Intellectual Property Law

New cookie technologies: harder to see and remove, widely used to track you

Posted on September 14, 2009
This is part 1 of a three-part series on user tracking on the web today. Cookies are still a privacy problem for web users, many years after privacy advocates first raised concerns about their use to track web browsing. Today, cookies are one of the main mechanisms that advertising companies like Google use to track and profile users across sites and over time -- often building up a single gigantic profile for years and years...

What information is "personally identifiable"?

Posted on September 12, 2009
Mr. X lives in ZIP code 02138 and was born July 31, 1945. These facts about him were included in an anonymized medical record released to the public. Sounds like Mr. X is pretty anonymous, right? Not if you're Latanya Sweeney, a Carnegie Mellon University computer science professor who showed in 1997 that this information was enough to pin down Mr...

EFF's Geek Reading: xkcd Webcomic Author Randall Munroe

Posted on September 10, 2009
Monday, September 21st will be the second Geek Reading event to benefit EFF, at 111 Minna in downtown San Francisco. This time, the author in question is Randall Munroe, otherwise known as the writer and cartoonist behind the brilliant webcomic xkcd. For those not yet part of the xkcd cult, the cartoon with the strange name consistently brings some of the sharpest satire to the world of the Internet and digital culture...

Who Controls Data About Public Transportation?

Posted on September 10, 2009
How should city transit authorities treat independent software developers who make use of public schedule data? What approach results in the best experience for their passengers and customers? Two models appear to be emerging to answer this question. One, typified by New York City's MTA and Washington, DC's WMATA, sees schedule and related data as valuable intellectual property, to be zealously protected, licensed and monetized...

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Improving DMCA Takedowns at Blogger, Flickr

Posted on September 08, 2009
In the past couple weeks, two major online service providers, Blogger and Flickr, announced improvements to their DMCA takedown policies. EFF had a hand in both: Blogger contacted us to discuss their improvements, and we contacted Flickr to raise some concerns we had...

National Coalition of Authors Urge Rejection of Google Book Search Deal

Posted on September 08, 2009
New York - A coalition of authors and publishers?including best-sellers Michael Chabon, Jonathan Lethem, and technical author Bruce Schneier?is urging a federal judge to reject the proposed settlement in a lawsuit over Google Book Search, arguing that the sweeping agreement to digitize millions of books ignores critical privacy rights for readers and writers...

UK Musicians Oppose Draconian Disconnect Policy

Posted on September 04, 2009
The UK government still seems unsure as to whether it's a good idea to punish those accused of illegal downloading by cutting off Internet access for entire households, saying it wants to "support" the music industry. But now it seems a coalition of the actual British musicians, songwriters and producers behind the music don't want "support" of this kind, and view this sort of draconian policy as "extraordinarily negative...

Google Book Privacy Policy: Good Start, Much More Needed

Posted on September 04, 2009
Late yesterday afternoon, September 3, 2009, Google finally issued a privacy policy for Google Books, both the current service and the extensive new book-related services they hope to have a federal court approve in October. While there are some good things in the policy — many that EFF and its coalition partners the ACLU of Northern California and the Samuelson Clinic at Berkeley Law School have long been urging Google to do — it is still falls well short of the privacy protections that readers need, both substantively and in whether it will be permanent and readily enforceable by readers...

Cybersecurity Act Returns With a Fresh Coat of Paint

Posted on September 02, 2009
In April, we voiced serious concerns about the Cybersecurity Act of 2009, a bill by Senators Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) and Olympia Snowe (R-ME), that sought to give the federal government unprecedented power over the Internet. For months, the bill has been redrafted behind closed doors and has recently been circulated, but by all accounts, the changes are cosmetic and it's sadly more of the same...

Grade the Obama Administration's Work on Consumer Privacy!

Posted on September 01, 2009
The Privacy Coalition, a coalition of organizations committed to privacy issues, is inviting the public to give the Obama Administration a grade on its privacy work thus far: The Obama Administration can protect consumer privacy by supporting new laws, by safeguarding the personal information held by the federal government, and by strengthening the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), the chief agency responsible for protecting U...

NYT on Locational Privacy

Posted on September 01, 2009
The New York Times today has a nice opinion piece by Adam Cohen that does a good job of laying out the concerns about locational privacy that EFF and other privacy advocates have raised: A little-appreciated downside of the technology revolution is that, mainly without thinking about it, we have given up ?locational privacy...

Privacy in Online Behavioral Tracking and Targeting - It's Time to Protect Consumers

Posted on September 01, 2009
EFF and a coalition of other consumer and privacy groups called on Congress today to protect Americans' privacy from invasive online behavioral tracking and targeting. In letters sent to the House Energy and Commerce Committee and two subcommittees, the groups delivered a legislative primer: "Tracking people?s every move online is an invasion of privacy...

Promising SXSW Panel Proposals

Posted on August 28, 2009
In the past few years, interesting conversations about new media and innovation have taken place at the South by Southwest (SXSW) conference and festival. Voting for the panels to be featured in 2010 is taking place until September 4 -- here are a few proposals that we think will yield interesting discussions: A panel titled "Reading ReInvented: Can You Steal this Book?" organized by Jason Schultz at the UC Berkeley School of Law seeks greater clarity on the future of the book -- a topic in serious need of attention from the smart and creative in light of Amazon's remote deletions on the Kindle, concerns with Google Book Search, and more...

The New York Times on Government Website Privacy

Posted on August 25, 2009
Today's New York Times includes their editorial board's take on revising government web tracking policy. Their recommendations align closely with those we made in coordination with The Center for Democracy and Technology earlier this month: Officials say they recognize that people must be told that their use of Web sites is being tracked ? and be given a chance to opt out...

Op-Ed on Lawless Surveillance by Cindy Cohn

Posted on August 24, 2009
EFF Legal Director Cindy Cohn has penned an opinion piece currently on the blog of the American Constitution Society. The piece points out that the Obama Administration has embraced two of the most radical positions taken by the Bush Administration — that the Executive Branch need not follow the law and that the courts should not be allowed to review the core constitutional questions that the Executive Branch wants hidden: The Bush administration's central view was that the executive branch was somehow above the niceties of the Constitution...

Chicago Development Critics Fight for Anonymity

Posted on August 21, 2009
Chicago - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has asked an Illinois Circuit Court judge to quash subpoenas aimed at outing opponents of a controversial city project. In December, local residents filed a lawsuit in state court against the city of Chicago and local developers, challenging the legality of a development project in the city's Uptown neighborhood...

Stomping Grapes for EFF in Indiana

Posted on August 21, 2009
Earlier this month, we received an exciting letter in the mail from the Vevay, Indiana Tourism Board. During our 38th Swiss Wine Festival (one of Indiana's Top 10 Festivals) held this August 27-30, we will be debuting a new event. Our First Annual "Media Celebrity Grape Stomp for Charity" will feature on-air celebrities from television and radio, newspaper columnists, professional bloggers and freelance writers...

PASS ID: REAL ID Reanimated

Posted on August 20, 2009
In February, the opponents of REAL ID were given a bit of hope when Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said that she wanted to repeal the REAL ID Act, the federal government's failed plan to impose a national identification card through state driver's licenses...

Warrants Required: EFF and Google's Big Disagreement about Google Book Search

Posted on August 18, 2009
The central question in the privacy debate that EFF and our partners at the ACLU of Northern California and the Samuelson Law, Technology & Public Policy Clinic at UC Berkeley have been having with Google about Google Book Search is whether this exciting new digital library/bookstore is going to maintain the strong protections for reader privacy that traditional libraries and bookstores have fought for and largely won...

Canada Action Alert: Speak Out on the Future of Digital Copyright

Posted on August 14, 2009

More Seek Privacy from Google Book Search Settlement

Posted on August 14, 2009
Concerns about Google Book Search and its potential effects on reader privacy are spreading widely in the wake of the joint action alert issued by EFF and the ACLU of Northern California. Copyright scholar Pam Samuelson recently investigated the scope of the settlement in an editorial titled "The Audacity of the Google Book Search Settlement," noting that "...

NPR Story on Google Books, Privacy and the Future of the Book

Posted on August 13, 2009
NPR had a radio story yesterday on the Google Books settlement and the privacy concerns raised by EFF and many authors and publishers. It's short but does a great job of covering the basic points, and includes excellent commentary from author Jonathan Lethem, who has joined EFF in calling on Google to do more to commit to privacy protections for readers: Novelist Jonathan Lethem says Google should be "congratulated" for its effort...

Judge Rules Against RealDVD

Posted on August 12, 2009
Judge Patel (who also handled Napster and Bernstein cases) has granted a preliminary injunction in favor of the major motion picture studios and DVD-CCA in their legal battle with Real Networks over its RealDVD products. The case involves the legality of two products intended to allow DVD owners to make digital copies onto hard drives for later playback...

Snatching Rights On the Playa

Posted on August 12, 2009
In a few weeks, tens of thousands of creative people will make their yearly pilgrimage to Nevada?s Black Rock desert for Burning Man, an annual art event and temporary community celebrating radical self expression, self-reliance, creativity and freedom...

The Onion: Google's New Opt-Out Privacy Protections

Posted on August 11, 2009
There's good news today for privacy advocates ? the Onion reports that Google has developed an exciting new "opt out" program for those who don't want the search giant compiling vast amounts of their personal data: Those unsure about whether this opt out feature is right for them may want to take action now ? tell Google you want privacy protections built in to Google Book Search to ensure the right to read privately in the future...

Recommendations for Federal Web Privacy Policy

Posted on August 11, 2009
Today, EFF and the Center for Democracy and Technology submitted comments to the Office of Management and Budget in response to the agency's review of the policies governing the federal government's use of cookies and other web technologies. The comments are an extension of recommendations we made in May, in which we suggested that the OMB permit cookie-based web analytics so long as the process was carefully overseen and met with specific strict safeguards...

The UK's Surveillance Society: Half A Million Intercepts of Communications Data in 2008

Posted on August 11, 2009
This week, the United Kingdom's Interception of Communications commissioner, Sir Paul Kennedy, announced his latest statistics for Britain's phone and email surveillance systems, to generally shocked responses by the British Public. In 2008, law enforcement, local authorities and the secret services in that country demanded "communication data" — the "who, how, when and where", but not the actual content of messages — 504,073 times...

EFF and PK to Congress: U.S. Trade Advisory Committee Needs Technology Users' Input

Posted on August 06, 2009
EFF and Public Knowledge this week urged Congress to give American technology users more input in international trade agreements that have broad ramifications for digital freedom. In written testimony submitted to the House Ways and Means Committee, the groups told lawmakers that the U...

Who Knows Where You Are, And Why?

Posted on August 05, 2009
San Francisco - Innovative new technologies can make it easier to pay your bridge toll or bus fare, to search for nearby businesses from your cell phone, and to get in and out of secure areas with a card instead of a key. But these systems also pose a dramatic threat to locational privacy -- your ability to move in public spaces without the systematic recording of where you are and when you are there...

The Kindle Lawsuit: Protecting Readers From Future Abuses

Posted on August 05, 2009
Not surprisingly, Amazon?s recent deletion of George Orwell?s 1984 and Animal Farm from its customers' Kindle e-book readers has sparked a class action lawsuit by Kindle users. After all, not only was the remote deletion ?stupid,? as CEO Jim Bezos admitted, it also appears to have been a violation of the terms of service for Kindle that Amazon itself drafted...

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