Intellectual Property Law

Apple, Give Us a "Freedom of Choice" Button

Posted on June 23, 2010
With the new iPhone 4 hitting stores this week, it seems like a good time to take a look at the impact Apple's business model has had on the stuff EFF cares about most ? innovation and your digital rights and expectations. But first, a little historical perspective...

IPEC Releases "Strategic Plan on Intellectual Property Enforcement"

Posted on June 23, 2010
Yesterday, the Obama Administration's Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator (IPEC), Victoria Espinel, released the "Joint Strategic Plan on Intellectual Property Enforcement" that Congress ordered up when it created the IPEC position. The plan lays out 33 "enforcement action items" grouped in 6 categories, which are helpfully summarized in a two-page chart...

'Hot News' Doctrine Could Stifle Online Commentary and Criticism

Posted on June 22, 2010
San Francisco - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), the Citizen Media Law Project (CMLP), and Public Citizen Monday urged the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit to consider the critical First Amendment questions at issue in a case asserting "hot news misappropriation" -- a doctrine that a federal court used to put time limit restrictions on the reporting of facts...

Sign the ACTA Communiqué and Tell Negotiators to Protect Your Rights

Posted on June 22, 2010
As we now know, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement — allegedly conceived to reduce the flow of fake physical goods across borders — could cut people off of the Internet, turn Internet intermediaries into copyright cops, and create a global framework that puts severe restrictions on innovation...

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It's Your Data, It's Your Bot: It's Not A Crime

Posted on June 22, 2010
Can public websites decide who is and is not a criminal through their terms of service? A brief EFF filed yesterday argues no. The amicus brief is a follow-up to one we filed last month in Facebook v. Power Ventures. Facebook claims that Power breaks California criminal law by offering users a tool that aggregates their own information across several social networking sites...

Hopeful Signs in Supreme Court's New Text Messaging Privacy Decision, City of Ontario v. Quon

Posted on June 17, 2010
The Supreme Court today issued its decision (pdf) in City of Ontario v. Quon, addressing the question of whether a city government's search of transcripts of a public employee's text messaging over a city-issued pager violated the Fourth Amendment. EFF had filed an amicus brief (pdf) in the case urging the Court to avoid making any broad pronouncements on whether and how the Fourth Amendment protects the privacy of communications such as texts that are stored by third party communications providers, and instead to limit its decision to the privacy rights of public employees...

Defcon 18 Getaway Contest and a NEW T-Shirt!

Posted on June 17, 2010
The Defcon 18 Getaway Contest is getting down to the wire and things are heating up! One hundred twenty-four participants have raised over $4,000 so far! In first place competing as an individual is Art Conklin with $725. In second place is Holy Handgrenades with $625...

Encrypt the Web with the HTTPS Everywhere Firefox Extension

Posted on June 17, 2010
Today EFF and the Tor Project are launching a public beta of a new Firefox extension called HTTPS Everywhere. This Firefox extension was inspired by the launch of Google's encrypted search option. We wanted a way to ensure that every search our browsers sent was encrypted...

Open Letter to Facebook: More Privacy Improvements Needed

Posted on June 16, 2010
San Francisco - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), the ACLU of Northern California, and a coalition of privacy groups are urging Facebook to give users true control over their personal data by taking six critical steps to protect members' information...

EU Search Engine Snooping Mandate Sneaked Into Child Protection Declaration

Posted on June 15, 2010
A controversial, surreptitious proposal to compel search engines to store everything that European citizens search for on the Internet has been introduced by a few members of the European Parliament. The veiled mandatory data retention proposal was sneaked into a broader declaration called "Written Declaration 29," which ostensibly seeks to promote the protection of children by developing an early warning system (EWS) to fight against pedophiles and sex offenders...

EFF Launches Subpoena Defense List to Help Targets of Movie-Downloading Lawsuits

Posted on June 11, 2010
We've heard from many people who have been distressed to learn that their identity is being sought by the US Copyright Group, which purportedly represents various independent filmmakers, for allegedly having downloaded a movie such as "Far Cry" over BitTorrent...

European Privacy Officials: Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft Are Still Breaking European Privacy Law

Posted on June 10, 2010
At a time when users regularly turn to search engines to find information on the Internet, search privacy is of paramount importance. The search terms you give to search engines can be used to compose a telling portrait of your interests and concerns, a fact that has led privacy advocates to call for greater protection for individual users...

Opt-Out Required to Prevent Your Yahoo! Mail Contacts From Being Used for Social Network

Posted on June 04, 2010
Earlier this week, Yahoo! announced a plan to try to leverage its Yahoo! Mail users' contacts into a social network of friends who will receive your Yahoo! Updates. Once the most visited website in the world, Yahoo! now ranks fourth worldwide, reaching about a quarter of all Internet users each day...

EFF Asks Judges to Quash Subpoenas in Movie-Downloading Lawsuits

Posted on June 03, 2010
Washington, D.C. - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) asked judges in Washington, D.C., Wednesday to quash subpoenas issued in predatory lawsuits aimed at movie downloaders, arguing in friend-of-the court briefs that the cases, which together target several thousand BitTorrent users, flout legal safeguards for protecting individuals' rights...

EFF Fights for Your Right to Resell CDs in Monday Hearing

Posted on June 02, 2010
Seattle - On Monday, June 7, at 9 a.m., a federal appeals court in Seattle will hear oral argument in a case where the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is fighting to uphold an eBay seller's "first sale" right to resell promotional CDs that he buys from secondhand stores...

Facebook Privacy Changes Inspire Praise, Optimism, and Skepticism

Posted on June 01, 2010
As soon as Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced the company's latest privacy changes last Wednesday, EFF published it's immediate reaction and posted a simple video tutorial. EFF also opined about the changes at AOL News, in the New York Times, on the radio with NPR's All Things Considered, and on television with PBS' Newshour...

"YouTube is UsTube": Creators Step in to Defend YouTube

Posted on May 31, 2010
Plenty of folks, from copyright lawyers to Internet entrepreneurs to investment bankers, have been watching the long-running legal battle between Viacom and Google/YouTube carefully, well aware that a decision in the case could have a profound effect on the future of the Internet...

Required Reading: Adrian Johns, Piracy: The Intellectual Property Wars from Gutenberg to Gates

Posted on May 30, 2010
I've just finished Adrian Johns' 2009 book, Piracy: The Intellectual Property Wars from Gutenberg to Gates, a 500+ page magnum opus stretching from the 1600s to the present. Johns is a noted University of Chicago historian, and his book is a fascinating and essential read for anyone interested in the history of the term "intellectual property" and development of the modern copyright and patent systems...

Creators Must Move Beyond Suing the Audience

Posted on May 28, 2010
The file-sharing public faces yet another wave of predatory litigation, this time from the so-called US Copyright Group ("USCG"), which is suing BitTorrent users on behalf of various independent filmmakers. The Hollywood Reporter reports that more than 20,000 individuals have been sued, with more suits to come, and the producers of the Oscar-winning The Hurt Locker have also signed up with the USCG to go after BitTorrent users...

How to Get More Privacy From Facebook's New Privacy Controls

Posted on May 26, 2010
Today, Facebook announced new privacy controls and settings in response to the tremendous public outcry over its April changes. Here we explain step-by-step how to take advantage of the new settings and maximize your privacy on Facebook. This is important because you must take affirmative steps to adjust your settings in order to take full advantage of the revised privacy practices...

Facebook's New Privacy Improvements Are a Positive Step, But There's Still More Work to Be Done

Posted on May 26, 2010
In response to a firestorm of criticism from EFF and others ([1][2][3]), and after much internal debate, Facebook today announced a series of privacy changes to the social networking site as Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg promised on Monday. We will be publishing instructions on how to best take advantage of the new settings shortly...

Tell Your Lawmakers: "Anti-Counterfeiting" Treaty Is a Sham!

Posted on May 25, 2010
The U.S. Trade Representative has spent the past two years working with other developed nations on a secret agreement allegedly designed to reduce the flow of fake physical goods across borders. However, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) is really a ruse that gives the entertainment industry its wishlist of Internet copyright regulations and enforcement power...

Facebook Violates Privacy Promises, Leaks User Info to Advertisers

Posted on May 21, 2010
A Wall Street Journal article today draws attention to yet another unexpected way in which Facebook's privacy practices have not complied with its public statements and have disregarded users' privacy rights. Just last week, when asked about Facebook's privacy practices with advertisers, Facebook executive Elliot Schrage wrote: We don?t share your information with advertisers...

Google Launches Encrypted Search

Posted on May 21, 2010
Google has just announced that it is rolling out an encrypted version of its web search service, https://www.google.com. This is something we've been asking Google for privately and publicly for some time, and we're very pleased to see it come to pass...

Time For Google to Grow Up: Open Wi-Fi Privacy Mistake Must Be The Last

Posted on May 20, 2010
Last week's news that Google's Street View cars collected the content of messages flowing over open wireless networks while mapping the location of those access points is a privacy wake-up call to the company and wireless users alike. Google had previously represented that it did not collect or store what it calls "payload data" and what EFF and the law call communications "content" ? the actual information that was being transmitted by users over the unprotected networks...

Judge Shields Identity of Online Critic Facing Baseless Lawsuit

Posted on May 19, 2010
San Francisco - A federal judge in San Francisco has quashed a baseless subpoena aimed at outing an anonymous online critic of Pennsylvania corporation USA Technologies after the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) successfully argued that the First Amendment shields the identity of anonymous speakers who engage in lawful speech...

EFF Seeks Attorneys to Help Alleged Movie Downloaders

Posted on May 19, 2010
Are you an attorney licensed to practice law in the United States? If you are, EFF needs your help to fight spam-igation. The U.S. Copyright Group has quietly targeted 50,000 Bit Torrent users for legal action in federal court in Washington DC. The defendants, all Does, are accused of having downloaded independent films such as "Far Cry," "Steam Experiment," and "Uncross the Stars" without authorization...

A Bill of Privacy Rights for Social Network Users

Posted on May 19, 2010
Social network service providers today are in a unique position. They are intermediaries and hosts to our communications, conversations and connections with loved ones, family, friends and colleagues. They have access to extremely sensitive information, including data gathered over time and from many different individuals...

EFF Adds Tens of Thousands of Pages to Government Document Archive

Posted on May 18, 2010
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has added thousands of never-before-seen records to its online collection of documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). The treasure trove of government records, now up to date and posted on our website in its entirety, is the result of almost 200 FOIA requests and over a dozen lawsuits...

Web Browsers Leave 'Fingerprints' Behind as You Surf the Net

Posted on May 17, 2010
San Francisco - New research by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has found that an overwhelming majority of web browsers have unique signatures -- creating identifiable "fingerprints" that could be used to track you as you surf the Internet. The findings were the result of an experiment EFF conducted with volunteers who visited http://panopticlick...

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