities of every consumer who purchased a Freetech "CoolSat" free-to-air (FTA) satellite receiver during the past five years. EFF argued that this demand, issued in discovery in a lawsuit between Echostar and Freetech, represented an unwarranted intrusion into the privacy of individual consumers...
minilinks for 2008-09-26
Posted on September 26, 2008Spore Makers Sued for Duplicitous DRMGame maker Electronic Arts is facing a lawsuit for the use of copy protection that secretly installs a restrictive program on a user's computer. ISP: It's Impossible For Us to Stop Illegal P2PA Belgian ISP, ordered by a court to stop illegal file-sharing, now says that effective filtering is impossible...
EFF Urges Court to Protect Innovation in Arista v. Lime Wire
Posted on September 26, 2008New York - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and a coalition of groups representing both consumers and industry filed an amicus brief today in the first major lawsuit since MGM v. Grokster against a creator of peer-to-peer (P2P) filesharing software, warning that the case has profound implications for the development of new software and hardware...
YouTube Anti-Scientology Takedowns: Good News, Bad News
Posted on September 25, 2008Now that the dust has settled on the anti-Scientology video takedown controversy, it's time to take stock. For those of you who missed this one: on September 4th and 5th, hundreds and possibly thousands of videos critical of the Church of Scientology were taken down as a result of DMCA notices reportedly sent by by American Rights Counsel, Dr...
Capitol v. Thomas: Judge Orders New Trial, Implores Congress to Lower Statutory Penalties for P2P
Posted on September 24, 2008Joining the ranks of federal district judges in Arizona and Massachusetts, District of Minnesota Chief Judge Michael Davis today concluded [44-page PDF] that simply making a music file available in a shared file does not violate copyright law, and ordered a new trial in Capitol Records v...
DoJ Agrees: IP Enforcement Bill is a Bad Idea
Posted on September 24, 2008Yesterday, the Department of Justice delivered a letter to Senators Specter and Leahy, blasting S.3325, the "Enforcement of Intellectual Property Right Act of 2008." In the letter, the DoJ echoes, almost exactly, the concerns that EFF and other public interest groups have had for months: We strongly oppose Title I of the bill, which not only authorizes the Attorney General to pursue civil remedies for copyright infringement, but to secure "restitution" damages and remit them to the private owners of infringed copyrights...
global minilinks for 2008-09-23
Posted on September 23, 2008South Korean Government Seeks to End Anonymity, Allow Arbitrary Content TakedownAll forum and chat room users will be required to make verifiable registrations using their real names; Web sites can be taken down for 30 days if they receive complaints of fraud or slander...
Internal DHS Documents Detail Expansion of Power to Read and Copy Travelers' Papers
Posted on September 23, 2008San Francisco - Recently obtained documents show that last year the Department of Homeland Security quietly reversed a two-decades-old policy that restricted customs agents from reading and copying the personal papers carried by travelers, including U...
Comcast Unveils Its New Traffic Management Architecture
Posted on September 22, 2008Late on Friday night, Comcast filed an overview of its new traffic management arrangements with the FCC. This is the long term replacement for its controversial practice of using forged TCP Reset packets to limit the use of peer to peer protocols. The new system appears to be a reasonable attempt at sharing limited bandwidth amongst groups of users...
Government Files to Dismiss NSA Telecom Surveillance Cases
Posted on September 20, 2008Late Friday night, the Government started the formal process for retroactive immunity for the telecommunications companies sued by EFF and others for their involvement in the warrantless surveillance of millions of ordinary Americans. The immunity is a key part of the unconstitutional FISA Amendments Act passed by Congress in July...
Law Firm Uses Bogus Trademark Claim in Attempt to Silence Online News Site
Posted on September 19, 2008San Francisco - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and Public Citizen, joined by Public Knowledge and Citizen Media Law Project, urged a federal judge in Chicago Friday to dismiss a law firm's baseless trademark claims, which were apparently aimed at quashing speech by an online news site...
DOJ View on Email Privacy May Hamper Prosecution of Palin Hackers
Posted on September 18, 2008On Wednesday, some hackers apparently obtained unauthorized access to Gov. Sarah Palin's Yahoo! email account by posing as Gov. Palin and getting a new password (Michelle Malkin and Wired News have details). Yesterday we noted that, based on the facts in newspaper reporting, a court would likely consider this a violation of the Stored Communications Act (SCA)...
minilinks for 2008-09-18
Posted on September 18, 2008New Bill Would Tighten Rules for Laptop SearchesThe Border Search Accountability Act would place limits on the governments ability to seize and search computers at the border. RIAA, MPAA Resume Lobbying on Copyright LawThe recording industry and the motion picture industry are pushing the latest version of the Enforcement of Intellectual Property Rights Act...
EFF Sues NSA, President Bush, and Vice President Cheney to Stop Illegal Surveillance
Posted on September 18, 2008The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) filed a lawsuit against the National Security Agency (NSA) and other government agencies today on behalf of AT&T customers to stop the illegal, unconstitutional, and ongoing dragnet surveillance of their communications and communications records...
U.S. Trade Office Withholds Documents on Secret IP Enforcement Treaty
Posted on September 18, 2008Washington, D.C. - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and Public Knowledge have filed suit against the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR), demanding information about a secret intellectual property enforcement treaty that the government has put on a fast track to completion...
Gov. Palin's Yahoo Email Account Hacked
Posted on September 17, 2008Last night, someone apparently obtained access to the Yahoo! email account of Governor Sarah Palin, the Republican candidate for Vice President. Screenshots of Gov. Palin's email account are now widely available on the sites such as Wikileaks and Gawker...
Copyright Enforcement Bill Being Pushed to Fast Track
Posted on September 16, 2008Our friends at Public Knowledge have been getting the word out about S. 3325, the Enforcement of Intellectual Property Act of 2008. The bill was amended by the Senate Judiciary Committee last week, but it still aims to give the government the power to bring civil suits against infringers (where they would normally file a criminal lawsuit), allowing the Department of Justice to act as an enforcement tool for the entertainment industry, paid by your tax dollars...
New Details of Official Dissent in Spying Scandal
Posted on September 16, 2008A new book containing explosive details about the NSA's illegal spying program hits stores today. Barton Gellman's "Angler: The Cheney Vice Presidency," excerpted in the Washington Post in two parts (1 & 2), brings to light new information about the warrantless wiretapping scandal and the role played by the most powerful vice president in history...
Secret Counterfeiting Treaty Must be Made Public
Posted on September 15, 2008EFF and more than 100 public interest organizations from around the world are calling for answers about the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) today. Based on leaked documents and industry comments about ACTA, we believe the treaty could require Internet service providers to monitor all consumers' Internet communications, interfere with fair use of copyrighted materials, and criminalize peer-to-peer electronic file sharing...
global minilinks for 2008-09-11
Posted on September 11, 2008Bloggers Less Well-Defended than Press in MoroccoThe arrest and two-year sentence of Mohammed Raji marks the first time anyone has been punished for a blog post in Morocco. EDVIGE and the Angry FrenchOpposition to a massive new "Big Sister" database has been boosted by a member of President Sarkozy's own cabinet...
New Court Decision Affirms that 4th Amendment Protects Location Information
Posted on September 11, 2008San Francisco - In an unprecedented victory for cell phone privacy, a federal court has affirmed that cell phone location information stored by a mobile phone provider is protected by the Fourth Amendment and that the government must obtain a warrant based on probable cause before seizing such records...
The Latest on DVD Copying
Posted on September 10, 2008Real Networks has received quite a bit of attention thanks to the launch of its Real DVD software, designed to allow people to copy their DVDs to their hard drives for later playback. (Why is that a big deal? Because Hollywood DVDs are encrypted with CSS, and if you decrypt them without permission, the motion picture industry's lawyers may come a-callin'...
minilinks for 2008-09-10
Posted on September 10, 2008Comcast Appeals FCC Web Traffic-Blocking DecisionAs expected, Comcast is challenging the FCC's authority to regulate the ISP's web traffic blocking behavior. Judge: Harry Potter Lexicon is Not Fair UseA fan's reference text to the Harry Potter series has been found to be infringing...
Google Cuts IP Log Retention to Nine Months
Posted on September 09, 2008Yesterday, Google announced a revised log retention policy, saying "we'll anonymize IP addresses on our server logs after 9 months," instead of the previous 18-24 months. Other information, like cookies, will stay on the longer retention plan. The announcement was in conjunction with Google's response to the European Union's Article 29 Working Party...
Tell the FCC to Open Up White Spaces!
Posted on September 08, 2008Last week, we sent out a call to action over the ?white spaces? issue soon to be addressed by the FCC. Let?s take a closer look at why this issue matters. It ought to be a no-brainer to say that the airwaves belong to everyone. We use the airwaves to carry TV and radio signals, for our cellphones and cordless phones, even for garage door openers and baby monitors...
Massive Takedown of Anti-Scientology Videos on YouTube
Posted on September 05, 2008Over a period of twelve hours, between this Thursday night and Friday morning, American Rights Counsel LLC sent out over 4000 DMCA takedown notices to YouTube, all making copyright infringement claims against videos with content critical of the Church of Scientology...
global minilinks for 2008-09-04
Posted on September 04, 2008Europe's Privacy Czar Attacks Telecom Amendments in EUSays that they could allow over-reaching controls over Internet technology. Kremlin Web Critic Shot by Police in IngushetiaMagomed Yevloyev, owner of the ingushetiya.ru site, and vocal critic of Ingushetia regional administration, was shot by a police officer, and died from his injuries, after being detained...
Keep Wireless Broadband on Track at the FCC
Posted on September 03, 2008Since Google's announcement of the Free the Airwaves campaign, there has been renewed interest in wireless broadband, municipal wi-fi, white spaces -- all long-standing efforts to bring more Internet to more people by making the Internet access available in the airwaves, instead of through underground wires...
minilinks for 2008-09-03
Posted on September 03, 2008AT&T Throws Blue Dog PartyAt the Democratic National Convention in Denver, AT&T threw a big party for Blue Dog Democrats who backed telecom immunity. Joe Biden's Pro-RIAA, Pro-FBI RecordThe Democratic nominee for Vice President has a history of uncompromising support for Hollywood, the recording industry and the intelligence community...
EFF IP Attorney Wins (Another!) Award
Posted on September 02, 2008EFF Senior Staff Attorney Fred Von Lohmann just won a much-prized acknowledgment from Public Knowledge, a public interest group based in Washington, DC whose mission to promote innovation and protect consumer rights often complements our mission at EFF...
Computers Seized from Berkeley Activist Space
Posted on August 28, 2008Yesterday, the FBI, UC Berkeley police, and Alameda County Sheriff's deputies conducted a raid on the Long Haul Infoshop, a community space that is home to a number of leftist and anarchist groups, including a newspaper and a radio station. Armed with a warrant (PDF), authorities entered and quickly removed every computer in the Long Haul space...
EFF Urges Copyright Office to Fix Digital Music Mess, but Carefully
Posted on August 28, 2008In comments filed today, EFF joined with other public interest and consumer groups in urging the Copyright Office to clarify the process for licensing digital music services, but to steer clear of larger digital copyright controversies. The comments were filed in a rulemaking involving the Section 115 compulsory license for "digital phonorecord deliveries" (DPDs) that has been dragging on since 2001 (read the July 16, 2008 "notice of proposed rulemaking" for a summary of the tortured history of the proceeding)...
Required Reading for "User-Generated Content" Sites: Io Group v. Veoh
Posted on August 28, 2008In an important ruling handed down yesterday, a federal district court threw out a copyright infringement suit brought by adult video producer Io Group against Veoh, concluding that the video hosting site qualifies for the DMCA safe harbor. The ruling should be required reading for the executives of every "Web 2...
EFF and ACLU of Northern California to ISPs and Content Owners: Do Your Part to Protect Political Speech
Posted on August 25, 2008Coauthored by ACLU of Northern California Technology and Civil Liberties Policy Director Nicole A. Ozer On blogs, personal and political websites, and through user generated content sites, ordinary citizens in extraordinary numbers are recreating a public sphere and reinvigorating the democratic debate at the core of our political system...
The Secret Room: EFF Designer's Cartoon on Illegal Spying
Posted on August 22, 2008I was asked recently to create a mural-sized political cartoon (and to paint it live!) at a show of experimental drawings and cartoons at the Mission Cultural Center in San Francisco. I chose as my subject the NSA's "secret room" at AT&T's Folsom Street facility...
minilinks for 2008-08-21
Posted on August 21, 2008Senators: FBI Rules Could Target Innocent PeopleFour Democrats criticized proposed attorney general guidelines that the Senators say would allow the FBI to spy on innocent Americans. Watch-Listed Fliers Can SueAn appeals court ruled that passengers can sue the government to have their names removed from no-fly lists...
Appeals Court Remands Gov't Appeal in Hepting v. AT&T
Posted on August 21, 2008Today, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit returned the Hepting v. AT&T case to the District Court. In a two sentence order, the court wrote: In light of the FISA Amendments Act of 2008, Pub. L. No. 110-261, we remand this case to the district court...
Order Against Comcast Issued, FCC Credits EFF
Posted on August 21, 2008The FCC has finally published its order (adopted on August 1) directing Comcast to stop blocking BitTorrent traffic. The 34-page ruling makes for surprisingly enjoyable reading, at least as FCC publications go. The order follows the basic outline that was explained by Chairman Martin in his statement on August 1, 2008...
Judge Rules That Content Owners Must Consider Fair Use Before Sending Takedowns
Posted on August 20, 2008A judge's ruling today is a major victory for free speech and fair use on the Internet, and will help protect everyone who creates content for the Web. In Lenz v. Universal (aka the "dancing baby" case), Judge Jeremy Fogel held that content owners must consider fair use before sending takedown notices under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act ("DMCA")...
The FCC and Regulatory Capture
Posted on August 20, 2008Earlier this month, Internet users welcomed the FCC's ruling against Comcast for interfering with BitTorrent uploads, celebrating the action as a victory for net neutrality. Reigning in Comcast's dishonest behavior was the right thing to do in this case, but many observers are worried that the FCC is establishing a dangerous habit of interfering with the Internet, especially since the FCC has a spotty history when it comes to serving the public...
MIT Coders' Free Speech At Stake
Posted on August 19, 2008As regular Deeplinks readers know, EFF's Coders' Rights Project is defending the rights of three MIT students who were prevented from presenting their research on security vulnerabilities in Boston's transit fare payment system. The students were hit with a temporary restraining order that silenced their planned presentation at DEFCON...
Judge Lifts Unconstitutional Gag Order Against MIT Students
Posted on August 19, 2008Boston - Today, a federal judge lifted an unconstitutional gag order that had prevented three Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) students from disclosing academic research regarding vulnerabilities in Boston's transit fare payment system. The court found that the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Agency (MBTA) had no likelihood of success on the merits of its claim under the federal computer intrusion law and denied the transit agency's request for a five-month injunction...
Victory for MIT Students in MBTA Lawsuit Hearing
Posted on August 19, 2008Today, Judge George O'Toole lifted the gag order on three MIT students who were sued by the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority for discovering a security vulnerability in the MBTA's fare payment system. The Court found that the MBTA was not likely to prevail on the merits of its claim under the federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act...
What If the Kindle Succeeds?
Posted on August 18, 2008The news recently has been full of reports that Amazon's e-book reader, the Kindle, is doing better than expected. Analyst Mark Mahaney from Citibank says Amazon is on track to sell about 380,000 Kindles this year, and says the Kindle "is becoming the iPod of the book world," with sales expected to hit $1 billion by 2010...
Innocent Customers Potentially Dragged Into Legal Battle Over Satellite TV
Posted on August 18, 2008San Francisco - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) asked a federal court Friday to reject efforts by Echostar to get the names and addresses of every customer that purchased a free-to-air satellite receiver. Echostar claims that the receiver can be modified to pirate DISH satellite TV programming...
DRM for Streaming Music Dies a Quiet Death
Posted on August 15, 2008Yet another nail has been driven into DRM's coffin, this time for streaming audio (PCPro has a nice overview of the state of DRM for digital music). Two of the leading on-demand streaming music sites, iMeem and LaLa, are not using DRM on their audio streams, instead sending the music as MP3s dusted with a dash of obfuscation...
MBTA Transit Official Supports MIT Students' Story
Posted on August 15, 2008Today, Richard Sullivan, a Sergeant Detective in the Transit Police of the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (and the liaison to the FBI), filed a Supplemental Declaration. In his declaration, Det. Sullivan said: the MIT Undergrads reiterated that they did not exploit the supposed vulnerabilities that they had identified in the MBTA's computer system, they promised that they would not do so in the future, and they promised that they would not teach others how to...
minilinks for 2008-08-14
Posted on August 14, 2008Oops! FBI Sorry For Spying on Journalists FBI Director Robert Mueller called the NY Times and the Washington Post to express regret for a breach of reporters' phone records. Google Comes Clean On Targeted AdvertisingThe Internet giant confessed to using DoubleClick cookies to deliver targeted advertising to users...
MIT Students Still Gagged by Federal Court
Posted on August 14, 2008A federal court judge in Boston Thursday refused to lift an unconstitutional gag order against three students from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) who uncovered vulnerabilities in Boston's transit fare payment system. In an editorial today, the Boston Globe wrote that Judge O'Toole "ought to lift it...
Condition or Covenant, and Why Should You Care?
Posted on August 13, 2008Imagine that you write some code, and offer it to the public under an open source license that requires that if someone distributes modified versions of the code, the modified versions also be open sourced. Now assume someone distributes modified versions of your code, but fails to open source the modified code...
Olympic Committee Takedown Shows Risks of Ill-Timed Take-Downs
Posted on August 13, 2008It?s never OK to use improper copyright claims to take down legitimate, non-infringing content, but such takedowns are particularly galling when they are timed to directly interfere with the impact of a political message. That?s what happened this week to the Free Tibet movement, and the situation illustrates the risks of a ?shoot first, ask questions later? approach to copyright policing...
Wikipedia Wins Dismissal of Baseless Defamation Claims
Posted on August 13, 2008In a victory for free speech and user-generated content, a New Jersey judge has dismissed baseless defamation claims against the operator of Wikipedia. In a recent ruling, the judge correctly found that federal law immunizes the Wikimedia Foundation from liability for statements made by its users...
EFF Urges Judge to Lift Gag Order on MIT Students
Posted on August 13, 2008Boston - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) urged a federal judge Tuesday to lift an unconstitutional gag order issued to three students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) whose academic research uncovered vulnerabilities in Boston's transit fare payment system...
MIT Students' Response to MBTA Statements
Posted on August 12, 2008Yesterday, the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority issued a statement to CNET that misrepresents the facts leading up to the MBTA's lawsuit against three MIT students. The statement said: A week ago, the MBTA learned about the presentation to be made at the conference, and immediately contacted MIT...
Universities Quietly Fighting Back Against RIAA Tactics
Posted on August 11, 2008Students that receive notices from the RIAA accusing them of illegal filesharing don't have many options. Innocent or not, their choices are limited to either paying the $3000-$5000 settlement, or going to court — where the RIAA's deep pockets guarantee an outrageously expensive legal battle...
MIT Students Gagged by Federal Court Judge
Posted on August 09, 2008Las Vegas - Three students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) were ordered this morning by a federal court judge to cancel their scheduled presentation about vulnerabilities in Boston's transit fare payment system, violating their First Amendment right to discuss their important research...
Public Pressure Mounts Against Invasive Border Searches
Posted on August 08, 2008Random, invasive laptop searches and other digital privacy violations at the U.S. border are facing increasing pressure from the public and Congress. One of the big complaints EFF and others have had is the lack of information and accountability about the intrusive examination of computer files, cell phone directories, and other private information -- and the indiscriminate copying of that data -- as Americans come back home from overseas...
EFF Launches Coders' Rights Project at Black Hat Conference
Posted on August 06, 2008Las Vegas - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) today launches its Coders' Rights Project -- a new initiative to protect programmers and developers from legal threats hampering their cutting-edge research. In conjunction with the project's launch, EFF is staffing an "EFF Is In" booth at Black Hat USA 2008 in Las Vegas on August 6 and 7...
minilinks for 2008-08-06
Posted on August 06, 2008DHS Issues Policy on Laptop SeizuresRules released by Homeland Security say agents can seize laptops and their contents without suspicion of wrongdoing. Privacy Group Spies on Google The National Legal and Policy Center used Google's street view to virtually stalk a Google executive...
EFF Battles Dangerous Attempts to Circumvent Electronic Privacy Law
Posted on August 05, 2008San Francisco - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has filed friend-of-the-court briefs in two key electronic privacy cases that threaten to expand the government's spying authority. In the first case, Bunnell v. Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), EFF filed a brief with the 9th U...
FCC Rules Against Comcast for BitTorrent Blocking
Posted on August 04, 2008On Friday, the FCC voted, 3-2, to punish Comcast for its surreptitious interference with BitTorrent uploads (a practice that EFF helped uncover and document in October 2007). The Commission adopted an order (text of which hasn't been released yet) finding that Comcast violated the neutrality principles set out in the FCC's 2005 "Internet Policy Statement...
Victory for DVRs in the Cloud
Posted on August 04, 2008Twenty-four years ago in the Sony Betamax case, the Supreme Court declared that using a VCR to "time-shift" - to record a television program for viewing at a later time - was a fair use. Today, the Second Circuit rejected [PDF] an attempt by the content industry to change the rules of the game if your video recorder is stored "in the cloud" on the Internet...
MySpace Criminal Charges Risk Dangerous Ramifications for Consumers
Posted on August 04, 2008San Francisco - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and a coalition of academics and public policy groups are urging a judge to dismiss computer crime charges in a case with dangerous ramifications for millions of people who use the Internet. The defendant in the case, Lori Drew, is charged with violating the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) by using a fictitious name and age on a MySpace account and using that account to make hurtful comments to a teenage girl...
Congress Bows to Big Content, Scapegoats Higher Ed
Posted on August 04, 2008Last week, after months of intensive wrangling, the House and the Senate finally agreed on a final version of the Higher Education Act (HEA). Buried in this massive bill, which touches on virtually every aspect of education, is a little provision requiring campuses to develop ?plans to effectively combat the unauthorized distribution of copyrighted material, including through the use of a variety of technology-based deterrents...
Sapient and Explorologist Settle Lawsuit
Posted on August 04, 2008Explorologist Ltd. and an online critic have settled their legal battle over a YouTube video challenging Uri Geller's claims about his mental powers. EFF and Schnader, Harrison, Segal & Lewis, LLP, represent Brian Sapient, who uploaded an excerpt from a documentary that critiqued Geller's performances and abilities to YouTube...
EFF Releases "Switzerland" ISP Testing Tool
Posted on August 01, 2008San Francisco - Hours before the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is expected to take action against Comcast for violating the FCC's net neutrality principles, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is releasing "Switzerland," a software tool for customers to test the integrity of their Internet communications...
minilinks for 2008-31-07
Posted on July 31, 2008Kansas Sentator Outraged by Chinese SpyingSenator Brownback objects to dragnet surveillance — when it is done by other countries. Networks Sue RedlassoFox and NBC made good on a threat to sue Redlasso, the popular service that allows users to clip and post TV shows...
Senators Announce New Intellectual Property Enforcement Bill
Posted on July 29, 2008Last week, members of the Senate Judiciary Committee introduced S. 3325, the "Enforcement of Intellectual Property Rights Act of 2008," a bill that proposes a number of alarming changes to copyright law. The bill is the Senate's gift to big content owners, creating new and powerful tools -- many of which will be paid for by your tax dollars -- for the entertainment industry to go after infringers...
In Memoriam: Ed Foster, 1949-2008
Posted on July 29, 2008Ed Foster, the journalist and consumer advocate behind InfoWorld's GripeLine column and GripeLog blog, died of a heart attack this weekend. He was 59. It's no exaggeration to say that Ed was one of the preeminent consumer rights activists of the digital age...
Yahoo! Offers Refunds to Customers Who Bought DRM-Crippled Tunes
Posted on July 29, 2008Last week, Yahoo! faced a predictable backlash when they announced that they would be ending support for the DRM that came with music sold through it's Yahoo Music service. EFF and others criticized the decision, saying Yahoo should either continue to support the DRM or compensate their customers with refunds and/or replacement mp3s...
Paper Catalog + Computer Database = Patent? Um, No.
Posted on July 29, 2008Last week, the patent office agreed to reexamine a patent it granted in 1994 on a "Computer-assisted parts sales method." Orion IP (later renamed Clear with Computers) has filed many, many lawsuits asserting infringement of this and related patents by many, many defendants...
Fair Use Prevails Over Michael Savage's Copyright Claims
Posted on July 28, 2008On Friday, a U.S. District Court granted the motion for judgment on the pleadings we and our co-counsel Tom Burke of Davis Wright Tremaine LLP filed in a copyright infringement suit brought by talk show host Michael Savage against the Council on American-Islamic Relations...
minilinks for 2008-25-17
Posted on July 25, 2008Parents to Be Punished For Children's Net Piracy Households that are suspected of illegal downloads will be blacklisted and have Internet access curbed under new rules in the UK. Senate Bill Asks Attorney General to Investigate Piracy Senators Leahy and Specter have introduced a new bill that would allow documents and records to be seized in civil copyright-infringement suits...
When the Reese's Peanut Butter Cups Principle Doesn't Apply
Posted on July 25, 2008When I was a kid, it seemed that every third commercial I saw was for Reese's Peanut Butter Cups. In these commercials, a chocoholic would collide with a peanut butter lover, quickly followed by the memorable exchange of "you got peanut butter in my chocolate" and "you got chocolate in my peanut butter...
Key Internet Censorship Law Struck Down Yet Again
Posted on July 24, 2008The ACLU, EFF, and a coalition of plaintiffs achieved yet another victory for online free speech this week when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit affirmed [decision, PDF] a district court's decision [decision, PDF] granting a permanent injunction against enforcement of the Child Online Protection Act of 1998 (COPA), a federal law that would violate the First Amendment by imposing civil and criminal penalties on commercial website operators that publish sexually explicit material without also using credit card authentication or other technological measures to verify viewer age and block access by minors...
Here We Go Again: Yahoo! Music Throws Away the DRM Keys
Posted on July 24, 2008Just over a month after consumer backlash caused MSN Music to rescind its decision to deactivate the digital rights management ("DRM") servers that allowed MSN Music purchasers to "reauthorize" music files after upgrading operating systems or buying new computers, Yahoo! Music has decided to deactivate its own DRM servers...
Three Ways to Fight Immunity
Posted on July 23, 2008It?s been two weeks since the Senate?s cowardly vote to pass the FISA Amendments Act (FAA), caving in to the president?s demands. With this vote, Congress gave the president virtually all of the spying powers he has sought for so long, and delivered the one thing he demanded above all else: Immunity for his telecom buddies for their role in his illegal spying program...
Salon's New Revelations on Illegal Spying
Posted on July 23, 2008Salon today published a new article in it's series of investigations into the Bush administration's illegal spying programs: Exposing Bush's History Abuse of Power (log-in may be required). The article describes how some in Washington D.C. are discussing the idea of a new and sweeping investigation into the White House's surveillance programs, one inspired by the famous Church Committee investigations of the 1970s...
EFF Opposes MPAA's Selectable Output Control FCC Petition
Posted on July 22, 2008Public Knowledge, joined by EFF as well as the Consumer Federation of America, the Digital Freedom Campaign, the Media Access Project, the New America Foundation and U.S. PIRG, yesterday filed an opposition [PDF] to the MPAA's FCC petition seeking a waiver of the ban against selectable output controls (SOC) (we have an explanation of what a "selectable output control" is on our Digital Video issue page)...
U.S. Patent Office Rejects All Ninety-Five NeoMedia Patent Claims
Posted on July 18, 2008EFF's Patent Busting Project, continues to march forward, this time with more good news about the petition that EFF, in conjunction with Paul Grewal and James Czaja of Day Casebeer Madrid & Batchelder, filed last April seeking reexamination of the NeoMedia bar-code lookup patent...
More ISPs Decide to Filter Usenet Newsgroups
Posted on July 18, 2008New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo recently succeeding in pressuring AOL and AT&T to join the ranks of Verizon, Sprint, and Time Warner Cable in limiting access to many or all of the Usenet newsgroups hosted on their servers. This tactic will hinder free speech and the access to information in Usenet communities, without deterring the child pornographer...
Library of Congress on DMCA, Copyright Law Troubles
Posted on July 17, 2008The chorus of voices criticizing the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) has just gotten a bit louder with the addition of a new and authoritative voice: The Library of Congress. In a new report, jointly released with the U.K.'s Joint Information Systems Committee, Australia's Open Access to Knowledge (OAK) Law Project, and the Netherlands' SURFfoundation, the Library of Congress' National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program points out that the work of preserving, documenting and archiving the nation's intellectual output is made unnecessarily difficult by antiquated copyright law exceptions and limitations, and TPM (technological protection measure) laws designed to restrict the making of digital copies...
minilinks for 2008-17-07
Posted on July 17, 2008Apple Sues PsystarThe Psystar OpenMac has incurred the wrath of the "Closed Software Movement." Prosecutor Flagged by US Terror Watch ListAir travel is difficult for Assistant Attorney General Jim Robinson, who has been put on a secret list by mistake...
Why the VPPA Protects YouTube and Viacom Employees
Posted on July 16, 2008Monday?s stipulation between YouTube and Viacom did not ?extend to records reflecting the business activities of the parties? employees and agents.? Instead, as we noted yesterday: The parties will meet and confer within 14 days of the execution of this Stipulation concerning records reflecting the business activities of the parties? employees and agents...
Viacom Letter to EFF re Google/YouTube Data Privacy
Posted on July 15, 2008Today Michael Fricklas, Viacom's General Counsel, sent EFF a letter in response to the concerns we raised regarding the user viewing data controversy over the past week. The letter, arriving on the heels of the stipulation entered between Google and Viacom last night, helps assuage a remaining concern: what if the parties changed the stipulation at a later time? To address this concern, Viacom's letter promises: that we will notify you [EFF], in advance, if, for some unforeseen reason we believe that these protections need to be modified in a way that reduces the level of public privacy protections so that you have an opportunity to discuss any concerns you may have or lodge any appropriate objections with the court...
You Bought It, But You Don't Own It
Posted on July 15, 2008In a devastating blow to user rights, an Arizona federal court has ruled that consumers can be guilty of copyright infringement if they violate the end user license agreement ("EULA") that comes with the software--even where the so-called "violation" is specifically excluded from copyright liability...
Friday Court Hearing in YouTube Video Battle
Posted on July 15, 2008San Jose - On Friday, July 18, at 9 a.m., the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) will urge a federal judge in San Jose to protect the free speech and fair use rights of mother who posted a home movie of her son dancing to Prince on YouTube. EFF represents Stephanie Lenz, who uploaded a 29-second clip of her son dancing in the family kitchen to the Prince song, "Let's Go Crazy," which is playing on a stereo in the background...
Viacom Narrows Request for YouTube Information
Posted on July 15, 2008Yesterday, Google/YouTube and Viacom reached a stipulation agreeing to anonymize information about most YouTube users prior to production. As YouTube's blog put it, "Viacom, MTV and other litigants have backed off their original demand for all users' viewing histories and we will not be providing that information...
Tiffany v. eBay: Court Rejects Tiffany's Expansive Trademark Infringement Theories
Posted on July 14, 2008In a decision that surely will be cited many times in coming years, Judge Richard Sullivan today sided with eBay in his decision [sixty-six page PDF] in the Tiffany v. eBay trademark trial. In so doing, the judge confirmed that trademark law is about consumer protection, not about squelching speech, and also rejected an attempt by Tiffany radically to expand the reach of contributory infringement...
FCC Chairman Hints at Order Against Comcast
Posted on July 11, 2008FCC Chairman Kevin Martin sent a signal today that the FCC may issue an order against Comcast in the wake of the scandal over their use of packet forgery to interfere with BitTorrent, Gnutella, and other Internet protocols. EFF worked with Robb Topolski to run the first controlled tests of Comcast's RST forgery practices last year...
The ?Repeal Immunity? Movement Begins Today
Posted on July 11, 2008Today, EFF Senior Staff Attorney Kevin Bankston was invited to guest-blog at The Hill.com's Congress Blog on EFF's plans in the wake of the recent surveillance law overhaul: Our long war against warrantless wiretapping has only just begun, and we will not stop until we get that legal ruling we?ve been fighting for...
Sixth Circuit Dodges Constitutional Question on Email Privacy; Warshak Case Dismissed on Procedural Grounds
Posted on July 11, 2008Today, the full panel of Sixth Circuit judges dismissed [opinion] on procedural grounds the case of Warshak v. US, a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of no-notice, warrantless searches of email stored by an email provider. A three-judge panel of Sixth Circuit judges had previously held [PDF], based in part on briefing by EFF [PDF], that the federal statute that authorized such searches of remote email accounts — the Stored Communications Act — violated the Fourth Amendment on its face...
Looking Back, Moving Forward: The Continuing Fight Against Telecom Immunity
Posted on July 10, 2008The debate over telecom immunity has now spanned almost two years. When the first proposal to grant immunity to the telecoms was introduced in Congress, in September of 2006, no one thought the fight would last this long. As we ponder the bizarre spectacle of a Congress that has willingly and repeatedly rolled over on the Bush administration's expansive claims of executive power, it is worth remembering that at one time it appeared that there would be hardly any resistance at all to the question of whether to grant immunity to the telecoms that participated in Bush's illegal warrantless wiretapping program...
Help EFF Continue the Fight Against Warrantless Wiretapping
Posted on July 10, 2008In a move that I can only describe as cowardice, Congress just passed legislation meant to immunize telephone companies for their illegal, disloyal, and irresponsible behavior. EFF has been fighting against telecom immunity, and we need your help to bring the fight to the next level: http://secure...
Senate Joins House in Caving to White House Immunity Demands
Posted on July 09, 2008Washington, D.C. - The U.S. Senate this afternoon passed the FISA Amendments Act, broadly expanding the president's warrantless surveillance authority and unconstitutionally granting retroactive immunity to telecommunications companies that participated in the president's illegal domestic wiretapping program...
Senate Begins Final Debate on Retroactive Immunity
Posted on July 08, 2008The final Senate debate on the dangerously flawed FISA Amendments Act began this morning. Senator Feingold spoke at length in favor of Senator Dodd's amendment to strip retroactive immunity from the bill: ...Granting retroactive immunity under these circumstances will undermine any new laws that we pass regarding government surveillance...
Bush: Telecom Immunity More Important Than Surveillance Powers
Posted on July 07, 2008Today the Bush Administration released a letter threatening to veto the upcoming FISA legislation if it included the Bingaman Amendment, which puts both telecom immunity and the court cases on hold until after the Inspector General reports about the warrantless wiretapping program...
Whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg on FISA
Posted on July 07, 2008Former intelligence officer Daniel Ellsberg, the whistleblower who in the early 1970s released the Pentagon Papers, has spoken out against the Senate's version of FISA reform and warrantless wiretapping. In this video posted on Boing Boing Gadgets, he reminds viewers that all members of Congress have taken an oath to uphold the Constitution...
A Real-Life Orphan Works Dilemma
Posted on July 07, 2008Though the orphan works problem can seem arcane, the New York Times provides a clear, real-life example of the orphan works problem. A history teacher and part-time book publisher wanted to use two photographs from the archives of the Brooklyn Historical Society -- and was willing to pay for the rights to use them...
Viacom's Statement on YouTube User Data Controversy
Posted on July 03, 2008Viacom released the following statement today in response to the YouTube user data controversy (first reported on this blog): "It is unfortunate that we have been compelled to go to court to protect Viacom's rights and the rights of the artists who work with and depend on us...
Court Rejects Attempt to Expand the DMCA
Posted on July 03, 2008Yesterday, a district court dismissed several claims in the case Coupons, Inc. v. Stottlemire, in which we had, in March, filed an amicus brief. Coupons offers online coupons that consumers can access and print using software provided by Coupons. The software tries to limit the number of times a user can print each coupon...
minilinks for 2008-07-02
Posted on July 03, 2008Is the Gov't Tracking Us Through Our Cellphones? Lawsuit Seeks AnswersA lawsuit brought by EFF and the ACLU seeks to force release of documents on cellphone tracking. RIAA requests internet filtering in international treatyThe ACTA treaty is too secret for the public to see, but the RIAA has been able to make suggestions -- including gutting "safe harbor" provisions that protect ISPs...
Cartoon: The Return of Snuggly, the Security Bear
Posted on July 03, 2008A few months back, SF Gate cartoonist Mark Fiore introduced his character Snuggly, the Security Bear, with a brilliant take on telecom immunity. Now, Snuggly is back, and he has a few words to say about "compromise."
What The New NSA Spying Decision Means for the Immunity Debate
Posted on July 03, 2008As we reported yesterday, Chief Judge Vaughn Walker of the Northern District of California has just issued a key ruling in Al Haramain v. Bush, one of the cases challenging the NSA's warrantless wiretapping program. Judge Walker is also overseeing the consolidated litigation against the telecoms...
Legal Filesharing on Campus?
Posted on July 03, 2008As EFF has been saying for years, the best way forward in the wars over illegal filesharing is the creation of a Voluntary Collective Licensing system. It sounds simple enough: Music fans would pay a small fee each month in exchange for a blanket license to share and download whatever they like...
Senator Hatch and Tinfoil Hats
Posted on July 03, 2008Apparently no longer even bothering with coherent or rational arguments, supporters of the flawed surveillance bill have now resorted to namecalling. Here's Senator Orrin Hatch's argument in last Thursday's Senate debate. (h/t ThinkProgress) "How many times have we heard claims that the Protect America Act would permit the government to spy on innocent American families overseas, on their vacations? Or innocent American soldiers overseas serving their country? Or innocent American students who are simply studying abroad? Painting this type of picture only feeds the delusions of those who wear tinfoil hats around their house and think that Nine-Eleven was an inside job...
Breaking News: Court Holds That FISA Preempts State Secret Privilege
Posted on July 02, 2008New NSA Spying Decision Undermines Arguments for Telecom Immunity Today, Chief Judge Vaughn Walker of the Northern District of California, issued an opinion in Al Haramain v. Bush, one of the cases challenging the NSA warrantless wiretapping program. The Court found that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) preempted the state secret privilege...
Court Ruling Will Expose Viewing Habits of YouTube Users
Posted on July 02, 2008Yesterday, in the Viacom v. Google litigation, the federal court for the Southern District of New York ordered Google to produce to Viacom (over Google's objections): all data from the Logging database concerning each time a YouTube video has been viewed on the YouTube website or through embedding on a third-party website The court?s order grants Viacom's request and erroneously ignores the protections of the federal Video Privacy Protection Act (VPPA), and threatens to expose deeply private information about what videos are watched by YouTube users...
European Lawmaker Sues U.S. Agencies to Obtain Travel-Related and Other Personal Information
Posted on July 01, 2008Washington, D.C. - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) filed suit on behalf of a member of the European Parliament today, demanding that the U.S. government release records about her "risk assessment" score and other information gathered about her during her international travels...
Surveilling Drivers For Safety, For The Environment, and For Profit
Posted on June 30, 2008There is a growing movement to surveil the drivers of cars — for insurance purposes. One idea is that vehicle insurance premiums should depend on verifiable, periodic measurements of how far a car has been driven. The case for such premiums is strong: driving further clearly increases the risk of an accident, and "Pay As You Drive" premiums would allow (some) drivers to pay less for insurance; would allow insurance companies to make higher profits; and would reduce the congestion, greenhouse emission and traffic accident costs that each mile driven causes for society...
Global minilinks for 2008-06-30
Posted on June 30, 2008Tor Project Blocked in China -- FinallyAfter years of aiding those seeking anonymity and bypassing censorship, Tor is finally blocked by the Great Firewall of China. China's Overeager American Censors"Practically every U.S.-owned search engine has caved to the Chinese government's demands that they censor political Web sites in China...
A Brief Reprieve on FISA: What Now?
Posted on June 27, 2008Thursday evening, Senator Reid officially delayed a final vote on the FISA Amendments Act until July 8. That gave us just twelve days — now, eleven — to change the political calculus and avoid a Congressional seal of approval on illegal wiretapping...
EFF Supports Senator Bingaman's Immunity Amendment: Congress Should Know What It is Immunizing
Posted on June 27, 2008The schedule for the Senate's return on July 8 allows for three amendments to be introduced to the FISA Amendments Act, which in its current form would grant immunity from the law to phone companies who engaged in illegal spying. One amendment, from Senators Dodd and Leahy, would strip immunity from the bill altogether...
minilinks for 2008-06-26
Posted on June 26, 2008Schwarzenegger Asks ISPs to Block NewsgroupsThe California Governor and Attorney General have asked ISPs to jump on the newsgroup-blocking bandwagon -- an attempt to stop child porn that will likely block legitimate speech as well. Prince v. Tribute to PrinceA Norwegian tribute album featuring covers of Prince songs by various artists is the latest object of the musician's wrath...
Senate Delays Vote on Immunity
Posted on June 26, 2008It's official: Thanks to overwhelming grassroots action, and the heroic efforts of Senators Dodd and Feingold, the Senate's vote on whether to grant phone companies immunity from the law for assisting in the President's illegal wiretapping program has been delayed until after July 4th Recess! This is an unexpected reprieve for civil liberties and the rule of law...
DNI and AG Fear Court Ruling on Warrantless Wiretapping
Posted on June 26, 2008EFF and others have long suspected that one reason the White House and its allies have fought for telecom immunity so fervently has been their fear that a judicial ruling on the legality of telecoms' participation would lead to a ruling rejecting the legality of the Administration's warrantless wiretapping program itself...
Vote On Immunity Appears Imminent, But Anything Could Happen
Posted on June 25, 2008There have been rumors that the Senate's vote on final passage of the FISA Amendments Act might be delayed until after next week's Congressional recess. Anything could happen, as the Senate is simultaneously rushing to complete two other controversial bills — one to address the mortage crisis, and another to fund the Iraq war — as quickly as possible...
Congress Must Investigate Privacy Violations at U.S. Borders
Posted on June 25, 2008This morning, EFF Senior Staff Attorney Lee Tien testified in a Senate hearing on laptop searches and other privacy violations faced by Americans at the U.S. border. Lee's testimony [PDF] outlined the dangers of random and invasive searches of travelers' digital devices, and urged more congressional investigation and oversight...
Senators Dodd and Feingold Stand Strong Against Immunity
Posted on June 25, 2008The Senate is once again arguing whether to pass The FISA Amendments Act, a deeply flawed and unconstitutional surveillance bill. Tuesday evening, Senator Dodd of Connecticut clarified what's at stake: This legislation includes provisions which would grant retroactive immunity to telecommunications companies that apparently have violated the privacy and the trust of millions of Americans by participating in the president?s warrantless wiretapping program...
Charter Communications ISP Halts Traffic Inspection/Advertising Plan
Posted on June 25, 2008Privacy-minded consumers celebrated a victory as the ISP Charter Communications announced a decision to scuttle a controversial advertising plan that would have involved surveillance of customers' Internet traffic -- likely using an invasive technique called deep packet inspection...
EFF to Testify at Congressional Hearing on Electronic Searches at U.S. Borders
Posted on June 23, 2008Washington, D.C. - On Wednesday, June 25, at 9 a.m., members of the U.S. Senate Judiciary hearing will hold a public hearing on laptop searches and other privacy violations faced by Americans at the U.S. border. Senior Staff Attorney Lee Tien of the Electronic Frontier Foundation will appear at Wednesday's hearing to urge more congressional investigation and oversight of the Department of Homeland Security's border search practices and policies...
Wanted: Prior Art to Bust Seer Patent
Posted on June 23, 2008The Patent Busting Project fights back against bogus patents by filing requests for reexamination against the worst offenders. We've successfully pushed the Patent and Trademark Office to reexamine five of the ten patents on our Most Wanted list. We're proud to have tackled half of the list, but now we need your help to bust another...
EFF Releases Updated White Paper on Best Practices for Online Service Providers
Posted on June 20, 2008Today EFF released a revised white paper on Best Practices for Online Service Providers, an update of the 2004 OSP Best Practices white paper. In the white paper, EFF offers some suggestions, both legal and technical, for the best privacy practices for collecting, storing and disclosing data that balance the needs of OSPs and their users' privacy and civil liberties...
House Falls Down on the Job
Posted on June 20, 2008The House of Representatives today has fallen down on the job. By passing the FISA Amendments Act (293-129, with 105 Democrats in favor), they voted to give this lame duck President an undeserved parting gift by passing immunity for telcoms that helped the President violate the Constitution by participating in the NSA's massive and illegal spying program...
EFF Urges Judge to Grant New Trial for Jammie Thomas
Posted on June 20, 2008San Francisco - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and a coalition of consumer and industry groups have asked a judge to grant a new trial to Jammie Thomas, who was hit with a $222,000 judgment in a file-sharing lawsuit based in part on the recording industry's bogus "making available" theory...
House Caves, Approves Fake 'Compromise' on Telecom Immunity
Posted on June 20, 2008Washington, D.C. - Privacy rights and the rule of law took a serious blow today when the House of Representatives passed blanket retroactive immunity for phone companies that participated in the president's warrantless surveillance program. The FISA Amendments Act, H...
Rebublican Senators: It's About Immunity
Posted on June 19, 2008The dangerous and unconstitutional FISA bill coming up before the House Friday appears to have support, with Speaker Pelosi describing it as a "balanced bill". The bill is far from balanced when it comes to immunity for telecoms, as the bill was written to guarantee dismissal -- a fact the Speaker's Republican colleagues are quite up front about: House Minority Whip Roy Blunt, R-Mo...
Microsoft to MSN Music Customers: Your Music is Still Good ? Till 2011
Posted on June 19, 2008Last April, Microsoft met with criticism when it announced that it would deactivate all music purchased from MSN Music. Customers rightly protested that the decision to pull the plug on the Digital Rights Management (DRM) servers that allow MSN Music customers to ?reauthorize? music files would render their purchases useless At the time, EFF announced an open letter to Microsoft, urging them to make things right with their customers by giving refunds or replacing DRM-crippled music, and by avoiding use of DRM in the future...
URGENT: Tell Congress to Vote Against Immunity
Posted on June 19, 2008In February, the House stood up for civil liberties and voted against a bill that contained immunity. But now the political landscape has changed, and all signs suggest that the House may be prepared to cave to the White House and vote to pass this bill...
EFF Urges Congress to Reject Final 'Compromise' on Telco Immunity
Posted on June 19, 2008Washington, D.C. - EFF calls on members of the House of Representatives to vote "NO" on H.R.6304, the FISA Amendments Act of 2008, which the House is expected to vote on tomorrow. The text of the bill was released today, and it contains blanket retroactive immunity for telcos that broke the law by cooperating with the NSA's warrantless surveillance program...
EFF Obtains New FISA Bill Containing Telecom Immunity, Vote in House Tomorrow!
Posted on June 19, 2008EFF has obtained a copy of the new FISA "compromise", and -- surprise! -- it contains blanket immunity for telecoms that helped the NSA break the law and spy on millions of ordinary Americans, just as we predicted yesterday. House Leadership intends to bring this bill to the floor for a vote tomorrow, so please contact your Congressperson now and tell them to vote NO on H...
Immunity in the News
Posted on June 18, 2008As Congress gets ready to vote on a new version of the FISA bill -- addressing the crucial question of whether it should pass immunity for telecom lawbreakers that participated in the NSA's illegal spying program -- the New York Times Editorial Board has weighed in...
New Ninth Circuit Case Protects Text Message Privacy From Police and Employers
Posted on June 18, 2008Today?s Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals opinion in Quon v. Arch Wireless is a victory for the privacy of email and text messages. The holding means that law enforcement needs a probable cause warrant to access stored copies of your electronic messages less than 180 days old, regardless of whether you have already downloaded or read them...
EFF Speaks Out Against Telecom Immunity Deal
Posted on June 18, 2008Washington, D.C. - Congress is widely reported to have struck a deal on legislation to amend the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) that includes immunity for telecommunications companies that helped the government illegally spy on millions of ordinary Americans...
Ninth Circuit Upholds Privacy of Text Messages
Posted on June 18, 2008Today the Ninth Circuit issued its opinion in Quon v. Arch Wireless, holding that "users of text messaging services such as those provided by Arch Wireless have a reasonable expectation of privacy in their text messages." The Court concluded: The search of Appellants? text messages violated their Fourth Amendment and California constitutional privacy rights because they had a reasonable expectation of privacy in the content of the text messages, and the search was unreasonable in scope...
minilinks for 2008-06-18
Posted on June 18, 2008Selectable Output Control (SOC) for Video Content: It's All About Control Jon Healy explains that the MPAA's petition to the FCC is really about gaining control over the next generation of video technology. Counter Spy Act -- Pro-Privacy or Anti-Piracy? A new bill in the Senate is designed to fight spyware -- but Ed Foster says it provides a loophole for software makers who would like the ability to remotely disable software that is suspected of being pirated...
Biting the Hand that Feeds (Traffic to) Them
Posted on June 17, 2008Last week, the Associated Press sent the Drudge Retort seven DMCA takedown notices, demanding that the site remove excerpts of AP articles ranging from 33 to 79 words that were linked through to authorized copies of the AP stories. As as business matter, the AP's approach is curious...
HOWTO: Analyze Immunity Provisions in FISA Legislation
Posted on June 17, 2008Members of Congress are currently negotiating language for Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) legislation, with reports saying that a deal is imminent. As early as this week, Congress may be voting on this legislation, which will determine whether or not telecommunications companies will be given immunity against lawsuits for their illegal participation in the President's warrantless surveillance program...
Help Put Fair Use and Transparency on the OECD Internet Agenda!
Posted on June 17, 2008EFF is currently attending the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development's ministerial meeting on the future of the Internet Economy in South Korea. As ever when a new international venue for discussion of Net policy emerges, there's a strong risk that the usual vested interests will attempt to dominate and use it for their own agendas...
Sweden and the Borders of the Surveillance State
Posted on June 16, 2008A proposed new law in Sweden (voted on this week, after much delay) will, if passed, allow a secretive government agency ostensibly concerned with signals intelligence to install technology in twenty public hubs across the country. There it will be permitted to conduct a huge mass data-mining project, processing and analysing the telephony, emails, and web traffic of millions of innocent individuals...
Report: Deal to Stop Courts From Ruling on Illegal Warrantless Wiretaps Imminent
Posted on June 13, 2008Today The Hill and Congressional Quarterly are reporting that a deal has been reached on legislation to amend FISA, which will include retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies. Under the guise of a compromise, the legislation is designed to ensure that the only issue the courts will review is whether or not the President told the telecoms that their conduct was legal, but not whether the conduct actually was legal...
Anonymity Preserved for Creator of MySpace 'Spoof' Profiles
Posted on June 13, 2008Cook County, IL - The president of a Chicago suburb has dropped his attempt to obtain the identity of an anonymous MySpace user after the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) filed an amicus brief detailing how the petition violated both the First Amendment and a federal statute that protects the privacy of online users...
The Patent Office Can?t Do It All Alone: Public Participation Is Key to Ensuring Patent Quality
Posted on June 13, 2008It?s not news that there are patents out there that never should have been granted. Whether it?s the ?invention? of entertaining a cat with a laser pointer, combining two well-known car features in a manner that offers no unexpected new outcome, or selling CDs of a live concert immediately after the show, the patent office allows some bad patents...
Judges Urged to Curtail Random Searches of Travelers' Laptops
Posted on June 12, 2008San Francisco - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and the Association of Corporate Travel Executives (ACTE) urged an appeals court today to review a flawed decision allowing random and invasive searches of travelers' computers at the U.S. border...
Judge Shoots Down Universal's Bogus Infringement Allegations
Posted on June 11, 2008San Francisco - A federal judge has shot down bogus copyright infringement allegations from Universal Music Group (UMG), affirming an eBay seller's right to resell promotional CDs that he buys from secondhand stores. Troy Augusto, represented by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and law firm Keker & Van Nest, was sued by UMG last year in the United States District Court for the Central District of California for 26 auction listings involving promo CDs...
Liberation Day for Promo CDs: Victory in UMG v. Augusto
Posted on June 11, 2008In an important victory for the first sale doctrine, a federal district court today ruled that selling "promo CDs" on eBay does not infringe copyright. The court threw out a lawsuit by Universal Music Group (UMG), which had argued that the "promotional use only" labels affixed to these CDs somehow conveyed eternal ownership on UMG, making it illegal to resell the CDs (or even throw them away)...
Tell Congress "No Deal on Telecom Immunity!"
Posted on June 11, 2008A new FISA bill is being drafted behind closed doors. Although it may appear quiet on the Hill right now, reports indicate that high-ranking Republicans and Democrats are hoping that a "compromise" foreign intelligence surveillance bill can be rushed through both the House and the Senate before the July 4th holiday -- maybe even next week...
Minilinks for 2008-06-10
Posted on June 10, 2008What the FISA Debate is Not About Marty Lederman asks why reverting to the old FISA rules is supposedly such a problem for the intelligence community. ISP Plan to Block Child Porn -- Will There Be Chilling Effects? The New York Attorney General says 3 major ISPs have agreed to block child porn -- but the plan could set a precedent that challenges the Communications Decency Act's protections for online content hosts...
What Will Happen to Surveillance in August 2008
Posted on June 10, 2008Yesterday the New York Times published an article, "Return to Old Spy Rules Is Seen as Deadline Nears," which allowed various Administration official to push their talking points supporting expanding their warrantless wiretapping powers. The main focus of the talking points is to suggest that Congress faces a deadline in August 2008 due to the expiration of the Protect America Act, and must pass surveillance legislation before that deadline...
Debunking Republican Spin on Fake Telecom Immunity "Compromise" in Today's NYT
Posted on June 10, 2008Congressional Republicans have new legislation they're pushing as a "compromise" on telecom immunity. One of their central talking points has been that the bill would allow a court to review whether the telcos acted legally when they cooperated with the NSA's warrantless wiretapping program...
Three Media Mistakes on Warrantless Wiretapping
Posted on June 10, 2008Here's a game you can play when reading or watching news about the President's warrantless wiretapping program. There are a few mistakes that the media keeps repeating over and over and over — see if you can spot them. Friday night's exchange on PBS News Hour between host Judy Woodruff and New York Times columnist David Brooks is typical: JUDY WOODRUFF: There was a little bit of news, David, today, that he -- maybe bigger than that -- that McCain agrees with the president that this wiretapping of Americans on their international phone calls and e-mails is legal...
Senators Dodd and Feingold Criticize Bond's False FISA "Compromise"
Posted on June 10, 2008Thanks to Senators Dodd and Feingold for sending a great letter today to House and Senate leadership decrying the telco immunity "compromise" being offered by Republican negotiators: As we understand it, the [Republican] proposal would authorize secret proceedings in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance to evaluate the companies' immunity claims, but the court's role would be limited to evaluating precisely the same question laid out in the Senate bill: whether a company received "a written request or directive from the Attorney General or the head of an element of the intelligence community...
Supreme Court Victory for Patent First Sale Doctrine
Posted on June 09, 2008The Supreme Court today issued a unanimous opinion in Quanta v. LG Electronics, its first ruling in 66 years addressing the patent exhaustion doctrine. Patent exhaustion is the patent law equivalent to copyright law's first sale doctrine -- once you buy a product, you own it and the patent owner generally can't interfere with your subsequent use...
Animal Welfare Group Battles Online Censorship of Rodeo Videos
Posted on June 09, 2008Chicago - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) asked a federal court today to protect the free speech rights of an animal welfare group after its video critiques of animal treatment at rodeos were removed from YouTube due to sham copyright claims...
Leading Intellectual Property Attorney Joins EFF
Posted on June 09, 2008San Francisco - Michael Kwun has joined the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) as a new Senior Intellectual Property Staff Attorney, bringing years of copyright, trademark, and patent litigation experience to EFF's legal team. Kwun comes to EFF from Google...
McCain Revises Stance on Warrantless Wiretapping Again
Posted on June 07, 2008Mere hours after a McCain spokesperson adopted the Bush Administration's flawed legal argument that courts have "recognized the President?s constitutional authority to conduct warrant-less surveillance" and that the "courts? findings supported the Bush Administration?s efforts in the wake of September 11, 2001," Senator John McCain said that: ?It?s ambiguous as to whether the president acted within his authority of not,?? he said, saying courts had ruled different ways on the matter...
McCain Adopts Bush Administration's Flawed Legal Analysis of Warrantless Wiretaps
Posted on June 06, 2008ABC News reported today a new statement from McCain campaign spokesperson Tucker Bounds on the Senator's views on the executive power to conduct warrantless wiretaps in defiance of the restrictions of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA): John McCain continues to believe, as he always has, that every President has the obligation to obey and enforce laws passed by Congress and signed by the President...
minilinks for 2008-06-06
Posted on June 06, 2008Obama Should Lead on FISA A CBS News Blogger has some advice for the presumptive nominee: Get to work protecting civil liberties! FTC Investigates Big Brother The practice of compiling profiles on Internet users for purposes of targeted advertising is coming under scrutiny...
EFF Asks Judge to Block Unmasking of MySpace User
Posted on June 05, 2008Cook County, IL - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) asked a judge in Illinois Wednesday to reject an attempt to identify an anonymous MySpace user who allegedly posted fake profiles of an Illinois official because the request would violate both the First Amendment and federal statute...
Laser Printers Found Guilty of "Making Available" Crimes
Posted on June 05, 2008Two professors and a student at the University of Washington released a study today explaining "Why My Printer Received a DMCA Takedown Notice" [PDF]. They argue that DMCA takedown notices, used as the principle mechanism for enforcing copyright on the Internet, should be viewed skeptically...
McCain Campaign Staffed By Telecom Immunity Lobbyists
Posted on June 05, 2008Senator John McCain's presidential campaign has strong connections to the high-powered lobbyists employed by AT&T and other telecommunications companies to escape from responsibility for violations of federal law, with paid lobbyists occupying prominant positions in the upper echelons...
Fair Use Defense Ruled "Likely to Prevail" in "Imagine" Copyright Infringement Suit
Posted on June 05, 2008This week, the Stanford Center for Internet and Society's Fair Use Project struck a telling blow in the battle to protect fair use. A US District Judge issued an opinion holding that the producers and distributors of the documentary Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed are likely to prevail on their fair use defense in a copyright infringement suit brought by Yoko Ono...
Prince Issues One Takedown Too Many
Posted on June 02, 2008It's a familiar story: A fan uploads a video shot at a Prince concert to YouTube, and that video promptly disappears the moment Prince's lawyers issue a DMCA takedown notice. It may seem silly to many fans, but the DMCA instructs content hosting sites to respond to copyright complaints by instantly removing disputed content...
Spying Telecoms Receive Billions in Government Contracts
Posted on June 02, 2008The telecoms who are being sued for their cooperation in the government's illegal warrantless surveillance program have received billions in government contracts. According to Washington Technology magazine, Verizon received $1.3 billion, Sprint $839 million and AT&T $505 million in federal prime contract revenue for fiscal 2007, for a total of $2...
Sunlight for ACTA
Posted on June 02, 2008In October 2007 the United States, the European Community, Switzerland and Japan simultaneously announced that they would negotiate a new intellectual property enforcement treaty, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, or ACTA. Australia, the Republic of Korea, New Zealand and Mexico have joined the negotiations...
Global minilinks for 2008-06-01
Posted on June 01, 2008DNA Samples at WIPOPolice entered WIPO headquarters to take saliva swabs from ten employees, after their diplomatic immunity was removed. Reports say the investigation relates to a "smear campaign" against the Deputy Director General. Protest British Telecom's Annual General Meeting in London July 16thBritons will protest Phorm's use of mass Net surveillance in ISP-hosted behavioral advertising systems...
Freedom Not Fear: Europe's Growing Protest Against Net Surveillance
Posted on May 31, 2008This weekend, marches and meetings across Germany will protest the overreaction of countries to the threat of terrorism, and the re-emergence of a surveillance state in that country. "Freedom Not Fear" is not a small event: over 20,000 people demonstrated in the last protest in September, and over thirty cities will be taking part in this weekend's demonstrations...
Computer Crime Laws Chill Discovery of Customer Privacy Threats
Posted on May 30, 2008Have you ever wanted to test whether an e-commerce website is keeping your data secure? The federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act -- and state statutes modeled on that law -- are so overbroad and vague that your curiosity could get you in deep legal water...
Watching the Detectors
Posted on May 28, 2008In the absence of NBC or Microsoft coming clean about what they've done - what flags NBC sent, and what flags Microsoft obeys, we've been doing some detective work of our own -- and we'd like your help. NBC have already said that their activation of their copy-control system was a "mistake"...
Global minilinks for 2008-05-27
Posted on May 27, 2008Michael Geist - Ten More Questions for Industry Minister PrenticeOn the eve of Canada's DMCA, the politician in charge has plenty to answer for. German Phone Company in Spying ScandalDeutsch Telekom employees analyzed "several hundred thousand landline and mobile connection data sets of key German journalists reporting on Telekom and their private contacts...
McCain Not Giving Straight Talk on Warrantless Wiretapping
Posted on May 23, 2008On Wednesday, a McCain campaign spokesperson outlined a surprisingly reasonable position on whether to hold telcos accountable for illegally spying on millions of Americans. EFF applauded his position at the time. But earlier today, the McCain campaign claimed that they had made a mistake, saying the report "incorrectly represented" his position, which now is that "companies who assist the government" should be granted amnesty in the pending FISA legislation...
EFF Blasts New 'Compromise' Offer on Telco Immunity
Posted on May 23, 2008Washington, D.C. - The latest Republican proposal to amend foreign intelligence surveillance law was announced yesterday by Senator Kit Bond , and included a purported "compromise" on the issue of whether telephone companies that illegally assisted in the government's warrantless wiretapping program should be granted immunity from lawsuits such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation's (EFF's) lawsuit against AT&T...
B-24 Liberated!
Posted on May 22, 2008Last month we told you about Lockheed Martin's effort to use trademark infringement claims to cause the removal of digital images of classic military aircraft from TurboSquid, a stock images site. The central mark at issue was the term ?B-24,? which Lockheed managed to register as a trademark for use in connection with scale models of airplanes...
If It Looks Like a Duck . . . Seattle Judge Finds Software Was Sold, Not Licensed
Posted on May 22, 2008In a major victory for consumers' rights, a federal district judge has firmly rejected software vendor AutoDesk's claim that its license agreement restricts its customers from re-selling the software they lawfully owned. As we've discussed before, the copyright industries have struggled for years to convince courts and their customers that software is merely licensed, not sold...
AT&T Spent $5.2 million on lobbying in the First Quarter of 2008
Posted on May 21, 2008The Associated Press is reporting that AT&T, the defendant in EFF's NSA surveillance litigation, "spent $5.2 million in the first quarter to lobby on domestic spying legislation and other issues." To put this into perspective, AT&T's spending for three months on lobbying alone is significantly more than the entire EFF budget for a whole year, from attorneys to sysadmins, pencils to bandwidth...
John McCain Wouldn't Give the Telcos Immunity if He Were President
Posted on May 21, 2008Breaking with President Bush and GOP Congressional leadership, presumptive Republican presidential nominee John McCain said today through one of his representatives that he did not believe that Congress should immunize phone companies from liability for their participation in the NSA's warrantless wiretapping — at least not until Congress has held hearings to find out exactly what conduct was being immunized, and not until the phone companies admit to and apologize for their lawbreaking...
Orphan Works Update: Is the Legislation Fair to Copyright Holders?
Posted on May 21, 2008As we pointed out in our deeplink and podcast on the issue, the Orphan Works legislation currently before Congress is stirring up all sorts of passions (and plenty of FUD). The debate continues this week-- with new contributions from two stalwart allies in the fight to reform copyright law...
minilinks for 2008-05-21
Posted on May 21, 2008Media Failing to Probe Candidates on Civil Liberties Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting takes the news media to task for not asking the tough questions of the presidential candidates. Senators Question NSL Served to Internet Archive Senators have asked the FBI to explain why the feds sought records from the digital library...
Boehner Wants Protection From Illegal Wiretapping - But Only For Himself
Posted on May 20, 2008Chris Frates at the Politico reveals how Republican Leader John Boehner is seeking wiretap protection for himself, but not for ordinary Americans: When a federal judge ordered Rep. Jim McDermott to pay House Minority Leader John A. Boehner and his attorneys more than $1 million in damages and legal fees for leaking an illegally taped phone call to the media, Boehner said he pursued the case because ?no one ? including members of Congress ? is above the law...
A Conversation About the Broadcast Flag
Posted on May 20, 2008Tim Jones meets with Danny O'Brien to discuss Vista, DRM and the Broadcast Flag. read more
Microsoft's Masters: Whose Rules Does Your Media Center Play By?
Posted on May 19, 2008While its customers are still puzzling over why Vista Media Center is suddenly refusing to record over-the-air NBC digital TV, Microsoft has come out with an astounding admission, courtesy of Greg Sandoval at CNet News: "Microsoft included technologies in Windows based on rules set forth by the (Federal Communications Commission)," a Microsoft spokeswoman wrote in an e-mail to CNET News...
Update: Why is NBC Flagging Digital TV Programs - and Why is Microsoft Obeying It?
Posted on May 16, 2008After further investigation of reports of Vista refusing to record NBC, we have found at least one case where a user receiving digital TV over-the-air has been blocked from recording TV shows. Justin Sanders, who took this screenshot, says he was recording Raleigh's HDTV channel WNCN-DT1 on his Vista machine when a popup stating that "restrictions set by the broadcaster ...
Senators Question FBI About Unlawful Internet Archive Record Demand
Posted on May 16, 2008A bipartisan group of senators sent a letter (pdf) to FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III this week demanding answers about an illegitimate National Security Letter (NSL) served on the Internet Archive last fall. The Archive joined with EFF and the ACLU to fend off the NSL, which sought information about an Archive patron that the FBI had no authority to gather...
Score Two for Defendants in the P2P Wars
Posted on May 16, 2008Yesterday saw two important court decisions in the file-sharing wars, both favoring defendants. First, Tanya Andersen, a single mother on a disability pension who successfully fought off allegations of illegal file-sharing, was awarded almost $110,000 in fees and costs...
Release the Orphan Works!
Posted on May 16, 2008Orphan works legislation has returned to Congress, and the controversy surrounding the bill is just as heated as it was the last time around, in 2006. While a broad coalition of libraries, museums, independent filmmakers, public interest groups, and commercial arts organizations such as the RIAA and the MPAA back the bill, several prominent visual artists? organizations have been rallying their members in opposition...
Does NBC Control Your TV?
Posted on May 15, 2008Reports are coming in of digital video recording systems refusing to record NBC programs - both on digital cable and over-the-air transmissions. We're still investigating whether these involved over-the-air digital TV, which would mean that NBC was the first broadcaster to attempt to revive the abandoned ATSC "broadcast flag" (as opposed to cable and analog copy control signals like CGMS-A which have been used before)...
New RSS Feeds
Posted on May 15, 2008EFF is making some changes to the site's RSS feeds. If you subscribe to EFF.org with RSS, you've probably been using either our Blog Feed or our Press Release Feed or our Action Alert Feed or some combination of those three. To simplify things, we've consolidated them into one place: The EFF Updates Feed...
The Lost Art of Orphan Works
Posted on May 15, 2008EFF designer Hugh D'Andrade speaks with Staff Attorney Corynne McSherry about the Orphan Works Act of 2008. read more
Global minilinks for 2008-05-10
Posted on May 11, 2008Press Freedom in the Arab World Goes OnlineAn overview of the effect of the Net on freedom of speech in the Middle East. "The internet has been a godsend for freedom of expression in the Arab world," says the Egyptian-American syndicated columnist Mona Eltahaw...
The Struggles of France's Three Strikes Law
Posted on May 09, 2008As 2008 began, the international music industry was proudly predicting the dawning of a new age of co-operation between rightsholders, Internet companies and governments. The dynamic new President of France, Nicolas Sarkozy, together with Denis Olivennes, the head of France's largest consumer electronics and media retailer, had announced a new policy of "graduated response" for the French Net...
Knitwit BBC Goes After Dr Who Fans
Posted on May 09, 2008Here's a fascinating UK legal analysis of an incident we see occurring all over the world: an over-eager rightsholder undermining Internet goodwill by pursuing their own fans for supposed IP infringements. Andre Guadamuz, is a lecturer at the Edinburgh University school of law, and organizes the fantastic British conference on "geek law", Gikii...
House Passes Controversial PRO IP Act
Posted on May 08, 2008Today, the House passed the controversial PRO IP Act (H.R. 4279) 410 to 11, with 12 representatives not voting. While Public Knowledge and other groups successfully persuaded the House to remove the most damaging provision in the bill (seemingly written solely to increase damages in the RIAA's file-sharing lawsuit campaign), the bill would nonetheless significantly expand federal enforcement of copyright law...
Ominous Signs of a Forthcoming "Compromise" on Telco Immunity - Tell the House To Stand Firm
Posted on May 08, 2008This morning, CongressDaily reported that Senator Jay Rockefeller is now privately circulating a new "compromise" proposal on surveillance legislation, only a day after it was reported that the telecoms themselves have begun shopping their own "compromise" proposals around the Hill...
A New Look at the Hub of AT&T's Spying Program
Posted on May 07, 2008Our class action lawsuit against AT&T for collaborating with the National Security Agency in the massive, illegal program to wiretap and data-mine Americans' communications includes powerful evidence of a secret room in San Francisco. But the hub of the spying program may be just outside of St...
EFF Answers Your Questions About Border Searches
Posted on May 07, 2008Readers of my deeplink on safeguarding your laptop and digital devices from warrantless searches at the border responded with both questions and answers. Some readers wondered whether you have an obligation not to destroy information on your laptop. Others pointed out that U...
Protect Digital Privacy at the Border and Beyond! (phone)
Posted on May 01, 2008Join a broad coalition of groups in urging key congressional committees to take action to protect travelers' digital privacy rights!
Protect Digital Privacy at the Border and Beyond! (email)
Posted on May 01, 2008Join a broad coalition of groups in urging key congressional committees to take action to protect travelers' digital privacy rights!
Action Alert: Stop State Secrets Privilege Abuse!
Posted on April 23, 2008Lend your support to the State Secrets Protection Act (S.2533), which limits the scope of a government privilege being abused to cover up embarrassing and illegal government activity!
Stop State Secrets Privilege Abuse!
Posted on April 23, 2008Lend your support to the State Secrets Protection Act (S.2533), which limits the scope of a government privilege being abused to cover up embarrassing and illegal government activity!
Support the House in the Last Stand Against Telecom Immunity!
Posted on February 12, 2008Today, the Senate passed a terrible surveillance bill granting immunity to lawbreaking telecoms, putting the House and Senate at the brink of a face-off. Show your support for the House to keep telecom immunity out of the final bill!
Support the House in the Last Stand Against Telecom Immunity! (phone)
Posted on February 12, 2008Today, the Senate passed a terrible surveillance bill granting immunity to lawbreaking telecoms, putting the House and Senate at the brink of a face-off. Show your support for the House to keep telecom immunity out of the final bill!
Support Senate Patent Reform and the EFF Patent Busting Project!
Posted on February 06, 2008Encourage the Senate to take up the Patent Reform Act of 2007 and improve the state of invention and innovation in America!
Oppose Telecom Immunity - Vote "No on Cloture" (phone)
Posted on January 25, 2008Next week, the Administration and its allies are trying to end Senate debate on FISA, forcing a vote on a terrible Senate Intelligence-based bill. Call your Senator now!
Oppose Telecom Immunity - Vote "No on Cloture" (email)
Posted on January 25, 2008Next week, the Administration and its allies are trying to end Senate debate on FISA, forcing a vote on a terrible Senate Intelligence-based bill. Email your Senator now!
Save Universities from Dangerous Copyright Policing Requirements
Posted on January 15, 2008The House's latest higher education bill includes a vague, troubling requirement for "Campus-Based Digital Theft Prevention," mandating that schools make dead-end plans to police their networks for infringing traffic.
Telecom Immunity Showdown in the Senate! Call now!
Posted on December 17, 2007A make-or-break moment for telecom immunity has arrived -- after months of back-room committee-meetings, the FISA bill will finally reach the Senate floor on Monday! Call your Senator now!
E-Mail your Senator - Tell them to hold Telecoms accountable
Posted on December 14, 2007Contact your senator to stop telecom immunity!
Save Universities from Dangerous Copyright Policing Requirements
Posted on November 13, 2007The House's latest higher education bill includes a nasty requirement for "Campus-Based Digital Theft Prevention," mandating that schools police copyrights. Call your Representative now!
Call the Senate Judiciary Committee and Demand Leadership - No Telecom Immunity!
Posted on October 19, 2007Senate committees are debating legislation that may give immunity to lawbreaking telcos. Call your Senators and tell them to stand up as leaders -- no telecom immunity!
Write a Letter to the Editor to Stop Telecom Immunity!
Posted on October 12, 2007Write to your local newspaper, blog or community website, and fight the latest round of shameful behavior by Congress and the telcos by taking the news to the public.
RESTORE Coming Back to House Floor: Tell Your Representative to Say No to Telecom Immunity
Posted on October 09, 2007The House is soon expected to consider the RESTORE Act again. Call your representative now and demand that he or she take a stand against telecom immunity!
Tell Congress to Do Its Job and Protect Your Rights
Posted on September 20, 2007Join EFF and a broad coalition of civil liberties organizations in picking up the phone and telling Congress to protect your rights and fix their mistakes.
Stop the Spying!
Posted on September 13, 2007Find the phone number for your representative and senators and tell them to stop the spying!
Support Electronic Voting Reform
Posted on August 31, 2007The Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act was re-introduced in February, and it currently has over 130 bipartisan cosponsors. The momentum is on our side, and it's more important than ever to ask your representative to support this bill.
Californians: Keep Privacy-Leaking Chips out of State ID!
Posted on June 18, 2007If Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tags are embedded in ID cards, they could transmit your personal information to strangers without your permission or knowledge. S.B. 768 is a bill that enforces proper protections for RFID tech (CA only).
Stop the SPY Act!
Posted on June 12, 2007Help stop the "SPY Act," a poorly worded law that shields badware vendors from state badware laws and private lawsuits.
Fight The Justice Department's Copycrime Proposal!
Posted on May 22, 2007Don't let Congress supercharge copycrimes!
Stop the Broadcasting Treaty Flip-Flop!
Posted on May 21, 2007But now the US WIPO delegation has flip-flopped, and the WIPO Chair just released a draft that once again endangers innovators' and users' rights.
CA Alert -- Tell Governor Schwarzenegger to Reject REAL ID!
Posted on April 23, 2007States have been fighting back against the privacy-invasive REAL ID -- if you live in California, use the form below and tell Gov. Schwarzenegger to say no to REAL ID.
Improve the Freedom of Information Act!
Posted on March 20, 2007A bill improving the Freedom of Information Act has already passed the House -- make sure that your senators know that you want open government!
Reform the PATRIOT Act and Stop the Abuse of Surveillance Powers
Posted on March 13, 2007The Administration's laundry list of privacy invasions keeps getting longer -- a recent report documents how the FBI has blatantly abused a key PATRIOT Act power and knowingly violated the law.Tell Congress to launch thorough and immediate hearings.
Repeal the REAL ID Act!
Posted on March 06, 2007Make sure your congressional representatives support the repeal of REAL ID before it's too late.
Support the FAIR USE Act of 2007!
Posted on February 27, 2007The FAIR Use Act would remove some of the entertainment industry's most draconian anti-innovation weapons and chip away at the Digital Millennium Copyright Act's broad restrictions on fair use. Take action to help restore balance in copyright now.
Pull Congress Back Into the Wiretapping Fight to Restore Your Rights
Posted on January 23, 2007Remind Congress that you want them to fix the so-called "Protect America Act."
Don't Let Congress Shackle Digital Music
Posted on January 12, 2007The PERFORM Act is a backdoor assault on your right to record off the radio and would force Internet webcasters to use DRM-laden formats rather than MP3. Take action to block this bill now.
Don't Let Cable Companies Ratchet Up Restrictions
Posted on October 02, 2006Don't let Cable Ratchet Up restrictions!
Were You Exposed by AOL's Data Leak?
Posted on August 09, 2006Over 650,000 AOL members private search terms were exposed by the company. If you're an AOL member - or have friends or family that are - you can demand action from the company.
The Corruptibles: Analog Hole
Posted on June 13, 2006You use the so-called "analog hole" when for instance, playing a DVD and then re-digitizing it for use on your computer. The analog hole is a safety valve for you to escape copy-protections for legal purposes.
The Corruptibles: Audio Flag
Posted on June 13, 2006The RIAA-backed PERFORM Act, sets out a list of "reasonable recording" restrictions for all satellite and digital radio devices.
The Corruptibles: Broadcast Flag
Posted on June 13, 2006The Broadcast Flag is a signal Hollywood wants embedded in all over-the-air digital television signals. Devices forced by law to obey the flag will only be able to output to other use-restricting gadgets.
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I am a flight attendant with British airways and beeing residing in the uk for a very long time . The only thing is that I was born in Morocco , I have no links anymore there . I am a british citizen . Every time i come
See your Human Resources Manager for help on this. Perhaps getting a work permit...
What are theunique e-discovery problems faced by out side legal counsel?
Some of them could be;
* How do I craft robust, defensible search s...
Must Freedom of Expression include the license to offend?
Yes
Imposing any limits on speech, no matter how seemingly reasonab...
Advantages electronic data storage?
1) searching speed: electronic database with powerful server can be searc...
Regulatory compliance?
The major compliance requirement in any organization is that, for different type...
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