Intellectual Property Law

Constructive Direct Action Against Censorship

Posted on December 14, 2010
The past few weeks have highlighted the vulnerability of centralized information systems to censorship: online speech is only as strong as the weakest intermediary. Sites hosting legitimate speech were caught up in an anti-counterfeiting raid by the Department of Homeland Security, EveryDNS stopped hosting WikiLeaks...

New Humble Indie Bundle: Pay-What-You-Want for Games and Help EFF, Again!

Posted on December 14, 2010
Wolfire Games releases the Humble Indie Bundle 2 on Tuesday, with some of the proceeds benefiting EFF. Like the first bundle launched this spring, the Humble Indie Bundle 2 is a collection of independently produced, DRM-free, cross-platform computer games...

Information is the Antidote to Fear: Wikileaks, the Law, and You

Posted on December 08, 2010
When it comes to Wikileaks, there's a lot of fear out there on the Internet right now. Between the federal criminal investigation into Wikileaks, Senator Joe Lieberman's calls for companies to stop providing support for Wikileaks and his suggestion that the New York Times itself should be criminally investigated, Senator Dianne Feinstein's recent Wall Street Journal op-ed calling for prosecution of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, and even the suggestion by some that he should be assassinated, a lot of people are scared and confused...

Democratic Underground Responds to Righthaven Copyright Troll Lawsuit

Posted on December 08, 2010
Righthaven is attempting to make a business out of suing Internet websites for copyright infringement. It has filed 180 copyright actions so far ?without ever first asking that a work be removed from the target website?in each case alleging ?willful infringement? and attempting to extract settlements by threats of statutory damages (up to $150,000), attorneys? fees and seizure of the domain name...

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The FBI Arbitrarily Covers Up Evidence of Misconduct: Is This the Transparency Obama Promised?

Posted on December 08, 2010
EFF recently received documents in response to one of our Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests that demonstrate a disturbing trend: the FBI's arbitrary application of FOIA exemptions to hide, or in some instances, reveal, its unlawful activities...

Chairman Genachowski?s Next Net Neutrality Proposal: What to Watch For

Posted on December 08, 2010
EFF has been monitoring the net neutrality debate with an eye to two main concerns, both stemming from our conviction that however laudable the goal of neutrality--and it is a laudable goal--the regulatory and legislative paths that get us there must not amount to a ?Trojan horse? that we?ll all regret: First, we have a well-founded fear of an open-ended grant of authority to the FCC to regulate the Internet, and attendant worries, especially about regulations that could create barriers to entry for the next generation of garage innovators...

Join EFF in Standing up Against Internet Censorship

Posted on December 07, 2010
Over the past few weeks, we here at EFF have watched as whistleblowing website WikiLeaks has fueled an emotionally charged debate about the secrecy of government information and the people's right to know. We have welcomed this debate, and the fact that there have been myriad views is the embodiment of the freedom of expression upon which this country was founded...

Common Sense and Security: Body Scanners, Accountability, and $2.4 Billion Worth of Security Theater

Posted on November 24, 2010
The Transportation Security Administration is feeling public heat these days over its combination of whole-body-image scanners and heavy-handed pat-down searches, and deservedly so. There?s no question that reform is needed to curtail TSA?s excesses...

EFF's Guide to Protecting Electronic Devices and Data at the U.S. Border

Posted on November 24, 2010
Amid recent reports that security researchers have experienced difficulties at the United States border after traveling abroad, we realized that it's been awhile since we last discussed how to safeguard electronic devices and digital information during border searches...

EFF Tool Offers New Protection Against 'Firesheep'

Posted on November 23, 2010
San Francisco - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has launched a new version of HTTPS Everywhere, a security tool that offers enhanced protection for Firefox browser users against "Firesheep" and other exploits of webpage security flaws. HTTPS secures web browsing by encrypting both requests from your browser to websites and the resulting pages that are displayed...

EFF Calls on European Commission to Protect Internet Users? Rights by Requiring Court Order Before ISP Takedowns

Posted on November 23, 2010
To provide greater protection for Internet users? freedom of expression and privacy rights, EFF recommended that the European Commission (EC) should preserve limitations on liability for Internet intermediaries and clarify that Internet intermediaries should not be considered to have ?actual knowledge? requiring them to takedown content unless they have received a court order or notification in comments filed recently as part of the EC's long-awaited public consultation on the workability of the 2000 EU eCommerce Directive...

EFF Urges Supreme Court to Block Government Overreach in State Secret Contract Dispute

Posted on November 23, 2010
EFF and the plaintiffs in an ongoing lawsuit over a notorious case of illegal government spying urged the U.S. Supreme Court last week to reject a government attempt to have the Court address constitutional questions about the state secrets privilege in a contract dispute case involving the privilege...

Microsoft Embraces First Wave of Kinect Innovation

Posted on November 22, 2010
Good news: after some initial sword rattling, Microsoft has embraced hardware hackers for modifying the Kinect. When asked about Microsoft's stance on hardware hackers putting the Kinect to creative new uses, Shannon Loftis, Studio Manager at Microsoft Game Studios said, "As an experienced creator, I'm very excited to see that people are so inspired that it was less than a week after the Kinect came out before they had started creating and thinking about what they could do...

Stand Up Against TSA?s Invasive Security Procedures

Posted on November 19, 2010
The Transportation Security Administration has adopted "enhanced" security procedures — presenting people with the horrible choice of either submitting to body scanners that show passengers unclothed or submit to what are called "groping" pat-down techniques which include touching both breasts and genitalia...

Patent Office to Reissue Narrowed Version of Patent on Internet Music Files

Posted on November 17, 2010
Another partial victory for EFF's Patent Busting Project: the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has announced that it will reissue a narrowed version of a patent on Internet music files after we asked the PTO to take a second look. So far nine of the original Top Ten Patents named in our campaign have been busted, invalidated, narrowed, or had a reexamination granted by the PTO...

EFF Brief: "Privacy" Protections for Corporations Undermines Government Transparency

Posted on November 17, 2010
EFF and a coalition of public interest groups urged the U.S. Supreme Court in an amicus brief Tuesday to reject so-called "privacy" protections for corporate entities under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). The case, Federal Communications Commission v...

EFF Discusses the Future of Internet Privacy at UN Internet Governance Forum

Posted on November 17, 2010
EFF recently participated in the UN Internet Governance Forum (IGF) in Vilnius, Lithuania, advocating for the respect of citizens' fundamental rights online. The IGF is an experimental and influential multi-stakeholder policy forum convened by the United Nations Secretary General in 2006, where civil society, industry, the technical community, and decision makers discuss key aspects of Internet governance issues on an equal footing...

In Data Portability Deathmatch, Users Lose Out

Posted on November 16, 2010
Co-authored by Rainey Reitman and Marcia Hofmann In the last few weeks, Facebook and Google have been engaging in a public tussle over an issue that is near and dear to EFF's heart: data portability. The crux of the issue is that when you sign up for Facebook, you can find your Gmail contacts or invite them to join the social networking service with a few quick clicks...

Legal Attack on Internet Music Storage Threatens 'Safe Harbor' Rules for Online Businesses

Posted on November 16, 2010
New York - In a legal battle over Internet music storage that could impact innovation and free expression on the Internet, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), Public Knowledge, and other public interest groups asked a federal judge in an amicus brief Tuesday to protect the "safe harbor" rules for online content in EMI v...

The Case Against COICA

Posted on November 16, 2010
In September, digital rights advocates and Internet engineers helped to delay the Combatting Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act (COICA), a terrible bill that would have allowed the Attorney General to censor the Internet in the name of copyright enforcement...

Thank You From EFF!

Posted on November 15, 2010
On behalf of the EFF staff, thank you for helping us to compete in PayPal's matching challenge. Together we raised over $70,400! Individual donors like you make EFF's work possible. EFF will also receive $5,000 in matched funds directly from PayPal, and additional matched funds from two very generous EFF members...

Reverse Engineering the Kinect: The Street Starts to Find Uses for Microsoft?s New Gaming Device

Posted on November 15, 2010
When Microsoft announced that it was launching a webcam-style peripheral for its Xbox360 that would allow users to interact with the game system without the need for a game controller, the excitement was not limited to gamers. The Kinect, which allows a user to control games through gestures, speech, and presented objects or images immediately intrigued the hardware hacking community...

EFF Welcomes Back Technology Director Chris Palmer

Posted on November 11, 2010
EFF is pleased to welcome yet another new addition to our team: Technology Director Chris Palmer. Chris is hardly a newcomer, however -- he's a former EFF technologist who is returning to the EFF fold after several years in the technology industry focusing on application security...

Pioneer Awards 2010 Recap: Photos, Video, and More

Posted on November 11, 2010
Congratulations to the winners of EFF's 2010 Pioneer Awards: Steven Aftergood, James Boyle, Pamela Jones and the website Groklaw, and Hari Krishna Prasad Vemuru! The 19th Annual Pioneer Awards ceremony was held this past Monday at 111 Minna Gallery in San Francisco...

PayPal's Matching Challenge

Posted on November 09, 2010
Donate to EFF this week and you can double — or even triple — the value of your contribution! PayPal and Convio will match up to $5,000 in donations to EFF made via PayPal between Tuesday, November 9, and Friday, November 12, 2010. First, double your donation through PayPal...

Professor Ed Felten Becomes the FTC's First Chief Technologist

Posted on November 09, 2010
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has a long history of promoting commercial competition and consumer protection. Clearly recognizing that many of the trickiest issues facing consumers today are digital, the Commission has made the commendable decision of hiring Princeton professor of computer science and public affairs Ed Felten as its first Chief Technologist...

Thomas-Rasset Damage Award: The Strange, Unpredictable World of Copyright Damages

Posted on November 05, 2010
After a brief deliberation, a jury this week awarded $1.5 million in statutory damages ($62,500 per recording) to the record label plaintiffs in Capitol v. Thomas-Rasset. The case has repeatedly made headlines as the first action against an individual accused of illegal file-sharing to make it to the trial stage...

EFF Welcomes New Activist Rainey Reitman

Posted on November 04, 2010
EFF is pleased to announce our newest staff activist: Rainey Reitman. Rainey will be working with the rest of our activism team to fight for privacy, free speech, and innovation on the Internet and other technologies. Prior to joining EFF, Rainey served as Director of Communications for the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, a top-notch nonprofit advocacy and education organization promoting consumer privacy...

Members-Only Speakeasy: Berlin

Posted on November 04, 2010
Join Senior Staff Attorney Kurt Opsahl at Speakeasy: Berlin to discuss EFF's latest work and raise a glass to digital freedom. EFF's Speakeasy events are a series of local, informal gatherings that give EFF members a chance to meet the people behind the leading digital civil liberties organization in the world...

2010 Pioneer Awards Ticket Contest

Posted on November 02, 2010
EFF is offering two complimentary VIP admissions (a $200 value) to the 19th Annual Pioneer Awards on November 8, thanks to a generous EFF donor. Meet the Pioneer Awards winners, host Cory Doctorow, EFF founders and board members, and other luminaries at the intimate VIP reception immediately preceding the awards ceremony, and then join us for the ceremony itself...

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