Intellectual Property Law

Sunlight for ACTA

Posted on June 02, 2008
In 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, 2008
DNA 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, 2008
This 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, 2008
Have 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...

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Watching the Detectors

Posted on May 28, 2008
In 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, 2008
Michael 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, 2008
On 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, 2008
Washington, 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, 2008
Last 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, 2008
In 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, 2008
The 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, 2008
Breaking 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, 2008
As 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, 2008
Media 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, 2008
Chris 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, 2008
Tim 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, 2008
While 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, 2008
After 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, 2008
A 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, 2008
Yesterday 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, 2008
Orphan 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, 2008
Reports 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, 2008
EFF 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, 2008
EFF 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, 2008
Press 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, 2008
As 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, 2008
Here'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, 2008
Today, 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, 2008
This 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, 2008
Our 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...

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