Intellectual Property Law

Gizmodo iPhone Warrant Affidavit Released, Impropriety of Search Confirmed

Posted on May 14, 2010
Today, San Mateo County Superior Court Judge Clifford Cretan ordered the release of the previously-sealed warrant affidavit that led to the search of Gizmodo editor Jason Chen?s house. As expected, the affidavit confirmed that there was no legal basis for the search...

Facebook Should Follow Its Own Principles

Posted on May 13, 2010
About a year ago, Facebook suffered a tremendous consumer backlash over its changes to the Terms of Service. To quell the uproar, Facebook introduced a set of Principles. Through a "Facebook site governance" vote, users voted on whether these Principles should serve as the foundation for governing the site...

EFF Demands Records on PATRIOT Act Effectiveness, Lawfulness, and Misuse

Posted on May 11, 2010
Washington, D.C. - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) filed suit today against the Department of Justice (DOJ), demanding records on three controversial PATRIOT Act surveillance provisions that expire early next year unless Congress renews them...

Geek Reading: Cory Doctorow's "For the Win"

Posted on May 11, 2010
Prolific author and blogger, tireless advocate of freedom in the networked world, Cory Doctorow's voice is needed now more than ever. His new novel "For the Win" hits the stores today, and he will be making a rare appearance here in San Francisco at EFF's Geek Reading on Wednesday May 19th...

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EU Parliament Scrutinizes International Data Sharing Agreements

Posted on May 06, 2010
Should US and European law enforcement agencies be given unrestricted access to commercial and travel transactions from individuals around the world without judicial oversight? That was the question on the table in a heated debate in the European Parliament this week...

PS3 Owners Sue Sony Over Removal of Features

Posted on May 05, 2010
In March, we wrote about Playstation 3 owners who were up in arms after Sony announced that a new firmware "upgrade" would actually disable a feature that enables users to run GNU/LINUX and other operating systems on their PS3 consoles. In response, a class action lawsuit has now been filed against Sony on behalf of PS3 owners who purchased their consoles after November 16, 2006 and before March 27...

The Humble Indie Bundle: Pay-What-You-Want for Games and Help EFF!

Posted on May 05, 2010
Wolfire Games is running an innovative pay-what-you-want promotion for five great indie video games with some proceeds benefiting EFF! Normally the five games would be valued at $80, but from now until Tuesday, 5/11, you can pay what you want for the entire game bundle including: World of Goo Aquaria Gish Lugaru HD Penumbra Overture The games are DRM-free and work with Mac, Windows, and Linux...

EFF Seeks to Protect Innovation for Social Network Users

Posted on May 04, 2010
San Francisco - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is urging a federal judge to dismiss Facebook's claims that criminal law is violated when its users opt for an add-on service that helps them aggregate their information from a variety of social networking sites...

Six Things You Need to Know About Facebook Connections

Posted on May 04, 2010
"Connections." It's an innocent-sounding word. But it's at the heart of some of the worst of Facebook's recent changes. Facebook first announced Connections a few weeks ago, and EFF quickly wrote at length about the problems they created. Basically, Facebook has transformed substantial personal information — including your hometown, education, work history, interests, and activites — into "Connections...

Net Neutrality: FCC Trojan Horse Redux

Posted on May 03, 2010
The Washington Post reports that FCC Chairman Genachowski is considering basing the FCC's proposed net neutrality rules on precisely the legal foundation discredited in a recent court ruling: Specifically, he is exploring a legal push under the current legal framework for broadband, which is under Title I, that would make possible the FCC?s push for a new net neutrality rule and reforms under a national broadband plan, the sources said...

Register Now: PrivacyCamp May 7th in San Francisco

Posted on April 30, 2010
EFF will be attending PrivacyCamp SF on Friday May 7th after the end of the Web 2.0 Expo, and we hope you will join us. The topic of the day will be Privacy and Social Networks. This first annual PrivacyCamp in San Francisco will be a day-long user-generated "unconference" of engineers, privacy advocates, professors, lawyers, entrepreneurs and social network users that will focus on the privacy implications of social networks like Facebook, Twitter, and Google Buzz...

Defcon 18 Getaway Contest Update

Posted on April 29, 2010
We're excited to report a great response to our inaugural Defcon 18 Getaway Contest since we announced it two weeks ago. Seventy-one participants have raised over $1900 so far! Registration is still open, and the contest is still very much up for grabs! Current first place team Holy Handgrenades is sitting pretty at $575, with individual contestants Evan Keiser at second place with $65 and Robert Rowley at third place with $25...

Facebook's "Evil Interfaces"

Posted on April 29, 2010
Social networking companies don't have it easy. Advertisers covet their users' data, and in a niche that often seems to lack a clear business model, selling (or otherwise leveraging) that data is a tremendously tempting opportunity. But most users simply don't want to share as much information with marketers or other "partners" as corporations would like them to...

The Gizmodo Raid: A Preview of Hollywood's Dystopian Plan for Copyright Enforcement

Posted on April 28, 2010
Last week?s police raid on Gizmodo blogger Jason Chen?s house, in response to a request from Apple Inc., has led many to wonder why government resources are being spent on a spat between Apple and Gizmodo. But here at EFF, we are also wondering if we?ve just seen the future of copyright enforcement...

Gizmodo Editor Chen Entitled to a Little First Amendment Respect

Posted on April 28, 2010
In yesterday's post, we asserted that the REACT high tech task force search of Gizmodo editor Jason Chen's home and seizure of his computers and other property as part of their investigation of that blog's reporting on the iPhone 4G prototype was almost certainly illegal...

Facebook's Eroding Privacy Policy: A Timeline

Posted on April 28, 2010
Since its incorporation just over five years ago, Facebook has undergone a remarkable transformation. When it started, it was a private space for communication with a group of your choice. Soon, it transformed into a platform where much of your information is public by default...

A Handy Facebook-to-English Translator

Posted on April 28, 2010
At last week's "f8" Facebook developer conference, Mark Zuckerberg's notable quotable was that Facebook is "building a Web where the default is social." To our ears, that sounds like "a Web where exposure is the norm." To achieve this, Facebook is rolling out technologies that essentially put Facebook features on other sites, while those sites share data back to Facebook...

OverREACTing: Dissecting the Gizmodo Warrant

Posted on April 27, 2010
Federal and California law both protect reporters against police searches aimed at uncovering confidential sources or seizing other information developed during newsgathering activities. Yet on Friday, agents with the Rapid Enforcement Allied Computer Team (REACT) executed a search warrant at Gizmodo editor Jason Chen?s home, searching for evidence related to Gizmodo's scoop on what appears to be a pre-release version of Apple's next iPhone model...

International Consumer Rights Group Publishes 2010 Global IP Watchlist

Posted on April 23, 2010
Each year, Consumers International works with non-governmental organizations worldwide to create and publish the "Consumers International IP Watchlist," a detailed survey of global copyright laws, focusing on national laws' impact on access to knowledge, or A2K...

Preliminary Analysis of the Officially Released ACTA Text

Posted on April 23, 2010
The text of the draft Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement was finally released to the public yesterday. We welcome the official release of the ACTA text after two years of negotiations. We can now have a serious public debate about its content and far-reaching impact on citizens' lives...

How to Opt Out of Facebook?s Instant Personalization

Posted on April 23, 2010
Yesterday, Facebook announced Instant Personalization, whereby select websites would "personalize your experience using your public Facebook information." The initial sites are Pandora, Yelp and Microsoft Docs. As Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg explained, this means that when you visit "Pandora for the first time, it can immediately start playing songs from bands you've liked...

Consumers International Video: When Copyright Goes Bad

Posted on April 23, 2010
Consumers International has released an excellent short film, When Copyright Goes Bad, which chronicles the rise of copyright as a global consumer rights issue and the ongoing fight for fairer copyright laws. The film features interviews with EFF Senior Staff Attorney Fred von Lohmann, Professor Michael Geist from the University of Ottowa Law School, Sunil Abraham from the Centre for Internet and Society, Hank Schocklee, co-founder of Public Enemy, and more...

Shaping IP Laws by Not-So-Gentle Persuasion: The Special 301 Report

Posted on April 21, 2010
At the end of this month the United States Trade Representative's Office will release its annual Special 301 report, a review of global intellectual property protection and enforcement standards conducted by the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR)...

Google Shows Government Information and Takedown Requests

Posted on April 20, 2010
Today, Google launched a fascinating new feature listing requests from government agencies for removal of content on Google and YouTube and for corresponding user information. Set up as a map, the Government Requests tool shows various countries around the world and lists the number of requests from that country between July and December of last year...

Everyone Who?s Made a Hitler Parody Video, Leave the Room

Posted on April 20, 2010
One the most enduring (and consistently entertaining) Internet memes of the past few years has been remixes of the bunker scene from the German film, The Downfall: Hitler and the End of the Third Reich (aka Der Untergang). EFF Boardmember Brad Templeton even got in on it, creating a very funny remix with Hitler ranting about troubles with DRM and the failure of DMCA takedowns to prevent fair uses...

ACTA Text To Be Released on April 21.

Posted on April 19, 2010
The 8th round of negotiations on the controversial Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement wrapped-up in New Zealand last week, with negotiators announcing that the ACTA text will be made public next Wednesday, April 21. Around the world, those following ACTA have been analyzing the leaked 18 January consolidated text since it surfaced on the Internet last month...

Facebook Further Reduces Your Control Over Personal Information

Posted on April 19, 2010
Once upon a time, Facebook could be used simply to share your interests and information with a select small community of your own choosing. As Facebook's privacy policy once promised, "No personal information that you submit to Facebook will be available to any user of the Web Site who does not belong to at least one of the groups specified by you in your privacy settings...

Government Backs Down in Yahoo! Email Privacy Case, Avoids Court Ruling on Important Digital Civil Liberties Issue

Posted on April 16, 2010
In the face of stiff resistance from Yahoo! and a coalition of privacy groups, Internet companies and industry coalitions led by EFF, the U.S. government today backed down from its request that a federal magistrate judge in Denver compel Yahoo! to turn over the contents of a Yahoo! email user's email account without the government first obtaining a search warrant based on probable cause...

Senators Introduce Bill in Response to EFF's Call for New Protections Against Secret Video Surveillance

Posted on April 15, 2010
Wow, that was fast: little more than two weeks after EFF testified to a Senate subcommittee that federal electronic privacy law needs to be updated to protect against secret video surveillance just like it regulates electronic eavesdropping, Senator Arlen Specter has responded by introducing a bill to do just that...

EFF Backs Yahoo! to Protect User from Warrantless Email Search

Posted on April 14, 2010
Denver - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) along with Google and numerous other public interest organizations and Internet industry associations joined with Yahoo! in asking a federal court Tuesday to block a government attempt to access the contents of a Yahoo! email account without a search warrant based on probable cause...

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