Copyright Holders Can’t Abuse Legal System to Pressure Thousands of Internet Users to Pay Unfair SettlementsWashington, D.C. – Striking a crushing blow against a legal linchpin of the copyright troll business model, a federal appeals court held today that copyright holders may not abuse the legal process to obtain the identities of thousands of Internet users. “This decision is a crucial victory,” said Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) Intellectual Property Director Corynne McSherry. “We are thrilled that a higher court has recognized that it is unfair to sue thousands of people at once, in a court far from home, based on…
Author: EFFSource
The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) is an organisation of 34 developed-country governments that work together to promote economic progress and trade through information sharing and research. This week it turned its attention to copyright, patents and other forms of so-called intellectual property, at a workshop on “Society’s Gain from the Intellectual Property Exchange.” EFF attended as an invited expert. The premise of this workshop, which forms part of a broader horizontal program of the OECD on New Sources of Growth: Knowledge-based Capital, is that copyright and other forms of intellectual property are part of a social bargain…
Every day cafes, airports, libraries, laundromats, schools and individuals operate “open” Wi-Fi routers, sharing their connection with neighbors and passers-by at no charge. The City of San Francisco recently deployed a free, public Wi-Fi network along a three-mile stretch of Market Street. Sometimes people use those connections for unauthorized activities. Most of the time they don’t, and the world gets a valuable public service of simple, ubiquitous Internet access. At EFF, we are big fans of open wireless. But we also know that operators of open networks sometimes worry that they could be legally responsible if people use their networks…
June 5, 2013 was when the world heard from Snowden. This year, it’s your turn to speak out. On June 5th, 2013 the Guardian newspaper published the first of Edward Snowden’s astounding revelations. The secret court order that conclusively showed that the US government was collecting the phone records of millions of innocent Verizon customers. It was the first of a continuous stream of stories that pointed out what we’ve suspected for a long time: that the world’s digital communications are being continuously spied upon by nation states with precious little oversight. A year later, we’re still learning about operations conducted…
Finally, some good news from Congress this week. Patent and surveillance reform may be suffering setbacks, but open access may be recovering thanks to a new provision passed yesterday that mandates a solid public access policy for NASA, NSF, NIST, the National Weather Service, and the Office of Science of the Department of Energy. The House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology marked up H.R. 4186, the Frontiers in Innovation, Research, Science and Technology (FIRST) Act. This science funding bill was controversial for a number of reasons, but we have been focused on one part: Section 303, dealing with public…
EFF and Public Knowledge have submitted comments to the Copyright Office, urging it to clarify the legality of using so-called “orphan works”—works that may or may not still be restricted by copyright, but for which the rightsholder is difficult or impossible to identify and locate. The orphan works problem has been widely recognized, and as we note in the comments, there is a clear consensus that the public needs more access to these sorts of books, photographs, films, and other materials. As we explain, the best way to facilitate that access is to make sure the public can rely on…
EFF is proud to participate in the launch of a new guide to alternative patent licensing. The guide was prepared by the Juelsgaard Intellectual Property & Innovation Clinic at Stanford Law School in partnership with EFF, Engine, and the Open Invention Network (OIN). Written by Stanford students Marta Belcher and John Casey, the guide provides a high-level overview of defensive patent aggregators and defensive patent licenses. We hope it will be a useful starting place for companies trying to navigate the patent landscape. Generally speaking, defensive aggregators use the pooled resources of member companies to purchase patents that may otherwise…
In 2012, when Twitter announced in a blog post that it was launching a system that would allow the company to take down content on a country-by-country basis—as opposed to taking it down across the entire Twitter network—EFF defended that decision as the least terrible option. After all, when a company refuses to comply with an official government request, the government’s response is often to block an entire platform. We pointed out that companies cannot be compelled to follow court orders from countries where they do not have significant assets or employees. As a result, we could expect that Twitter…
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has put police on notice: an automatic license plate reader (ALPR) alert, without human verification, is not enough to pull someone over. Last week, the appellate court issued an important opinion in Green v. City & County of San Francisco, a civil rights lawsuit that calls into question whether technology alone can provide the basis for reasonable suspicion under the Fourth Amendment. The panel overturned a lower court ruling in favor of San Francisco and its police department, allowing the case to go to trial. A case of computer error Late one night in…
Patent reform suffered a massive setback today when Senator Patrick Leahy, as chair of the Judiciary Committee, announced that he is taking patent reform “off the agenda.” We understand that other senators—particularly Sens. Chuck Schumer and John Cornyn—were still working hard to reach a bipartisan deal. Just as they were ready to release a new bill, Leahy stepped in to kill the process. The Senate’s failure is especially galling given that the House overwhelming passed the Innovation Act in December. The strong patent reform bill passed with a 325-91 vote that included a majority of both Republicans and Democrats. Meanwhile,…