Intellectual Property Law

Legal Battle Over Government Demands for Twitter Records Unsealed by Court

Posted on February 08, 2011
Alexandria, VA - A federal court in Alexandria, Virginia today unsealed motions filed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), the American Civil Liberties Union, and others concerning government attempts to obtain Twitter account records about three individuals in connection with its WikiLeaks investigation...

Tell Your Representative to Reject the PATRIOT Act Sneak Attack Before Tomorrow's Vote!

Posted on February 07, 2011

FBI, DOJ and DEA Stall Release of Records on Bid to Expand Surveillance Laws

Posted on February 03, 2011
Today EFF filed a reply brief in its FOIA lawsuit seeking records from the FBI, DOJ and DEA that would justify the Administration?s need to expand federal surveillance laws like the Communications Assistance to Law Enforcement Act (CALEA). The proposed expansion would require communications providers like Skype, Facebook, Blackberry and Twitter to build wiretapping capabilities right into their systems, and although we know Congress intends to turn to this issue early this year, FBI, DEA and DOJ have argued they can?t give us all the documents we asked for until the summer of 2012...

Part I: FCC ?Ancillary? Authority to Regulate the Internet? Don?t Count on It

Posted on February 03, 2011
The FCC published its long-awaited final Report and Order on net neutrality at the end of December (more on that in part 2 of this post), but the debate is far from over. Republican members of Congress have loudly voiced their displeasure with the attempt to regulate internet activity; they?ve already filed a bill putting internet regulatory authority solely in the hands of Congress...

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Contact the Senate Judiciary Committee TODAY to Support Reforms to PATRIOT Act!

Posted on February 02, 2011

EFF Urges Supreme Court to Crack Down on Bad Patents

Posted on February 02, 2011
San Francisco - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), joined by Public Knowledge and the Apache Software Foundation, urged the U.S. Supreme Court Tuesday to make it easier to invalidate bad patents -- a decision that would benefit software innovators both large and small...

As International Privacy Day is Celebrated, Governments Continue to Chip Away at Privacy Rights

Posted on February 02, 2011
"Effective data protection is vital for our democracies and underpins other fundamental rights and freedoms." - Viviane Reding, Vice-President of the European Commission and Commissioner for Justice, Fundamental Rights and Citizenship. Last Friday, privacy advocates and government officials in countries across the world celebrated the 5th annual International Privacy Day — even as individual privacy is threatened by surveillance proposals and security breaches worldwide...

Copyright Troll Gives Up in Porn-Downloading Case

Posted on February 01, 2011
Dallas, TX - An adult video company has dropped its flawed lawsuit accusing hundreds of Internet users of illegally downloading pornography. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and Public Citizen (PC) are counsel for the anonymous defendants at the request of the court...

EFF Files Comments with Copyright Office on Pre-1972 Sound Recordings

Posted on February 01, 2011
EFF yesterday filed comments in response to the Copyright Office?s recent Notice of Inquiry regarding the ?desirability and means of bringing sound recordings fixed before February 15, 1972, under Federal jurisdiction.? Pre-1972 sound recordings are the vestigial tail of copyright law, a subset of works that are carved out of the federal Copyright Act and still receive protection under state law...

EFF Urges Commerce Department to Embrace 'Do Not Track'

Posted on February 01, 2011
Support for a browser-header-based "Do Not Track" proposal is building in both the federal government and the private sector, which is good news for Internet users who are concerned about privacy. Friday, EFF submitted comments to the Department of Commerce Internet Policy Task Force, urging the department to embrace the system and support legislation that would authorize the Federal Trade Commission to act on Do Not Track...

Egyptian Actions Highlight Dangers in U.S. Cybersecurity Proposals

Posted on January 31, 2011
The Egyptian regime's shutdown of the Internet in an attempt to preserve its political power highlights the dangers of any government having unchecked power over our Internet infrastructure, and puts a fine point on the risks to democracy posed by recent Congressional proposals to give the President a broad mandate to dictate how our internet service providers respond to cyber-emergencies...

EFF Uncovers Widespread FBI Intelligence Violations

Posted on January 30, 2011
EFF has uncovered widespread violations stemming from FBI intelligence investigations from 2001 - 2008. In a report released today, EFF documents alarming trends in the Bureau?s intelligence investigation practices, suggesting that FBI intelligence investigations have compromised the civil liberties of American citizens far more frequently, and to a greater extent, than was previously assumed...

Internet Security Savvy is Critical as Egyptian Government Blocks Websites, Arrests Activists in Response to Continued Protest

Posted on January 27, 2011
As we've seen in Iran and Tunisia, social networking tools have given activists in authoritarian regimes a powerful voice, which can be heard well beyond their own country. But the use of social networking tools has also given their governments ways to identify and retaliate against them...

MasterCard?s Support for COICA Threatens A Free And Open Internet

Posted on January 26, 2011
In the last months of 2010, the WikiLeaks wars reminded transparency activists of something copyright and trademark lawyers know all too well ? online speech is only as strong as the many service providers on which it depends. All too often web hosts, domain name registrars and other service providers cave at the slightest legal or government pressure, with disastrous consequences for their users...

House Subcommittee Revives Mandatory Data Retention Debate...With a Surprise Attack on EFF

Posted on January 25, 2011
This morning, the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism and Homeland Security held a hearing on mandatory Internet data retention, once again reviving the debate over whether Congress should pass legislation to force ISPs and telecom providers to log information about how users communicate and use the Internet...

Mozilla Leads the Way on Do Not Track

Posted on January 24, 2011
Earlier today, Mozilla announced plans to incorporate a Do Not Track feature into their next browser release, Firefox 4.1. Google also announced a new privacy extension today, but we believe that Mozilla is now taking a clear lead and building a practical way forward for people who want privacy when they browse the web...

Early Lessons from the Tunisian Revolution

Posted on January 21, 2011
Last week's post about the increasingly draconian and desperate measures the Tunisian government was taking to censor bloggers, journalists, and activists online was rapidly made irrelevant by subsequent events. Over the next few days, Tunisian dictator El Abidine Ben Ali promised not to run for re-election in 2014, then offered widespread reforms, including freedom of expression on the Internet, and finally stepped down from power and fled the country...

Don't Sacrifice Security on Mobile Devices

Posted on January 21, 2011
Increasingly powerful mobile phones are making Internet access and use more convenient than ever. However, the security of mobile operating systems is not as mature or as strong as that of workstation and server operating systems. Platforms like Windows and Ubuntu receive security scrutiny, and regular and frequent updates to resolve security problems...

EFF Urges California Court to Grant Public Access to Electronic Mapping Data

Posted on January 21, 2011
Last week, EFF joined a coalition of public interest and media groups in filing an amicus brief (pdf) urging a California Court of Appeal to uphold the public?s right to access electronic files created and stored by local governments. The case, Sierra Club v...

Know Before You Go, Part 2: Burning Man Improves Ticket Terms But Retains Takedown Powers

Posted on January 20, 2011
At EFF, we like to give credit where it is due. Over the past few years, we?ve repeatedly called out the Burning Man Organization (BMO) for using online ticket terms to require participants to assign to BMO, in advance, the copyrights to any pictures they took on the playa...

Bitcoin - a Step Toward Censorship-Resistant Digital Currency

Posted on January 20, 2011
A few weeks ago, we mentioned a rather unusual technological endeavor to create an online currency. We received a few queries about this subject, so decided to provide a more thorough description of what digital currency is, how this system works, why it's appealing and how it might fall short of user expectations...

Social Media and Law Enforcement: Who Gets What Data and When?

Posted on January 20, 2011
This month, we were reminded how important it is that social media companies do what they can to protect the sensitive data they hold from the prying eyes of the government. As many news outlets have reported, the US Department of Justice recently obtained a court order for records from Twitter on several of its users related to the WikiLeaks disclosures...

Fuzzy Boundaries: The Potential Impact of Vague Secondary Liability Doctrines on Technology Innovation

Posted on January 19, 2011
Last year, Ninth Circuit Chief Judge Alex Kozinski and Josh Goldfoot from the DoJ's Criminal Division directly confronted some of EFF's concerns about overreaching theories of secondary copyright infringement. Playing on EFF founder John Perry Barlow's seminal essay, Judge Kozinski and Mr...

Sony v. Hotz: Sony Sends A Dangerous Message to Researchers -- and Its Customers

Posted on January 19, 2011
Co-authored by Corynne McSherry and Marcia Hofmann For years, EFF has been warning that the anti-circumvention provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act can be used to chill speech, particularly security research, because legitimate researchers will be afraid to publish their results lest they be accused of circumventing a technological protection measure...

EFF Asks Judges to Quash Subpoenas in Porn-Downloading Lawsuits

Posted on January 17, 2011
San Francisco - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has asked an Illinois judge to quash subpoenas issued in predatory lawsuits involving alleged illegal downloading of pornography. In an amicus brief filed Friday, EFF argued that the adult film companies were abusing the law in order to coerce settlement payments despite serious problems with the underlying claims...

FCC Contest Seeks More Data for a Better Net Neutrality

Posted on January 13, 2011
Last week, the FCC announced the "FCC Open Internet Apps Challenge," a contest to attract software that helps ordinary users measure whether their Internet services — both mobile broadband and traditional "fixed" broadband — are consistent with open Internet principles...

EFF Calls for Immediate Action to Defend Tunisian Activists Against Government Cyberattacks

Posted on January 11, 2011
Demonstrations and protests over unemployment and poor living conditions have been ongoing in Tunisia since the beginning of December, but last week the Tunisian government turned up the heat on bloggers, activists, and dissidents by launching a JavaScript injection attack that siphoned off the usernames and passwords of Tunsians logging in to Google, Yahoo, and Facebook...

Happy New Year from EFF!

Posted on January 11, 2011
Thank you to all of the Electronic Frontier Foundation supporters who were able to make a contribution this past year. Truly your donations, advocacy, and steadfast moral support have helped make EFF the formidable organization that it is today. We have come a long way from our first victory in Steve Jackson Games v...

The Best of Cablegate: Instances Where Public Discourse Benefited from the Leaks

Posted on January 07, 2011
Since late November, the whistleblower website Wikileaks has been in the process of releasing in waves over 250,000 leaked United States diplomatic cables. Known as "Cablegate," this is the largest publication of confidential documents by any organization...

When Bad Patents Hurt Good People: Patent Threat Shuts Down Flight Planning Site

Posted on January 05, 2011
In another example of using patents to stifle—rather than promote—innovation, a company called FlightPrep has come out fighting, threatening online flight planning sites with its newly obtained patent, and going so far as to sue at least one of those sites...

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