Today, the House Judiciary Committee is holding a hearing on “remedies” in copyright law—that is, the penalties, injunctions, and other means of challenging and penalizing alleged infringement. This is hugely important: fixing copyright’s remedy provisions (like excessive, unpredictable monetary penalties and government seizures of domain names) is key to ensuring that copyright does its job—helping to encourage creativity—without unduly interfering with free speech and innovation. To help the Judiciary Committee, and to explain why fixing this part of copyright law is so important, EFF is releasing a white paper today. Collateral Damages explains how copyright’s system of “statutory damages” chills…
Author: EFFSource
In many parts of the developing world, students face barriers to access academic materials. Libraries are often inadequate, and schools and universities are often unable to pay dues for expensive, specialized databases. For these students, the Internet is a vital tool and resource to access materials that are otherwise unavailable to them. Yet despite the opportunities enabled by the Internet, there are still major risks to accessing and sharing academic resources online. A current situation in Colombia exemplifies this problem: a graduate student is facing four to eight years in prison for sharing an academic article on the Internet. He…
Yesterday, ProPublica reported on new research by a team at KU Leuven and Princeton on canvas fingerprinting. One of the most intrusive users of the technology is a company called AddThis, who by are employing it in “shadowing visitors to thousands of top websites, from WhiteHouse.gov to YouPorn.com.” Canvas fingerprinting allows sites to get even more identifying information than we had previously warned about with our Panopticlick fingerprinting experiment. Canvas fingerprinting exploits the fact that different browsers have slightly different algorithms, parameters, and hardware for turning text into pictures on your screen (or more specifically, into an HTML 5 canvas…
In the TV series Person of Interest, two government artificial intelligence programs—one gone rogue—can access virtually every surveillance camera across New York City, including privately operated ones in places like parking garages, hotels, and apartment complexes. The creators of the show try to stay one step ahead of modern technology. So the question is: do cities really create networks of interconnected private and public security cameras? Yes, they do. If you’re going to San Diego Comic-Con (and the Person of Interest team is), you’ll want to pull on your Batman mask or slather on the Sith paint if you’re passing…
More than 100,000 people will descend on San Diego Comic-Con this week, including yours truly representing the Electronic Frontier Foundation. If you’re one of the the lucky badge-holders with an interest in protecting Internet freedom, I’d love to chat with you and give you a sticker (while supplies last, obviously). Our friends at Alaska Robotics and musician Marian Call have generously offered us a spot at their table. You can find me there (#1134 in the main exhibition hall) from 2 – 3 pm on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. But EFF isn’t the only opportunity at SDCC to ponder issues…
El 10 de Julio marca un año desde que EFF y una coalición de cientos de expertos y activistas de DDHH pusieron los toques finales a los Principios Necesario y Proporcional. Estos 13 Principios articulan cómo la ley internacional de los derechos humanos se debe aplicar a la vigilancia gubernamental. Los Principios han recibido desde entonces firme apoyo en todo el mundo, impulsados parcialmente por la indignación popular ante el espionaje de la NSA, el GCHQ y otras agencias de inteligencia remarcada en los documentos filtrados por el denunciante Edward Snowden. Activistas locales y nacionales de México a Corea del…
July 10 marks one year since EFF and a coalition of hundreds of experts and human rights activists put the finishing touches on the Necessary and Proportionate Principles. These 13 Principles articulate how international human rights law should be applied to government surveillance. The Principles have since received strong support across the globe, fueled in part by the popular outrage over spying by the NSA, GCHQ and other intelligence agencies highlighted in documents leaked by whistleblower Edward Snowden. National and local activists from Mexico to South Korea to Canada to Brazil have used the Principles to push for stronger protections…
Add-On for Firefox and Chrome Prevents Spying by Ads, Social Widgets, and Hidden TrackersSan Francisco – The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has released a beta version of Privacy Badger, a browser extension for Firefox and Chrome that detects and blocks online advertising and other embedded content that tracks you without your permission. Privacy Badger was launched in an alpha version less than three months ago, and already more than 150,000 users have installed the extension. Today’s beta release includes a feature that automatically limits the tracking function of social media widgets, like the Facebook “Like” button, replacing them with a…
EFF is releasing an experimental hacker alpha release of wireless router software specifically designed to support secure, shareable Open Wireless networks. We will be officially launching the Open Wireless Router today at the HOPE X (Hackers on Planet Earth) conference in New York City, aiming to bring aboard members of the hacker community. This release is a work in progress and is intended only for developers and people willing to deal with the bleeding edge. The software aims to do several things that existing routers don’t do well—or don’t do at all. We are beginning a journey that we hope…
“What kind of data is the NSA collecting on millions, or hundreds of millions, of Americans?” That’s the question John Napier Tye, a former State Department section chief for Internet freedom, calls on the government to answer in his powerful op-ed published today by the Washington Post. In it, Tye calls the NSA’s surveillance operations abroad, conducted under Executive Order 12333, a threat to American democracy, stating that this power “authorizes collection of the content of communications, not just metadata, even for U.S. persons.” Executive Order 12333, signed by President Ronald Reagan on December 4, 1981, established rough guidelines for…