Deeplinks

EFF recently won our challenge to invalidate claims of the “podcasting patent” using a procedure at the Patent Office called inter partes review. This procedure allowed us to challenge a patent that was being used to demand licenses from individual podcasters, even though EFF itself had never been threatened by the patent owner. EFF’s ability to file this petition was important because many of those targeted by the patent owner—small podcasters—would be unable to afford the $22,000 filing fees to challenge the patent, let alone the attorneys’ fees that would come along with it. Also, if an individual podcaster had filed an inter partes review it would have faced a risk of retaliation in the form of a district court lawsuit from Personal Audio.

The notice and takedown provisions of the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) provide a streamlined way for copyright owners to remove material from the Internet. Now almost two decades after the law was passed, the DMCA takedown system has proved itself to be an utter disappointment. Users are frequently outraged by false takedown notices that are issued recklessly (such as the scattershot automated notices that Total Wipes Music Group recently sent targeting websites, including EFF's) or even maliciously (such as the use of takedowns to silence political speech).

The House passed two cybersecurity "information sharing" bills today: the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence's Protecting Cyber Networks Act, and the House Homeland Security Committee's National Cybersecurity Protection Advancement Act. Both bills will be "conferenced" to create one bill and then sent to the Senate for advancement. EFF opposed both bills and has been urging users to tell Congress to vote against them.