Deeplinks
EFF is encouraging Canadians to join together tomorrow for a day of action against a dangerous bill that’s navigating through the Canadian legislature and threatening to strip its citizens of their rights to privacy and freedom of expression.
Bill C-51, the Anti-Terrorism Act, 2015, introduces a wide range of sweeping changes to how the Canadian government handles its national security and anti-terrorism efforts. The bill just passed its second reading in the conservative-led House of Commons in late February and the government is now hastily rushing to pass it with less than two weeks of debate.
Today, the FCC published its new order [PDF] on net neutrality. As promised, the rules start by putting net neutrality on the right legal footing, which means they have a much stronger chance of surviving the inevitable legal challenge. This is the culmination of years of work by public interest advocates and a massive outpouring of public support over the past year. Make no mistake, this is a win for Team Internet!
Now, what about the rules themselves? We’re still reviewing, but there’s much to appreciate, including bright line rules against blocking, throttling, and paid prioritization of Internet traffic. For example, an ISP cannot degrade customers’ access to services that compete with its own offerings and cannot charge tolls to privilege traffic from one web service over others.
Yesterday, a jury found that the 2013 song "Blurred Lines" was an infringement of Marvin Gaye's "Got to Give It Up" composition from 1977. Following the 7-million-dollar verdict, professional musicians are waking up to a fact that ordinary Internet users have long known: our overbearing copyright laws are a threat to creativity.
Numerous musicians are expressing disbelief at the verdict, seeing little similarity between the two songs aside from a general "feel" or "vibe." According to the LA Times:
Los Angeles composer and producer Gregory Butler said Tuesday afternoon that his friends and colleagues in the industry were stunned by the verdict.
The Federal Communications Commission voted 3-2 in favor of net neutrality rules last month, and we expect the final version of rules to be released shortly. From all reports, it sounds like the rules generally track what we (and four million Americans!) have been urging over the past year. But the incumbent ISPs are working hard to seed fear, uncertainty, and doubt about what the FCC's up to. Let's cut through some of the nonsense.
EFF, the Center for Democracy & Technology, and Professor Eric Goldman from Santa Clara University School of Law filed an amicus brief in a Massachusetts federal trial court highlighting the importance of interpreting Section 230 (47 U.S.C. § 230) broadly to shield websites and other Internet intermediaries from liability for illegal content posted by their users.
Apple, that’s who. Or Microsoft, or any of the other vendors whose products US government contractors have successfully exploited according to a recent report in the Intercept. While we’re not surprised that the Intelligence Community is actively attempting to develop new spycraft tools and capabilities—that’s their job—we expect them to follow the administration’s rules of engagement. Those rules require an evaluation under what’s known as the “Vulnerabilities Equities Process.” In the White House’s own words, the process should usually result in disclosing software vulnerabilities to vendors, because “in the majority of cases, responsibly disclosing a newly discovered vulnerability is clearly in the national interest.”
Cyber, Cyber, Cyber. The word makes most technical people cringe but it’s all the rage right now in DC and other policy circles. The rallying calls are now familiar and the central pitch is that private entities and networks—the buzzword is “critical infrastructure”—should be strongly incentivized to “share” information with the government. In other words, providers should surrender more of their and their customers’ privacy. There’s much danger there and EFF continues to sound the alarm.
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