Deeplinks
There’s a battle taking place over the future of academic publishing, but the impact that battle will have on the world is anything but academic. The stakes are high, and there are real casualties.
Hay una batalla que está ocurriendo sobre el futuro de las publicaciones académicas, pero el impacto que este combate tendrá en el mundo será cualquier cosa menos académico. Los riesgos son altos, y hay víctimas reales.
The House of Commons Science and Tech Committee has published its report on the draft Investigatory Powers Bill, influenced by comments submitted by 50 individuals, companies, and organizations, including EFF. The report is the first of three investigations by different Parliamentary committees. While it was intended to concentrate on the technological and business ramifications of the bill, their conclusions reflect the key concern of lawmakers, companies, and human rights groups about the bill’s dangerously vague wording.
Top officials of countries involved in the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) are convening in New Zealand today to sign the final agreement. But really this ceremony is just a formality. We knew since November, from the day they announced a completed deal and made the text public shortly thereafter, that they would do this. These officials have not been accountable to the public. They have remained steadfast in excluding public participation and ignoring all calls for transparency over the more than five years of TPP negotiations. Because of this opaque process, trade negotiators were able to fill the agreement with Hollywood and Big Tech's wish lists of regulatory policies without having to worry about how they would impact the Internet or people's rights over their digital devices.
Should a company be allowed to use its own contractual fine print to take away its customers’ free speech? What fundamental rights should not be waivable?
We’ve written in the past about companies putting clauses in their form contracts that ostensibly forbid customers from posting online reviews of those companies’ products and services. Members of the Maryland House of Delegates have introduced a bill (MD H.B. 131) seeking to end the practice in Maryland. The bill’s sponsors are Dels. Jeff Waldstreicher, David Moon, Benjamin Kramer, and C.T. Wilson.
Altos funcionarios de los países que participan del Tratado Trans-Pacífico (TPP en inglés) se han convocado en Nueva Zelanda esta semana para firmar el acuerdo final. Pero en realidad esta ceremonia es simplemente una formalidad. Desde noviembre del año pasado, desde el día que anunciaron un acuerdo concluido e hicieron público el texto un poco después, sabíamos que iban a hacer ésto. Los funcionarios de comercio no han rendido cuentas al público. Ellos se mantuvieron firmes excluyendo la participación pública y haciendo caso omiso a todos los pedidos de transparencia en los más de cinco años de negociaciones del TPP.
Behind the Western-supported government of President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi’s lies a troubling trend threatening free speech in Egypt. CPJ’s latest figures list Egypt as the second highest jailer of journalists, second only to China. According to the organization’s 2015 prison census, 82% of all journalists in prison in Egypt used the Internet as a medium.
Who is a Mormon? This is a fundamental question of self-identity, religion, and even Wikipedia. One would think, however, that that answer would not be found in trademark law.
Intellectual Reserve, Inc. (IRI), which owns and manages the trademarks of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints has made a series of trademark claims against small startups and organizations using the term “Mormon” in their names and URLs, including our client, the Mormon Mental Health Association (MMHA).
We first heard of IRI making claims to own the word “Mormon” when they got into a legal dispute with a company called “Mormon Match.” IRI claimed that both the company name and the associated URL infringed on IRI’s trademarks in the terms “Mormon” and “Mormon.org” (among others).
This morning, the White House announced an Executive Order establishing a federal interagency privacy council composed of senior privacy officials from two dozen federal agencies. While seeming to offer some promise, however, the council has a limited mandate, and ultimately represents an overdue nod to privacy principles the administration has repeatedly abused in practice.
If the Obama administration wants to support privacy, it can start by finally offering straight answers to Congress on surveillance and intelligence practices that offend privacy. Instead, Congress has legislated surveillance policy in the dark while enduring a long series of executive misrepresentations.
The companies and organizations that run the Internet’s domain name system shouldn’t be in the business of policing the contents of websites, or enforcing laws that can impinge on free speech. The staff of ICANN, the organization that oversees that system, agrees. That’s why it’s not surprising that the Motion Picture Association of America, which has consistently sought power to edit the Internet, is now bypassing ICANN and making private deals with domain name registries.
The California Department of Justice (CADOJ) is ending its practice of holding meetings in ways that impede the public's ability to meaningfully participate in oversight of the state's sprawling network of police databases. The new reforms, announced in response to EFF advocacy, will allow greater opportunity for Californians to review and comment on policy changes that impact their privacy and civil liberties.
Remembering One of the Original Constitutional Challenges to the CDA
Clinton Fein is South African born artist, writer, activist & social media strategist, best known for his Torture exhibition—photographic reenactments based on the notorious images from Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq—and his First Amendment victories. Fein resides in San Francisco and Palm Springs. This article is a first person account and does not necessarily represent the views of EFF.
A “notice” slapped on the outside of a package saying “single use only” continues to ensure a manufacturer selling you the product can sue for patent infringement should someone dare reuse its goods. This is what the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit held on Friday, reaffirming its previous case law, despite intervening Supreme Court law and compelling arguments against its earlier case law.
The issue is one of “patent exhaustion.” This is the patent law version of “first sale,” the doctrine in copyright law that says that once a consumer buys a copy of a work, she owns it, and can do what she wants with that copy. Patent law is similar. Once a patent owner sells a product, it cannot later claim its use is infringing.
We learned on Tuesday evening that a U.S. federal magistrate judge ordered Apple to backdoor an iPhone that was used by one of the perpetrators of the San Bernardino shootings in December. Apple is fighting the order which would compromise the security of all its users around the world.
Laura Poitras—the Academy and Pulitzer Prize Award-winning documentary filmmaker behind CITIZENFOUR—has a brand new show at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City. EFF is currently representing Poitras in a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit, and some of the documents disclosed in the course of that lawsuit are on display as part of the exhibit, Laura Poitras: Astro Noise.
Update February 19, 2016: The Senate bill has been amended to preserve attorneys fees. The compromise allows a judge to withhold fees if the records request "was made primarily to harass the agency or cause a violation of this chapter." [.pdf] This is a significant improvement, but at this stage EFF has not withdrawn its opposition.
Florida’s “Sunshine Law” is widely regarded as one of the best state-level open records laws in the nation. Unfortunately, the Florida legislature is now trying to eliminate one of the key components—a measure allowing successful plaintiffs in public records lawsuits to recover attorney’s fees. Currently, reimbursement is mandatory when the plaintiff prevails, but the proposed law would make this a discretionary choice by the judge.
When the text of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) was first released in November last year, it included provisions dictating the kinds of penalties that should be available in cases of copyright infringement. Amongst those provisions, the following footnote allowed countries some flexibility in applying criminal procedures and penalties to cases of willful copyright infringement on a commercial scale:
With regard to copyright and related rights piracy provided for under paragraph 1, a Party may limit application of this paragraph to the cases in which there is an impact on the right holder’s ability to exploit the work, performance or phonogram in the market.
Zero-rating has become the bleeding edge of the net neutrality debate. India recently decided to reject zero-rating plans such as Facebook's Free Basics, while in the United States carriers push boundaries with zero-rating experiments such as T-Mobile's Binge-On plan (which led to a public spat with EFF over our criticism of the service, for which Legere has since apologized), as well as AT&T's Sponsored Data, Verizon's FreeBee, and Comcast's Stream TV.
Imagine traveling back to 1996 in a typical American living room. What's changed? The TV is three feet thick and weighs 150 pounds. There’s a VHS videocassette recorder underneath, but no Internet-connected devices to be seen.
Now, what hasn't changed?
The cable or satellite tuner box. It’s a black or grey plastic slab. You have to lease it from your pay-TV provider for a monthly fee. It doesn’t add much functionality to your living room setup, except that your TV subscription doesn’t work without it.
We’ve seen a technological revolution but one thing hasn’t changed: whether it’s 1996 or 2016, the cable and satellite companies have kept their monopoly on set-top boxes. Lack of competition keeps those boxes feature-poor, electricity-hungry, and expensive – users pay an average of $231 per year in rental fees.
The White House has submitted two copyright treaties to the Senate for ratification: the Marrakesh Treaty, which would improve access to copyrighted works for people with visual and print disabilities; and the Beijing Treaty, which could create a new layer of monopoly rights for the creators of audiovisual works. International copyright treaties move slowly, so neither of these is a surprise. For years now, we've encouraged the adoption of Marrakesh and the rejection of Beijing.
The Board of Supervisors of Santa Clara County, a jurisdiction in central California, is currently weighing a series of local surveillance reforms that could establish a model for other counties and municipalities. At a hearing last Thursday—one of many so far—I spoke in support of the proposed ordinance and submitted a letter with suggested amendments.
The First Amendment guarantees that even patent owners are subject to the slings and arrows of public criticism. Today EFF has submitted a motion and amicus brief asking the court to reject a patent owner’s attempt to silence criticism of its lawsuit.
The story begins last October when a company called Global Archery Products filed a lawsuit against Jordan Gwyther. Global Archery accused Gwyther of infringing its trademark on ‘Archery Tag’ and of infringing two patents on foam-tipped arrows. Gwyther sells arrows to the live action role playing (LARP) community.
Anyone familiar with the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) may find that it can be challenging to explain to others, in simple terms, how it threatens our rights online and over our digital devices.
EFF is filing public comments on a series of studies initiated by the U.S. Copyright Office, and we need your help. One of the studies focuses on the notice-and takedown procedures outlined in section 512 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). We'd like to hear from you about your experience with those procedures, and the policies and practices that platforms have implemented to comply with them.
(Traducción de David Bogado y Katitza Rodríguez)
The legal dispute between Apple and the FBI might prove pivotal in the long-running battle to protect users' privacy and right to use uncompromised encryption. The case has captured the public imagination. Of course, EFF supports Apple's efforts to protect its users.
The case is complicated technically, and there is a lot of misinformation and speculation. This post will offer a technical overview, based on information gleaned from the FBI's court motion and Apple's security documentation.
We won a groundbreaking legal victory late Friday in our Jewel v. NSA case, which challenges the NSA’s Internet and telephone surveillance. Judge Jeffrey White has authorized EFF, on behalf of the plaintiffs, to conduct discovery against the NSA. We had been barred from doing so since the case was filed in 2008, which meant that the government was able to prevent us from requesting important information about how these programs worked.
This week's order by a federal magistrate judge requiring Apple to engineer new security flaws in its iPhone software operating system has prompted widespread and escalating controversy. Legitimate concerns about its implications have driven users around the country to raise their voices in defense of not only their privacy, but also the security of their online platforms threatened by the FBI's demands.
EFF has spent years battling the undemocratic Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP); not because we are against free trade, but because we fear that the undue influence that vested interests have over the United States Trade Representative (USTR). In turn, the USTR exercises its own influence over foreign policymakers, ultimately resulting in punishingly strict copyright rules and ham-fisted digital policies sweeping the globe. These concerns have been fully validated with the belated release of the final text of the agreement.
Update February 29, 2016: EFF has received confirmation that Chelsea Manning received the print-outs we sent directly. However, the U.S. Army has not responded to our correspondence.
EFF was dismayed to learn last week that the U.S. Disciplinary Barracks (USDB) at Fort Leavenworth has refused to provide inmate Chelsea Manning with printouts of EFF blog posts and other materials related to prisoner censorship. Worse yet, it appears that the reason is ostensibly to protect EFF’s copyrights.
Twenty years ago, large chunks of the Web went dark. These sites were changing their layout, or in some cases even going offline, to protest the Communications Decency Act, signed on February 8 by President Bill Clinton as Title V of the landmark Telecommunication Act. By some estimates, more than 5% of sites online on the early Web took part.
The Communications Decency Act (CDA) was embroiled in controversy: as a direct response to the new law, EFF co-founder John Perry Barlow wrote his influential Declaration of Independence of Cyberspace; EFF kicked off the Blue Ribbon Online Free Speech campaign that became one of the most iconic images of online activism of the era.
The news has been flooded with reactions to Apple’s principled stance in defense of user privacy. But even as Apple opposes the FBI's demands to undermine the security of its operating system, where is President Obama on the issue of strong encryption?
On Wednesday, the President's press secretary said that "the F.B.I. can count on the full support of the White House." Does that mean President Obama is going to turn his back on strong security for modern tech?
EFF, Fight for the Future, and Encryption Supporters Protest Outside the San Francisco Apple Store
Dozens of people gathered at the Apple Store in San Francisco this evening to shout their support for the company's position defending privacy and security in the face of irresponsible government demands.
Organized as part of a day of action including events in Boston, New York City, Washington, D.C, and Southern California, the rally in San Francisco was the second in a single week responding to the FBI's latest demands to expand its authority.
At the beginning of the year, the City of Kyle, Texas, approved a controversial agreement to install automated license plate recognition (ALPR) technology in its police vehicles. The devices would come at no cost to the city’s budget; instead, police would also be outfitted with credit card readers and use ALPR to catch drivers with outstanding court fees, also known as capias warrants.
With each card swipe, an added 25% surcharge would go to Vigilant Solutions, the company providing the system. As an added bonus the company would also get to keep all the data on innocent drivers collected by the license plate readers—indefinitely.
Protecting Fair Use from the Trans-Pacific Partnership
Copyright is too often used to stifle speech and restrict common sense uses of creative works, from books, to films, textbooks, images, and music. That's why we need exceptions and limitations to copyright, to serve as a safety valve against these kinds of abuse. Fair use is the most robust framework to permit uses of copyrighted material without permission from the creator or rightsholders. The United States is particularly known for having a strong, court-tested fair use regime, enabling all kinds of uses and innovation to thrive on the Internet.
Does your business follow copyright law to the best of its ability? Not good enough. At least that was the case for one long-standing peer-to-peer network, which had its payment processing shut down after more than 14 years of being a loyal PayPal customer.
Soulseek, a peer-to-peer file-sharing network, faced a Kafkaesque battle with PayPal. When its donors were cut off from making payments to Soulseek, the network struggled to figure out what it had done wrong—or even get a response from PayPal to its questions. Thankfully, Soulseek reached out to EFF. We got in touch with Paypal and helped convince them to reinstate the network.
The FBI's demand that Apple craft new software to bypass iOS's security protections has ignited a worldwide debate about a government's ability to force tech companies to sabotage their own security. One repeated question has been: will other countries, like China, demand the same powers?
Today EFF filed our response brief in the appeal of our successful challenge to Personal Audio’s podcasting patent. Back in April 2015, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) ruled in our favor and invalidated all of the patent claims we challenged. Personal Audio appealed this decision to the Federal Circuit.
On Thursday, Apple filed its motion to vacate last week's controversial judicial order requiring it to undermine device security for its iOS operating system. The company's filing explains in compelling and forceful terms not only how the government demands to which it responds would undermine national security and place millions of people at risk, but also why the FBI has chosen an inappropriate process through which to seek a groundbreaking new power that Congress has sensibly never granted.
Copyright Bots Aren’t Always Bad, But They Shouldn’t Be in Charge
In 2007, Google built Content ID, a technology that lets rightsholders submit large databases of video and audio fingerprints and have YouTube continually scan new uploads for potential matches to those fingerprints. Since then, a handful of other user-generated content platforms have implemented copyright bots of their own that scan uploads for potential matches.
Apple is holding its annual shareholders meeting this morning at its headquarters in Cupertino, California. Unsurprisingly, the big topic of the day was Apple's defense of its users as it fights the FBI's unreasonable demands to break an iPhone's encryption. CNET reported that Apple's CEO, Tim Cook, was greeted with a standing ovation, and he assured the crowd that his company was not scared of the upcoming courtroom battle. Also attending this morning's meeting was EFF's Executive Director Cindy Cohn, who made the following statement during the question and answer period:
The right to an anonymous vote is a cornerstone of the U.S. democratic process. Yet from the time until you walk into the voting booth until long, long after you cast your ballot, your personal information is a highly sought-after commodity. Often your name, contact details, and political leanings are frighteningly easy for political campaigns to access, collect, share, trade, and sell.
This month, we feature another yet another patent that takes an ordinary business practice and does it on a computer. Our winner is US Patent No. 8,738,435, titled “Method and apparatus for presenting personalized content relating to offered products and services.” As you might guess from its title, the patent claims the idea of sending a personalized marketing message using a computer.
Now Can We Please Just Stop Trying to Ban Software?
Apple cannot be compelled to bypass the lock screen on an iPhone seized by the government in a New York drug case, according an order issued today by magistrate Judge James Orenstein. It’s a significant rejection of the government's interpretation of the All Writs Act, which prosecutors have advanced in multiple jurisdictions across the country—most prominently, in connection with a locked iPhone 5c that once belonged to one of the San Bernardino shooters. Today's order comes just three days before amicus briefs will be submitted in the California case, and weeks before oral arguments are set to take place.
Deeplinks Topics
- Fair Use and Intellectual Property: Defending the Balance
- Free Speech
- Innovation
- International
- Know Your Rights
- Privacy
- Trade Agreements and Digital Rights
- Security
- State-Sponsored Malware
- Abortion Reporting
- Analog Hole
- Anonymity
- Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement
- Biometrics
- Bloggers' Rights
- Broadcast Flag
- Broadcasting Treaty
- CALEA
- Cell Tracking
- Coders' Rights Project
- Computer Fraud And Abuse Act Reform
- Content Blocking
- Copyright Trolls
- Council of Europe
- Cyber Security Legislation
- CyberSLAPP
- Defend Your Right to Repair!
- Development Agenda
- Digital Books
- Digital Radio
- Digital Video
- DMCA
- DMCA Rulemaking
- Do Not Track
- DRM
- E-Voting Rights
- EFF Europe
- Encrypting the Web
- Export Controls
- FAQs for Lodsys Targets
- File Sharing
- Fixing Copyright? The 2013-2016 Copyright Review Process
- FTAA
- Genetic Information Privacy
- Hollywood v. DVD
- How Patents Hinder Innovation (Graphic)
- ICANN
- International Privacy Standards
- Internet Governance Forum
- Law Enforcement Access
- Legislative Solutions for Patent Reform
- Locational Privacy
- Mandatory Data Retention
- Mandatory National IDs and Biometric Databases
- Mass Surveillance Technologies
- Medical Privacy
- National Security and Medical Information
- National Security Letters
- Net Neutrality
- No Downtime for Free Speech
- NSA Spying
- OECD
- Offline : Imprisoned Bloggers and Technologists
- Online Behavioral Tracking
- Open Access
- Open Wireless
- Patent Busting Project
- Patent Trolls
- Patents
- PATRIOT Act
- Pen Trap
- Policy Analysis
- Printers
- Public Health Reporting and Hospital Discharge Data
- Reading Accessibility
- Real ID
- RFID
- Search Engines
- Search Incident to Arrest
- Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act
- Social Networks
- SOPA/PIPA: Internet Blacklist Legislation
- Student and Community Organizing
- Student Privacy
- Stupid Patent of the Month
- Surveillance and Human Rights
- Surveillance Drones
- Terms Of (Ab)Use
- Test Your ISP
- The "Six Strikes" Copyright Surveillance Machine
- The Global Network Initiative
- The Law and Medical Privacy
- TPP's Copyright Trap
- Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement
- Travel Screening
- TRIPS
- Trusted Computing
- Video Games
- Wikileaks
- WIPO
- Transparency
- Uncategorized
eff.org/nsa-spying
