In The News
Will secret copyright treaty restrict digital rights?
By Jeff Porten, Computerworld
The Electronic Frontier Foundation received a copy with 159 pages intact, but an additional 1,362 pages redacted with the claim that the contents were crucial to national security.
S.F. cops may have gone too far in seizing DJ gear at underground parties
Jennifer Maerz, SF Weekly
San Francisco police have been confiscating DJs' laptops when they break up warehouse parties, even though no one is being arrested or even cited. The practice is chilling, and deprives the DJs of their means of livelihood, even though the DJs did nothing wrong. This article reviews what's been happening and EFF's role in trying to protect laptop privacy.
D.C. Circuit Examines Warrantless GPS Surveillance
Legal Times
This is a news report about the oral argument in U.S. v. Jones, a GPS tracking case in which EFF filed an amicus brief arguing that such surveillance requires a warrant.
Mac cloner guilty, but "hackintosh" tools will persist
By Jacqui Cheng, Ars Technica
Psystar has a ray of hope left in this case, but the ruling's language indicates that the clone maker's success on the remaining claims is unlikely. Psystar did not respond to our request for comment, but the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Fred von Lohmann doesn't think this is necessarily a death blow to the hackintosh industry as a whole.
"While the ruling is a serious setback for Psystar, I don't see it having much impact beyond the facts of that case," von Lohmann told Ars. "On a number of important points, the outcome was driven by Psystar-specific factors, such as Psystar forfeiting one of their strongest defenses by failing to plead it in time. Moreover, my understanding is that the commercial 'hackintosh' industry has moved on to selling software that enables the user to bring their own PC and OS X DVD, rather than selling a pre-installed solution like the one at issue in the ruling."
iPhone app developer quits over approval process
by Jim Dalrymple, CNET News
In order to get the fixes to customers, Kafasis took out all of the offending images and replaced them with the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) logo. If you tap on the logo, you will be taken to a page explaining why the images have been removed.
These Hobbyists Add to Calculators, Multiplying Their Fun
Dionne Searcey, Wall Street Journal
Calculator hobbyists having fun with and studying programmable calculators got unwanted attention from Texas Instruments' legal department. EFF is representing three of the hobbyists, who are violating no law. This article introduces some of the hobbyists and illuminates their interests and motivations.
Google Book Search Database Halved By Removing Most Foreign Texts
By Norman Oder, Library Journal
Cindy Cohn of the Electronic Frontier Foundation wrote, "Unfortunately, the parties did not add any reader privacy protections. The only nominal change was that they formally confirmed a position they had long taken privately that information will not be freely shared between Google and the Registry."
Copyright overreach goes on world tour
By Rob Pegoraro, Washington Post
Much information about ACTA has come from leaked documents posted to such sites as http://wikileaks.org; other details have been pried out through Freedom of Information Act requests by such groups as the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Knowledge Ecology International.
Facebook Case Sets Up Google Latitude as Tempting Legal Tool
By Clint Boulton, eWeek
Kevin Bankston, senior staff attorney for the EFF, who originally harangued Google over Latitude, was not happy about the feature, noting that Location History for Latitude creates a whole new set of privacy risks because that history may be vulnerable to demands by the government or civil litigants.
Activists launch online copyright database
By Shaun Nichols, V3.co.uk
The new Copyright Watch site is slated to serve as a reference base for users on copyright laws around the world. Among the groups participating in the effort are the US-based Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and Electronic Information for Libraries.
