Intellectual Property Law

ASCAP Wants To Be Paid When Your Phone Rings

Posted on June 19, 2009
ASCAP (the same folks who went after Girl Scouts for singing around a campfire) appears to believe that every time your musical ringtone rings in public, you're violating copyright law by "publicly performing" it without a license. At least that's the import of a brief [2...

miniLinks for 2009-06-19

Posted on June 19, 2009
REAL ID Revival Bill Is Another Attempt at a National ID A new "PASS ID" bill seeks to create a privacy-invasive national ID, just like its antecedent, REAL ID. IP Colloquium Podcast Tackles Patent Damages Reform UCLA Law Professor Doug Lichtman and his guests explore the contentious issues around patent reform, including the difficulty of calculating damages and considering the many possible reforms...

Hear, Hear: New York Times Editorial Board Calls for Repeal of FISA Amendments Act

Posted on June 18, 2009
Responding to repeated reports that the National Security Agency's surveillance dragnet is continuing to intercept Americans' purely domestic communications in the millions, the New York Times editorial board is calling on Congress to repeal the deeply-flawed FISA Amendments Act (FAA), which broadly expanded the government's spying powers while immunizing the phone companies that illegally cooperated with the NSA program...

Google Considering More HTTPS, Other Services to Follow?

Posted on June 18, 2009
Earlier this week, privacy and security researchers urged Google to improve the security of Gmail, Google Docs, and Google Calendar by enabling the more secure HTTPS encryption by default. As it stands, all users currently log in to Google services over HTTPS...

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Record Labels' $1.9 Million Win in Thomas Retrial Constitutional?

Posted on June 18, 2009
The jury in the retrial of Ms. Jammie Thomas-Rasset deliberated only a few hours today before concluding that she had willfully infringed the copyrights of 24 songs and awarding $1.92 million in statutory damages ($80,000 per recording) to the record label plaintiffs...

More from the NYT on NSA's Domestic Spying: "Pinwale" Has Your Emails

Posted on June 17, 2009
Following up on their report in April detailing the National Security Agency's systemic and significant "overcollection" ? that is, illegal interception ? of Americans' domestic communications, James Risen and Eric Lichbtblau of the New York Times have just published a new story with even more detail about the NSA's ongoing warrantless wiretapping and the concerns it is raising in Congress...

EFF and Public Knowledge Reluctantly Drop Lawsuit for Information About ACTA

Posted on June 17, 2009
Washington, D.C. - The Obama Administration's decision to support Bush-era concealment policies has forced the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and Public Knowledge (PK) to drop their lawsuit about the proposed Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA)...

Trade Sanctions and Web 2.0: Are US Regulations Hurting Free Speech in Iran?

Posted on June 16, 2009
For the past few days, Iranians have been taking advantage of US-hosted communication services like Twitter and Facebook to communicate with each other about their contested election, uncover and compare facts, and convey their experiences to the rest of the world...

EFF Busts Bogus Internet Subdomain Patent

Posted on June 16, 2009
San Francisco - The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has announced that it will revoke an illegitimate patent on Internet subdomains as a result of the Electronic Frontier Foundation's (EFF) Patent Busting Project campaign. U.S. Patent No. 6,687,746, now held by Hoshiko, LLC, claimed to cover the method of automatically assigning Internet subdomains, like "action...

Amendments to Computer Crime Law Are a Dark Cloud with a Ray of Light

Posted on June 15, 2009
In September of last year, Congress amended the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) as part of a larger bill dealing with identity theft. Unfortunately, the amendments broaden the already extensive reach of the law, and fail to clarify the most vexing question about the statute, the definition of ?unauthorized access?...

Into the DTV era, with no broadcast flag mandate

Posted on June 12, 2009
Today (June 12, 2009) marks the completion of the U.S. transition to digital television, as TV stations switch off their analog transmitters. Just a few years ago, some broadcasters and movie studios argued that this transition couldn't happen without a DRM mandate -- a legal requirement for devices to obey the broadcast flag and apply DRM restrictions to free, over-the-air broadcasts...

EFF Challenges Government's 'Back Door Wiretap'

Posted on June 11, 2009
Cincinnati - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and other civil liberties groups filed an amicus brief in Warshak v. United States urging the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Wednesday to hold that the government's seizure of email without a warrant violated the Fourth Amendment and federal privacy statutes, as well as the Justice Department's own surveillance manual...

Google Book Search Settlement: Foster Competition, Escrow the Scans

Posted on June 11, 2009
There is mounting concern in some quarters that the Google Book Search settlement (see previous posts here, here, and here) could have anticompetitive effects. Everyone (including Google) seems to agree that, all else being equal, we shouldn't want a world where Google is the only entity that is scanning and providing online access to books, particularly the majority of out-of-print books whose owners can't be found (i...

Cookies Crumbling: YouTube Takes a Small Step to Increase Privacy of Whitehouse.gov Visitors

Posted on June 11, 2009
After discussions with EFF, YouTube has implemented additional privacy protections for visitors to Whitehouse.gov viewing embedded videos hosted by YouTube. When the Whitehouse.gov website launched in January, including embedded videos from YouTube, privacy advocates raised concerns that without extra privacy measures, YouTube would be improperly tracking visitors to the government website, including recording which videos were watched and combining that information with the ever-growing amount of information that Google and YouTube have about internet users, through YouTube?s use of cookies...

Hollywood drives us into the "Analog Sunset"

Posted on June 10, 2009
As Blu-ray.com reports, the AACS licensing authority has released the "Final Adopter Agreement" it plans to enforce against consumer electronics companies that make BluRay players (and any other AACS devices that come along). Buried inside that 188 page document is a plan to eliminate analog video...

France Declares Three Strikes Unconstitutional

Posted on June 10, 2009
Before legislation becomes law in France, it must pass the muster of the Conseil Constitutionnel: a group of jurists who determine whether each new law is consistent with the principles and rules of France's constitution. For the passage of Sarkozy's unpopular "three strikes" HADOPI legislation, the approval of the Conseil was the final hurdle to cross...

China's Spy in the Home

Posted on June 09, 2009
The Chinese Ministry of Industry and IT's announcement that all PCs sold in China must include government-approved filtering software is a profoundly worrying development for online privacy and free speech in that country. While the application, "Green Dam Youth Escort", claims to only block pornographic sites, the access to a home computer such filtering software requires means that it could also have the power to conduct all sorts of other surveillance and control — far more than China's current monitoring and blocking systems at the ISP level permits...

EFF comments on Child Safe Viewing Act

Posted on June 08, 2009
Recently, EFF filed comments with the FCC in connection with the Child Safe Viewing Act of 2007, which requires the FCC to conduct a study of V-chip-like blocking technologies that might apply to media other than television ? such as Internet access, perhaps...

minilinks for 2009-05-08

Posted on June 08, 2009
Craigslist Censorship Causes Uptick for NewspapersAfter Craigslist stopped accepting erotic ads due to pressure from law enforcement, newspapers are reporting significant gains in adult classified ad sales. Travel Documents Now Required to Exit U.S.Federal regulations effective June 1, 2009 require government-issued travel documents, frequently featuring RFIDs, for exit as well as entry to the U...

The Child Safe Viewing Act and another DMCA victim

Posted on June 08, 2009
In an earlier post, we mentioned that EFF filed comments with the FCC in connection with the Child Safe Viewing Act of 2007. This process unexpectedly drew our attention to a copyright issue, which we discuss below. read more

EFF Launches TOSBack - A 'Terms of Service' Tracker for Facebook, Google, eBay, and More

Posted on June 04, 2009
San Francisco - "Terms of Service" policies on websites define how Internet businesses interact with you and use your personal information. But most web users don't read these policies -- or understand that the terms are constantly changing. To track these ever-evolving documents, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is launching "TOSBack": a "terms of service" tracker for Facebook, Google, eBay, and other major websites...

EFF and ACLU Planning to Appeal Dismissal of Dozens of Spying Cases

Posted on June 03, 2009
San Francisco - A federal judge today dismissed dozens of lawsuits over illegal domestic surveillance of American citizens, ruling that telecommunications companies had immunity from liability under the controversial FISA Amendments Act (FISAAA). The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) California and Illinois affiliates are planning to appeal the decision to the 9th U...

Why DRM on e-Books Will Fail

Posted on June 02, 2009
They say a picture is worth a thousand words. Well, here's one that vividly illustrates why putting DRM on e-books is short-sighted, futile, and doomed. If you must have words, here are a few explaining this photo. And here are a few more wherein Microsoft security engineers explain in their 2002 "Darknet" paper why all DRM like this is doomed to fail...

Taking Copyright Education Seriously

Posted on June 01, 2009
Last week, after months of work, EFF launched Teaching Copyright, a balanced, fact-based curriculum for high school educators looking to discuss copyright issues in the classroom. We decided the time was right to unveil the project after the debut of the Copyright Alliance Education Foundation (CAEF), which is offering a variety of educational materials assembled by the film, music and software industries...

Apple Rejects EFF Updates App, Claims Parody Content Is Objectionable

Posted on June 01, 2009
Last month, EFF got an email from software developer Duane Fields of Exact Magic, asking if he could use our logo on an iPhone application that exclusively displays content from EFF's RSS feed. Sounded like a great idea to us, as long as it was clear that the app wasn't an EFF-sponsored product...

Enter Stage Right: The "Cyber Czar"

Posted on May 29, 2009
This blog post appeared today in the ACSblog of the American Constitution Society. National commitment to cybersecurity is welcome, but government control of the internet is not. This morning's White House-issued cybersecurity proposals seem to recognize this distinction and are therefore vastly preferable to the Rockefeller-Snowe Cybersecurity Act introduced into Congress last month...

minilinks for 2009-05-28

Posted on May 28, 2009
Sotomayor's Cyberlaw RecordPresident Obama's nomination to the Supreme Court, Sonia Sotomayor, is the first nominee with a cyberlaw record. FCC's New Deal for Rural InternetArsTechnica reviews the FCC's Rooseveltian proposal for how to deliver broadband to the rural public...

When Fair Use Is Fairly Difficult

Posted on May 28, 2009
For years, it's been a notoriously popular internet meme to remix the "bunker scene" from the 2004 film "Downfall." In the original scene, actor Bruno Ganz portrays Adolf Hitler's ranting breakdown in the final days of the Third Reich. In the hands of internet remixers, the scene's English-language subtitles have been modified to transform it into commentary on everything from the subprime mortage crisis to breakfast theft...

EFF Launches 'Teaching Copyright' to Correct Entertainment Industry Misinformation

Posted on May 27, 2009
San Francisco - As the entertainment industry promotes its new anti-copying educational program to the nation's teachers, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) today launched its own "Teaching Copyright" curriculum and website to help educators give students the real story about their digital rights and responsibilities on the Internet and beyond...

Two New Books On Innovation Colliding With Law

Posted on May 27, 2009
We at EFF have long lamented that, too often, incumbent industry leaders use law as a weapon to quell disruptive innovators, to the detriment of competition, innovation, and the public. Here's how Larry Downes puts it in a recent Forbes interview about his forthcoming book due out in October, The Laws of Disruption: Where innovators must improve is anticipating legal challenges at the heart of their products and services...

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