Intellectual Property Law

Destabilizing the UK's Digital Economy

Posted on December 02, 2009
Much of the coverage of the UK's proposed Digital Economy bill has centered, and rightly so, on the damaging consequences to civil liberties for Britons caused by its Internet termination provisions. Less documented is quite how damaging these regulations are for the bill's own namesake: Britain's present and future digital economy...

USA Technologies Attempts to Out Anonymous Online Critics, Runs Into New California Fee Statute

Posted on December 02, 2009
A Pennsylvania publicly-traded company has become the latest corporate entity to use the legal system in an attempt to out an anonymous online critic, and EFF is defending the critic with the help of the First Amendment as well as an important new California statute...

Senator Bayh Responds on ACTA

Posted on December 01, 2009
Senator Evan Bayh recently responded to a constituent's concerns about the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA). Sadly, Senator Bayh's letter is troubling and frustrating. He echoes the USTR's misleading conflation of "counterfeiting" and "copyright infringement," doesn't address the draconian Internet provisions, and, worst of all, fails to acknowledge the most egregious problem altogether -- that ACTA is being negotiated in secret and being hidden from Congress and the public...

Lawsuit Demands Answers About Social-Networking Surveillance

Posted on December 01, 2009
San Francisco - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), working with the Samuelson Law, Technology, and Public Policy Clinic at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law (Samuelson Clinic), filed suit today against a half-dozen government agencies for refusing to disclose their policies for using social networking sites for investigations, data-collection, and surveillance...

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Surveillance Shocker: Sprint Received 8 MILLION Law Enforcement Requests for GPS Location Data in the Past Year

Posted on December 01, 2009
This October, Chris Soghoian — computer security researcher, oft-times journalist, and current technical consultant for the FTC's privacy protection office — attended a closed-door conference called "ISS World". ISS World — the "ISS" is for "Intelligence Support Systems for Lawful Interception, Criminal Investigations and Intelligence Gathering" — is where law enforcement and intelligence agencies consult with telco representatives and surveillance equipment manufacturers about the state of electronic surveillance technology and practice...

Side A: DJs Win Laptops Back

Posted on December 01, 2009
Following a hearing in the San Francisco Superior Court today, DJs and party guests Justin Credible and Matthew Higgins had their illegally seized laptops returned to them. This is great news, and a real relief to the pair who have been without their machines for over a month...

The Xbox Live Bans: A Cautionary Tale of the TOS

Posted on November 30, 2009
"Your console has been banned." For many gaming enthusiasts, perhaps nothing is more unnerving than the prospect of losing the ability to duel with friends and strangers over the Internet for hours on end. Yet earlier this month, this fear became a reality for many Xbox owners when Microsoft banned a large number of consoles from its Xbox Live service...

The Distraction of Transparency: an ACTA News Roundup

Posted on November 24, 2009
Alerted in part by your letters and calls, Senators have begun to express concern over the secrecy and content of ACTA, while the MPAA, RIAA and other established groups rush to reassure them that ACTA — while of course they know nothing of its actual content — will be good for business and that "transparency is a distraction"...

EFF Launches New "Terms of (Ab)Use" Page

Posted on November 24, 2009
One cannot go online today without eventually being asked to accept a set of so-called Terms of Service (or TOS). Such TOS agreements have become ubiquitous to websites and other online services in the same way End User License Agreements (EULAs) have become the mainstay of the software industry...

Federal Court Partially Invalidates One of EFF Most Wanted Patents: Acacia Research Streaming Media

Posted on September 30, 2009
Ten claims from the Acacia Research Streaming Media Patent have been invalidated by the U.S.District Court for the Northern District of California. The Court invalidated the remaining claims that had been asserted in the litigation, after several others had been dropped from the suit by Acacia...

PATRIOT Act Debate Must Include Reform of Last Year's FISA Amendments Act

Posted on September 30, 2009
Today, the American Constitution Society's blog, ACSblog, was gracious enough to let EFF's Kevin Bankston guest blog about the current debate over renewal of the USA PATRIOT Act. Kevin took the opportunity to highlight the need for Congress to revisit the broad surveillance authority granted by last year's FISA Amendments Act (FAA) when it considers reforming the PATRIOT Act...

NYT: New Obama Policy on State Secrets isn't Enough; Reform by Congress is Needed

Posted on September 29, 2009
Today's New York Times included an excellent editorial on the Obama Adminstration's new policy toward the state secrets privilege. Echoing EFF's disappointment in the new procedures, the editorial explains: The other day, Attorney General Eric Holder Jr...

Prompted by EFF Lawsuit, FBI (Partially) Releases Domestic Surveillance Guidelines

Posted on September 29, 2009
The Federal Bureau of Investigation has released a heavily censored version of its controversial Domestic Investigations and Operations Guidelines (DIOG), which became effective on December 1, 2008. EFF requested public disclosure of the guidelines under the Freedom of Information Act in December and, after more than six months passed with no response, we filed suit against the Department of Justice in June 2009...

EFF Supports New Bill to Repeal Telco Immunity

Posted on September 29, 2009
Yesterday, four US Senators led by Senator Chris Dodd announced plans to introduce "The Retroactive Immunity Repeal Act". That bill, endorsed by EFF, would repeal the law that Congress passed last summer granting immunity to phone companies that illegally assist in domestic spying by US intelligence agencies, and would revive EFF?s recently dismissed lawsuit against AT&T for its collaboration in the NSA?s warrantless wiretapping program...

Cops Can't Convert Car Into Tracking Device Without Court's OK

Posted on September 29, 2009
The Supreme Court of Massachusetts recently held that officers may not place GPS tracking devices on cars without first getting a warrant. The case, Commonwealth v. Connolly, was decided under the state corollary to the Fourth Amendment, and its reasoning may influence pending GPS tracking cases, including United States v...

Reform the USA PATRIOT Act and Repeal Telco Immunity

Posted on September 28, 2009
Last week, ten US Senators introduced the perfect vehicle for reform of the surveillance powers in the PATRIOT Act, as well as the much broader and more dangerous FISA Amendments Act (FAA), the warrantless surveillance law that was passed by Congress last summer...

Hey, TI, Leave Those Kids Alone

Posted on September 26, 2009
Graphing calculators have long inspired geeks in remarkable ways. But, sadly, rather than celebrating the hobbyists that love their programmable calculators, Texas Instruments has set the lawyers loose on them, invoking the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA)...

You Bought It, You Own It: MDY v. Blizzard Appealed

Posted on September 25, 2009
When you buy World of Warcraft (WoW) in a retail box, do you own the copy of the software you bought? That's the critical legal question facing the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in a pending appeal in MDY v. Blizzard, and the question that Public Knowledge took on in an excellent amicus brief filed with the court earlier this week...

Obama?s Disappointing State Secrets Procedures

Posted on September 24, 2009
After months of internal review, the Obama Administration today announced a new policy on the use of the state secrets privilege. The state secrets privilege traditionally allows the government to withdraw particular pieces of evidence from a court case on the grounds that the evidence would reveal sensitive classified information...

EFF Wins Release of Telecom Lobbying Records

Posted on September 24, 2009
San Francisco - A judge ordered the government Thursday to release more records about the lobbying campaign to provide immunity to the telecommunications giants that participated in the NSA's warrantless surveillance program. U.S. District Judge Jeffrey S...

PATRIOT Debate Round-Up: Dems Press Obama for Reforms; Leahy Bill a Good Start But Doesn't Stack Up to Last Week's JUSTICE Bill

Posted on September 24, 2009
Following last week's introduction by Senators Feingold and Durbin of the JUSTICE Act bill, the debate over renewal and reform of the USA PATRIOT Act kicked into over-drive this week with a second bill introduced in the Senate and hearings in both the House and Senate...

How online tracking companies know most of what you do online (and what social networks are doing to help them)

Posted on September 22, 2009
This post is Part 2 of a series on user tracking on the web today. You can read Part 1 here. 3rd party advertising and tracking firms are ubiquitous on the modern web. When you visit a webpage, there's a good chance that it contains tiny images or invisible javascript that exists for the sole purpose of tracking and recording your browsing habits...

Book Review: Bill Patry's Moral Panics and the Copyright Wars

Posted on September 22, 2009
Bill Patry is widely regarded as one of the leading copyright law experts in the United States. For the past several years, moreover, he's been Senior Copyright Counsel at Google. Yet somehow he's found the time to write a book, too, Moral Panics and the Copyright Wars, which was published earlier this month...

Google Releases Complete Google Voice App FCC Response

Posted on September 18, 2009
Today, recognizing pending FOIA requests by EFF and Wired News, Google dropped its claim of confidentiality and paved the way for the FCC to release the full text of its explanation of Apple's rejection of the Google Voice iPhone app. As we've reported previously, the FCC is investigating Apple's rejection of the Google Voice iPhone app from Apple's iPhone App Store...

RIAA Asks Schoolkids To Assist With Propaganda

Posted on September 17, 2009
Last week, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) announced an update to Music-Rules!, its flagship "curriculum" for teaching copyright law to schoolkids. We wrote about Music-Rules! and similar industry propaganda efforts in May, outlining some of their falsehoods and biases...

UMG v. Veoh: Big Win for Online Video

Posted on September 17, 2009
Earlier this week, a federal court in Los Angeles ruled that Veoh, an online video hosting service similar to YouTube, qualifies for a DMCA safe harbor that protects the service from monetary damages for copyright infringements committed by its users...

Ninth Circuit Holds Disloyal Computer Use Is Not A Crime

Posted on September 17, 2009
Are employees who use their workplace computers contrary to the interests of their employers criminals under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act? Yesterday, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals said disloyal keyboarding is not a crime in LVRC Holdings v. Brekka...

EFF Supports JUSTICE Bill to Reform the USA PATRIOT Act and Repeal Telecom Immunity

Posted on September 17, 2009
On December 31, three provisions of the USA PATRIOT Act that broadly expanded government surveillance authority in the wake of 9/11 are set to expire.1 The Obama Administration made clear in a letter this week to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy that although the Justice Department supports reauthorization of those provisions, it is also open to discussing modifications to the law ?to provide additional protection for the privacy of law abiding Americans...

Protect Your Privacy Rights

Posted on September 16, 2009
When the Internet helped foster nationwide protests in Iran, EFF published a new international edition of our Surveillance Self-Defense guide, explaining how dissidents could avoid government eavesdropping and censorship. Google's new Book Search service will track everything you read, creating a dossier that's ripe for abusive government demands...

License to Kill Innovation: the Broadcast Flag for UK Digital TV?

Posted on September 15, 2009
The British MP Tom Watson has highlighted a digital TV consultation by UK regulator Ofcom, held in response to an inquiry from the BBC (the consultation deadline is this Wednesday): The BBC has indicated that third party content owners are seeking to ensure that reception equipment will implement ...

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