In the latest example of a troubling trend in which companies play the role of law enforcement and moral police, Chase Bank has shut down the personal bank accounts of hundreds of adult entertainers. We’ve written before about the dire consequences to online speech when service providers start acting like content police. These same consequences are applicable when financial services make decisions about to whom they provide services. Just as ISPs and search engines can become weak links for digital speech, too often financial service providers are pressured by the government to shut down speech or punish speakers who would…
Author: EFFSource
Lately it seems every day has a big new patent story. Yesterday, the Supreme Court heard argument in an important case about the problem of vague and ambiguous patents. Today, the Court issued twin rulings, in Octane and Highmark, that will make it easier for defendants in patent cases to get attorney’s fees. This decision is bad news for patent trolls who bring weak cases and use the high cost of defense to extort settlements. While it’s a step in the right direction, we hope it will be followed by broader legislative reform curbing patent troll abuse. Today’s unanimous opinions…
Twenty-three governments have come together this week for the 4th annual Freedom Online Coalition (FOC) conference in Tallinn, Estonia—a meeting where FOC members work together to “coordinate their diplomatic efforts and engage with civil society” in order to advance Internet freedom worldwide. The United States and the United Kingdom are both members of the FOC—meaning they’ve committed to protecting human rights and freedom online. However, when former US National Security Agency (NSA) contractor, Edward Snowden, disclosed the purported mass surveillance capabilities of the NSA and the United Kingdom’s Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), it left civil society wondering how these two…
Patent reform language floated around the Hill last week while Congress was on recess. A recent draft included a retroactive effective date of April 24, 2014. While final phrasing for the upcoming Senate patent bill isn’t known, rumors of this start date were enough to spur action: on Wednesday, April 23—a day before reforms would presumably come into effect—trolls filed a total of 184 lawsuits against businesses big and small. Clearly, the proposed reforms have patent trolls shaking in their boots. But in order for these changes to actually pass, the Senate needs to hear from you—you the user, you…
Six Ethiopian bloggers, all members of the Zone Nine bloggers’ collective, were arrested this weekend. Befekadu Hailu, Atnaf Berahane, Natnael Feleke, Mahlet Fantahun, Zelalem Kibret, and Abel Wabela were reportedly arrested in the streets or in their offices. According to a report by Human Rights Watch, police also searched their homes and confiscated private laptops and literature. After being held incommunicado in Maekelawi, a detention center in Addis Ababa, all six bloggers appeared before the Federal First Instance Court First Criminal Bench in Arada, where they were charged with “Working with foreign organizations that claim to be human rights activists…
Here’s what the Deputy Solicitor General of the United States had to say during Tuesday’s Aereo Supreme Court argument when asked directly whether a ruling might throw the United States out of line with international agreements: We haven’t made that argument. We we believe that existing U.S. copyright law properly construed is fully sufficient to comply with our international obligations. But that that doesn’t mean that we think that whenever a court misconstrues the statute, we will automatically be thrown into breach. It’s certainly possible. But if this case were decided in Aereo’s favor that some of our…
Today, April 26, is the day marked each year since 2000 as “Intellectual Property Day” by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). There are many areas where EFF has not historically agreed with WIPO, which has traditionally pushed for more restrictive agreements and served as a venue for domestic policy laundering, but we agree that celebrating creativity is a good thing. As the saying goes, though: when you’re a hammer, everything looks like a nail. For the World Intellectual Property Organization, it may seem like creativity and “intellectual property” are inextricably linked. That’s not the case. In the spirit of…
President Obama is on a diplomatic tour of Asia this week and one of his top priorities is the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a trade agreement that includes restrictive copyright enforcement measures that pose a huge threat to users’ rights and a free and open Internet. In particular, he’s seeking to resolve some major policy disagreements with Japan and Malaysia—the two countries that have maintained resistance against some provisions in the TPP involving agriculture and other commodities. Despite some reports of movement on some of the most controversial topics during meetings between Obama and Japanese Prime Minister Abe, it seems that…
EFF has been on the road, traveling to cities and towns across the country to bring our message of digital rights and reform to community and student groups. And while we had the tremendous opportunity to talk about our work and our two lawsuits against the NSA, the best part of the trip was learning about all of the inspiring and transformative activism happening everyday on the local level to combat government surveillance and defend our digital rights. We met students and professors in Eugene, Oregon who held a campus-wide digital rights event at the University of Oregon. There, students…
At the start of her opening address to the NETmundial conference in Sao Paolo this Tuesday, Brazil’s President Dilma Rousseff ceremonially signed the Marco Civil, Brazil’s long fought-for Internet Bill of Rights, into law. Even as she did so, activists from the floor below waved Ed Snowden masks and banners protested the bill’s inclusion of a data retention mandate. It was a prefiguration of the battle between high hopes, user rights, anti-surveillance activism, and the forces of compromise that would take place in this forum over the next two days. Over a thousand delegates, from advocacy groups like EFF, companies…