Press Mentions: November, 2004
Washington Post, Nov. 18
"D.C. College Students Targeted in Piracy Suit"
...Wendy Seltzer, a staff attorney at the San Francisco-based Electronic Frontier Foundation, said that lawsuits do not help stop file sharing.
"We absolutely think it's a bad idea," Seltzer said. "It doesn't take advantage of the possibilities that the technology offers. What people really want is a way to trade files legally"...
Linux Weekly News, Nov. 18
"EFF on Mailing Lists and Spam"
...The EFF has put out a lengthy document describing its concerns with contemporary spam filtering techniques...
Associated Press, Nov. 17
"Film Trade Group Files Anti-Piracy Suits"
The MPAA is running the risk of being seen as too heavy-handed, especially by suing people who have downloaded a single movie, said Wendy Seltzer, a staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
"We don't think for any industry that suing its fans is the best approach to new technologies," Seltzer said.
Providence Journal, Nov. 17
"Dusting for Information"
..."The potential for in-depth monitoring brought by these sensor networks is astounding." � Kevin Bankston, Electronic Frontier Foundation...
Los Angeles Times, Nov. 16
"DMV Chief Backs Tax by Mile"
...Privacy advocates worry about the government tracking the whereabouts of every car in California. In one scenario -- currently being tested in Oregon -- tracking devices send a signal to a GPS satellite following the car, and that information would be used to calculate the tax bill. Other devices send a signal directly from the car to the pump, which calculates the tax based on the odometer reading.
Annalee Newitz, a policy analyst for the Electronic Frontier Foundation in San Francisco, which monitors privacy issues, said if the device "can communicate with a satellite and then communicate back with another device on the ground, it could be used for something else. That would be my concern: How are limits placed on how this device could be used?"...
Wired News, Nov. 16
"Marvel Battles Role Players"
Marvel's suit is a first for the video-game industry, though it has not been unexpected.
"This stuff has been lurking out there," said Fred von Lohmann, a senior attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
Von Lohmann thinks that Marvel -- and other content providers that might want to take action against virtual worlds whose players design potentially infringing content -- needs to understand the realities of modern culture. "People are going to be appropriating these objects of culture. It comes naturally in a world that is dominated by television and trademarks.... It's hard to imagine expressing yourself without using at least some of them."
Associated Press, Nov. 12
"Marvel sues firms behind online superhero role-playing game"
Marvel Enterprises Inc. sued two firms behind a computer superhero role-playing game it claims allows players to make virtual characters that are too similar to "The Hulk," "X-Men" and other heroes in the comic book company's stable. The lawsuit, filed Wednesday in federal court, asserts South Korea-based NCSoft Corp. and San Jose-based Cryptic Studios Inc. violated Marvel's trademark characters in their game "City of Heroes." Marvel seeks unspecified damages and an injunction against the two companies to stop using its characters...
The argument can still be made that "City of Heroes" is only empowering users to the same degree that an establishment like Kinkos enables customers to make paper copies of copyrighted material, said Fred von Lohmann, a senior intellectual property attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
"Is it a violation of copyright to make up a character in the virtual world or is that fair use?" von Lohmann said. "This is really untested ground in the courts" ...
Internet News, Nov. 9
"Sender ID Up for Discussion in D.C."
Microsoft's controversial Sender ID for E-Mail dominated the opening panel of a two-day e-mail authentication summit sponsored by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)...
...Annalee Newitz, a policy analyst for the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), said finding the name behind the IP addresses of the sender is possible today, though it requires a subpoena...
NPR, Nov. 8
"MPAA Crackdown on Movie Pirates"
EFF staff attorney Jason Schultz is quoted.
Associated Press, Nov. 6
"In suit over Web site for complaints, boundaries of online speech"
...Judges also weigh whether a person is likely to confuse the gripe site with the real one, said Wendy Seltzer, staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a San Francisco-based civil-liberties group. A site that bashes a product is not likely to create such confusion, she said.
Companies have threatened scores of criticism sites with trademark infringement and have lost many of the cases that have actually gone to court, Seltzer said. But most of the time, she said, the site owners simply agree to stop before a lawsuit is even filed. Thus, the boundaries of their rights are never tested...
Associated Press, Nov. 4
"Movie studios launch legal offensive against online pirates"
Some critics of the music industry's legal efforts question whether they are effective. They also question the negative backlash that comes from suing people who may have downloaded one or two songs.
"The recording industry lawsuits don't appear to have reduced file sharing to any meaningful degree," said Fred von Lohmann, a senior intellectual property attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
InternetNews.com, Nov. 3
"Data Dumps Recommended for ISPs"
Service providers faced with a growing amount of subpoenas and DMCA (define) "take-down" requests should consider cleaning their network logs, according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF).
The San Francisco-based legal advocacy firm has published a set of best practices for ISPs to protect themselves from getting mired in privacy or copyright infringement issues.
"ISPs are having to add copyright and privacy protection as an extra transaction cost," EFF staff attorney Wendy Seltzer told attendees here at the ISPCON trade show. "They have to add staff to respond to take down requests and comb the logs to respond to subpoenas instead of offering best products. They are often being pulled into the disputes and are becoming a choke point because users need them to get their connection to the Net."
The EFF recommends that ISPs only keep the data logs that they really need ...
IDG News Service, Nov. 3
"Group tallies more than 1,100 e-voting glitches"
U.S. voters calling in to a toll-free number had reported more than 1,100 separate incidents of problems with electronic voting machines and other voting technologies by late Tuesday during the nationwide election...
In a majority of cases where machines allegedly recorded a wrong vote, votes were taken away from Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry, or a Democratic candidate in another race, and given to Republican President George Bush or another Republican candidate, said Cindy Cohn, legal director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF)...
"We're only hearing from people who caught it," Cohn said during a press conference hosted by a coalition of nonpartisan groups that have questioned the security of e-voting machines. "It gives us this uneasy feeling we're seeing the tip of the iceberg."
The reports of misvoting happened on a variety of brands of e-voting machines, Cohn said. In some cases, e-voting machines may have misread voter intentions when the voter accidentally brushed the computer touch screen, she said...
Wall St. Journal, Nov. 3
"Despite Fears, Voters Faced Few Problems, But Very Long Lines"
...Matt Zimmerman, a lawyer with the San Francisco-based Electronic Frontier Foundation who spent Election Day in a Miami command center, said he had received a substantial number of voter complaints about touch-screen machines recording the wrong vote. Besides voter error, he said, one possible culprit may be that voting-machine screens aren't calibrated correctly and poll workers may not be equipped to fix this technical problem...
Los Angeles Times, Nov. 2
"Electronic Voting Glitches Reported"
...By 3 p.m. today, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a technology civil liberties group based in San Francisco, said its election errors hotline received more than 600 complaints about touch screen voting machine foul-ups from voters nationwide.
In New Orleans, e-voting machines in dozens of precincts went on the fritz and poll workers had no paper ballot backups, resulting in long lines. Local voting activists asked a judge to extend polling hours by two hours to 10 p.m.
"New Orleans wins the award for the worst voting situation in the country," said EFF staff attorney Cindy Cohn...
