Intellectual Property Law

Political Forum Fights Back Against Righthaven Copyright Troll Suit

Posted on September 28, 2010
Las Vegas - The online political discussion forum Democratic Underground is fighting back against a lawsuit filed by copyright troll Righthaven LLC, arguing in court documents filed Monday that the short excerpt of a news article at issue in the suit is a clear case of fair use...

An Open Letter From Internet Engineers to the Senate Judiciary Committee

Posted on September 28, 2010
Today, 87 prominent Internet engineers sent a joint letter the US Senate Judiciary Committee, declaring their opposition to the "Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act" (COICA). The text of the letter is below. Readers are encouraged to themselves write the Senate Judiciary Committee and ask them to reject this bill...

Government Seeks Back Door Into All Our Communications

Posted on September 27, 2010
The New York Times reported this morning on a Federal government plan to put government-mandated back doors in all communications systems, including all encryption software. The Times said the Obama administration is drafting a law that would impose a new "mandate" that all communications services be "able to intercept and unscramble encrypted messages" — including ordering "[d]evelopers of software that enables peer-to-peer communication [to] redesign their service to allow interception"...

Patent Office Agrees With EFF?s Arguments on C2 VoIP Patent

Posted on September 22, 2010
Continued good news in the fight to bust bad software patents: the Patent Office has issued an encouraging office action in the reexamination of the C2 patent, one of EFF's "Most Wanted" patents. The C2 patent claims to cover a ?Method and Apparatus for Implementing a Computer Network/Internet Telephone System,? broad enough to essentially wholesale claim using the Internet to call someone?s phone...

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Censorship of the Internet Takes Center Stage in "Online Infringement" Bill

Posted on September 21, 2010
Senator Patrick Leahy yesterday introduced the "Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act" (COICA). This flawed bill would allow the Attorney General and the Department of Justice to break the Internet one domain at a time — by requiring domain registrars/registries, ISPs, DNS providers, and others to block Internet users from reaching certain websites...

California Ban on Violent Videogames Violates First Amendment

Posted on September 17, 2010
Washington, D.C. - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and The Progress & Freedom Foundation (PFF) urged the United States Supreme Court Friday to protect the free speech rights of videogame creators and users, asking the justices to uphold a ruling throwing out unconstitutional restrictions on violent videogames...

On Writing, Funding, and Distributing Software to Activists Against Authoritarian Regimes

Posted on September 17, 2010
Writing software to protect political activists against censorship and surveillance is a tricky business. If those activists are living under the kind of authoritarian regimes where a loss of privacy may lead to the loss of life or liberty, we need to tread especially cautiously...

Revised Opinion in Privacy Case Blurs Clear Limits to Digital Search and Seizure

Posted on September 15, 2010
Yesterday, the Ninth Circuit issued an unfortunate revised opinion in United States v. Comprehensive Drug Testing Inc., a case featuring blatantly unconstitutional government action. As the court put it: ?This case is about a federal investigation into steroid use by professional baseball players...

EFF Says Violating Company Policies Is Not a Computer Crime

Posted on September 15, 2010
San Francisco - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) urged a federal appeals court Tuesday to dismiss charges that would turn any employee use of company computers in violation of corporate policy into a federal crime. In U.S. v. Nosal, an ex-employee is being prosecuted on the claim that he induced current company employees to use their legitimate credentials to access the company's proprietary database and provide him with information, in violation of corporate computer-use policy...

Sarah Palin Revisited: Why Terms of Use Shouldn't Be Enforced Through Computer Crime Law

Posted on September 15, 2010
Last week, we questioned whether Sarah Palin may have violated Facebook's terms of use by using a ghostwriter to update her profile. We also criticized Facebook's attempts to enforce those terms with state and federal computer crime laws ? which carry both civil and criminal penalties ? in Facebook v...

John Doe Strikes Back: New Developments in the US Copyright Group ("Hurt Locker") Cases

Posted on September 15, 2010
After months of dragnet litigation and intimidation, some of the thousands of ?John Doe? Defendants targeted in mass copyright lawsuits filed in the District of Columbia are fighting back in earnest. The lawsuits are the brainchild of a Washington, D...

Privacy and Safety Questions Loom Over Federal Program to Track Preschoolers

Posted on September 14, 2010
San Francisco - The ACLU of Northern California (ACLU-NC) and the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) are calling for answers to critical privacy and safety questions that loom over a controversial federal program to track preschoolers with radio frequency identification (RFID) chips at George Miller III Head Start program in Richmond, California...

Jack-Booted Thugs and Copyright Enforcement

Posted on September 14, 2010
When it comes to copyright enforcement and the government, EFF frequently warns that giving government agents a reason to censor, search, seize, and indict must be taken very seriously. Without safeguards and a thorough accounting of the consequences, laws and policies targeting so-called "pirates" can be used pry away human rights and undermine fundamental elements of democracy and freedom...

EFF Welcomes New Attorneys to Transparency Team

Posted on September 13, 2010
EFF is pleased to announce two new additions to our FOIA Litigation for Accountable Government (FLAG) Project: staff attorney Jennifer Lynch and Open Government Legal Fellow Mark Rumold. Our FLAG Project uses the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and other tools to uncover and expose important government information, protect individual liberties, and hold government agencies accountable...

?Magic Words? Trump User Rights: Ninth Circuit Ruling in Vernor v. Autodesk

Posted on September 13, 2010
In a major blow to user rights, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has issued a decision that will go a long way toward ensuring that software buyers will rarely be software owners. In a triumph of legal formalism over reality, the Court held that the copyright?s first sale doctrine ? the law that allows you to resell books and that protects libraries and archives from claims of copyright infringement ? doesn?t apply to software (and possibly DVDs, CDs and other ?licensed? content) as long as the vendor saddles the transfer with enough restrictions to transform what the buyer may think is sale into a mere license...

9th Circuit's Troubling New State Secrets Decision Demonstrates Need for Reform

Posted on September 13, 2010
The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, ruling en banc in a case called Mohamed v. Jeppesen Dataplan, yesterday adopted the Bush and Obama Administration's joint Executive Branch power grab in the form of the state secrets privilege. The Court, in a 6-5 en banc ruling, dismissed a case brought by victims of horrendous torture and forced disappearance against a Boeing subsidiary whose employee admitted that they knew they were handling the "torture flights...

Breaking News Security Alert ? Stop Using Haystack Software Now

Posted on September 13, 2010
The Censorship Research Center announced on its blog today that it has halted testing of the Haystack anti-censorship software in Iran pending a security review by a third party. Based on this announcement, we recommend that users stop using all versions of the Haystack software immediately.

European Parliament Asks EU ACTA Negotiators to Protect Citizens' Fundamental Rights

Posted on September 09, 2010
In a victory for democracy and transparency, the European Parliament adopted Written Declaration 12/2010 (WD 12) on the proposed Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement earlier this week. WD 12 calls on EU negotiators to ensure that ACTA does not weaken citizens' fundamental rights of freedom of expression, privacy, and judicial due process, and will not require Internet intermediaries to act as copyright police at the behest of the entertainment industry...

Is Sarah Palin a Computer Criminal?

Posted on September 09, 2010
Vanity Fair suggests that Sarah Palin's distinctive voice on Facebook and Twitter is actually someone else's. According to the article, she appears to have given a ghostwriter access to her social networking accounts to speak on her behalf: When it was first set up, in January 2009, Palin's Facebook page might as well have been a file cabinet for official press releases ("Palin Pushes Parental Consent Legislation") written mostly in a stiff, third-person form...

Beyond "Censored": What Craigslist's "Adult Services" Decision Means for Free Speech

Posted on September 08, 2010
On Saturday, after years of pressure from law enforcement officials, Internet classified ad web site Craigslist bowed to demands to remove its "Adult Services" section which critics charged encouraged prostitution and other sex-related crimes. Or it least it appears that it did...

EFF Experts Address Security, Openness, and Privacy at United Nations' Internet Governance Forum

Posted on September 08, 2010
Vilnius, Lithuania - Experts from the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) will address security, openness, privacy, and other issues at the United Nations' Internet Governance Forum (IGF), set for September 14-17 in Vilnius, Lithuania. This is the fifth meeting of the IGF, which was established to discuss public policy issues related to Internet governance on a global scale...

Breaking News on EFF Location Privacy Win: Courts May Require Search Warrants for Cell Phone Location Records

Posted on September 07, 2010
This morning, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia issued its highly anticipated ruling in a hotly contested cell phone location privacy case. EFF filed a friend-of-the-court brief and participated at oral argument in the case, arguing that federal electronic privacy law gives judges the discretion to deny government requests for cell phone location data when the government fails to show probable cause that a crime has been committed...

Righthaven's Brand of Copyright Trolling

Posted on September 02, 2010
Copyright trolls are nothing new, and Righthaven is just the latest group of lawyers to try to turn copyright litigation into a business model. What these lawyers have in common is that they seek to take advantage of copyright's draconian damages in order to bully Internet users into forking over money...

EFF Asks Court to Protect Craigslist from Defamation Suit

Posted on September 02, 2010
San Francisco - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and a coalition of public interest groups and law professors have asked a California appeals court to protect craigslist from a lawsuit that could spur websites to be less helpful in responding to complaints about user behavior...

Reading, Writing, and RFID Chips: A Scary Back-to-School Future in California

Posted on August 30, 2010
Scary news from California's Contra Costa County — school officials there have reportedly decided to track some preschoolers with RFID chips, thanks to a federal grant supplying the funding. According to a story from the Associated Press, the students will wear a jersey at school that has the RFID tag attached...

Good News: Security Researcher Released on Bail

Posted on August 28, 2010
Hari Prasad, the Indian security researcher arrested for allegedly stealing an electronic voting machine, has been released on bail. Earlier this year, an anonymous source gave the machine to Prasad and a team of researchers, who discovered critical security flaws...

Colbert's Word: Control-Self-Delete

Posted on August 26, 2010
Just a few weeks after his interview with EFF Legal Director Cindy Cohn, American hero Stephen Colbert has returned to the subject of digital rights. And he's come up with a great solution to the problem of privacy and online social networks: Control-Self-Delete...

Facebook Should Stop Censoring Marijuana Legalization Campaign Ads

Posted on August 26, 2010
Facebook is facing down another embarrassing episode of censorship this week after refusing to show ads submitted by the Just Say Now marijuana legalization campaign. The gag is an important reminder that social networks like Facebook — while useful, interesting, and pretty — are "walled gardens" with overseers whose interests can overwrite free speech, open communication, and in this case, essential political debate...

EFF Seeks to Help Righthaven Defendants

Posted on August 25, 2010
The Electronic Frontier Foundation is seeking to assist defendants in the Righthaven copyright troll lawsuits. Righthaven, founded in March of 2010, files hundreds of copyright infringement lawsuits on behalf of newspaper publishers against bloggers who make use of news content without permission...

Musopen Wants to Give Classical Music to the Public Domain

Posted on August 25, 2010
Music lovers take note: the classical music archive Musopen needs your help to liberate some classic symphonies from copyright entanglement. Museopen is looking to solve a difficult problem: while symphonies written by Beethoven, Brahms, Sibelius, and Tchaikovsky are in the public domain, many modern arrangements and sound recordings of those works are copyrighted...

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