Deeplinks

Padmapper and 3Taps ended their three-year legal fight with craigslist on Monday, agreeing to stop using classified ad data from craigslist on their own sites. 3Taps has also agreed to pay craigslist $1 million on the condition that craigslist donate the money to EFF. While we’re pleased to receive a donation that will help us continue our mission of defending civil liberties online, we’re disappointed that the court won’t be affirming Padmapper and 3Taps’ right to use data from craigslist postings—data that can’t be copyrighted—to create innovative new tools.

Sadly, today the U.S. Supreme Court refused to review the Federal Circuit’s dangerous decision in Oracle v. Google. Oracle claims a copyright on the Java Application Programming Interface (API), and that Google infringed that copyright by using certain Java APIs in the Android OS. The Federal Circuit had ruled in Oracle’s favor, reversing a well-reasoned district court opinion holding that the APIs in question were not subject to copyright. Google had asked the Supreme Court to review the Federal Circuit decision.

EFF has long condemned the Vietnamese government's crackdown on bloggers, including the imprisonment of high-profile blogger and activist Le Quoc Quan. Our support for freedom of expression in Vietnam has even earned us the attention of the Vietnamese government, which attempted to compromise our employees' computers by sending them links to malware. We are pleased to anticipate Quan's imminent release from prison on June 27, though we are sad to note that Quan owes his release not to a change of heart on the part of the Vietnamese government, but the fact that he has served the full term of his 30-month prison sentence related to politically-motivated charges of tax evasion.