In The News: February, 2007
February 28th, 2007
Suit demands details on secret court's wiretap ruling
Bob Egelko, San Francisco Chronicle
A privacy rights group sued the Justice Department on Tuesday to try to pry loose a ruling by a secret court that the Bush administration says approved its clandestine wiretapping program...
"While national security and law enforcement demand a limited amount of secrecy, Americans have the right to know the government's basic guidelines for this kind of invasive electronic surveillance of their personal communications,'' said David Sobel, a lawyer for the organization.
February 28th, 2007
RIAA Sends Schools a P2P Heads Up
Roy Mark, InternetNews.com
In a new legal campaign launched today against illegal peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) is offering college and university students a chance to settle before they get sued...
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a longtime critic of the music industry's P2P lawsuits, quickly countered that the RIAA's campaign is doomed.
"It's not a particularly good strategy," Rebecca Jeschke, the EFF's media relations coordinator, told internetnews.com. "The kids will move on to other technologies."
February 28th, 2007
Boucher DMCA Exemption Bill Would Legalize Commercial-Skipping
Scott M. Fulton, III, BetaNews
A copy of the early draft language of the revised H.R. 1201, sponsored by Rep. Rick Boucher (D - VA) and introduced on the floor of the US House of Representatives yesterday, shows the revised legislation would add six new exemptions to US Code section 1201, which had been amended by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act...
For its part, the Electronic Frontier Foundation has come out in support of the bill, also as anticipated. "Technology companies play a game of Russian roulette whenever they create products with both infringing and non-infringing uses," an EFF statement reads this evening.
February 27th, 2007
The Online-Video Takedown Smackdown
Catherine Holahan, BusinessWeek.com
Amateur filmmaker Matt Hawes thought his video spoof of MTV's The Real World was sufficiently funny to get noticed on YouTube...
EFF staff attorney Corynne McSherry says her organization has seen a recent surge in the number of cases, brought on behalf of people such as Hawes, involving misuse of the act's takedown procedure.
February 27th, 2007
DoJ Sued For Release Of FISA Court Rules On Spy Program
KC Jones, InformationWeek
The Electronic Frontier Foundation has sued the Department of Justice, demanding the release of records related to court orders authorizing electronic surveillance...
In a statement announcing the lawsuit, EFF senior counsel David Sobel said that Americans have the right to know the government's basic guidelines for electronic surveillance of their personal communications. The government has claimed that ordinary Americans haven't been targeted and that only communications involving suspected terrorists have been intercepted.
February 27th, 2007
Music executives judge Jobs, lament losses
Greg Sandoval, CNET
The discussions at a music conference here Tuesday started with an all-around bashing of Apple CEO Steve Jobs before moving to the plethora of issues plaguing the music industry...
In January, EMI said it was reviewing a request by the Electronic Frontier Foundation to allow reverse engineering of its digital rights management software. That EMI would even consider the proposal was seen in many circles as a step forward by the anti-DRM camp.
February 27th, 2007
Tech forum questions if pretexting ban will work
Robert Mullins, InfoWorld
Obtaining private records under false pretenses is bad, but some in the technology industry say it happens all the time and wonder whether new federal legislation will curb "pretexting"...
Although some speakers at the summit criticized phone companies for not protecting call records well enough, another wondered how pretexting could be stopped.
"This has been happening for years," said Shari Steele, president of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
February 26th, 2007
San Francisco turns free Wi-Fi into long battle
Michelle Quinn and James S. Granelli, Los Angeles Times
In his October 2004 State of the City address, Mayor Gavin Newsom pledged to "not stop until every San Franciscan has access to free, wireless Internet service"...
But the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and other advocates raised concerns about EarthLink's privacy policy. They also complained that Google's ability to track the whereabouts of network users could prove irresistible to law enforcement (Google said people worried about such things could sign up using false names).
February 26th, 2007
Google gets hand in trademark dispute
IT News
Previously critical of the search engine, the Electronic Frontier Foundation supports Google's argument that sponsored links do not constitute infringing uses of trademarks...
"The Internet has brought together speakers of many kinds -- some competing with trademark owners, others criticizing them, still others simply referring to them while discussing other subjects or products," EFF Staff Attorney Corynne McSherry said in a prepared statement. "Services like Google's 'sponsored links' help people with something to say reach those who might be interested in hearing it."
February 23rd, 2007
Just An Online Minute... EFF: Trademark Search Buys Protect Free Speech
MediaPost
A federal appellate court is getting ready to decide whether Google's method of selling paid search ads violates trademark law...
With the case now pending in the Second Circuit, the civil rights group Electronic Frontier Foundation has gotten involved. In a friend-of-the-court brief filed this week, the EFF argues that there's more at stake than just competition between business rivals. The EFF makes the case that Google's policy of allowing people to purchase trademarked names also protects free speech rights.
February 22nd, 2007
US judge orders domestic spying cases to proceed
Associated Press
U.S. officials failed to sideline dozens of domestic spying lawsuits on Tuesday as a federal judge ordered the war on terror-connected cases to proceed despite a pending appeal...
"The government wanted this case to be placed in the deep freeze and this decision is allowing it to move forward," EFF attorney Kurt Opsahl told AFP. "We are very pleased. Now, we have to come up with our targeted set of questions."
February 22nd, 2007
AT&T Can Continue Hiding Surveillance Secrets
Megan Tady, The New Standard
A federal judge in San Francisco ruled Tuesday that evidence will remain sealed in the class-action lawsuit accusing AT&T of collaborating with the government to illegally spy on Americans' communications...
In a press statement, EFF expressed its disappointment in the judge's decision. "Given that the privacy of millions of Americans is at stake, we strongly believe that the public would benefit from seeing this evidence for themselves," said Cindy Cohn, EFF's legal director.
February 21st, 2007
Google Seals Desktop XSS Hole
David Utter, SecurityProNews
A vulnerability in the Google Desktop product could have exposed files on a machine running it to an external attacker...
The Electronic Frontier Foundation has had concerns about Google Desktop virtually since its inception. Those concerns escalated when version 3 of the software, with its 'Search Across Computers' feature, hit the Internet in February 2006.
February 21st, 2007
Case against AT&T/NSA continues
ZDNet
A federal judge ruled that a class action lawsuit against AT&T over its participation in NSA spying can go forward, rejecting requests by the government and AT&T to freeze proceedings during an appeal, the Electronic Frontier Foundation says...
"We're disappointed that the court did not choose to unseal all of the documents that include or refer to the evidence presented by Mark Klein and our expert, J. Scott Marcus. The government has already agreed that the evidence is neither classified nor a state secret, and is only being held under seal because of AT&T's weak trade secrecy claims," said Cindy Cohn, EFF's Legal Director. "Given that the privacy of millions of Americans is at stake, we strongly believe that the public would benefit from seeing this evidence for themselves."
February 21st, 2007
Federal judge lets discovery proceed in domestic spying class action lawsuit
Joshua Pantesco, JURIST
US District Court Chief Judge Vaughn Walker issued an order Tuesday imposing a limited stay on discovery in a class action lawsuit challenging the legality of the Bush administration's domestic surveillance program, despite the government's request to stay discovery pending the outcome of an appeal to the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit...
Also on Tuesday, Judge Walker denied a media request to unseal documents filed in the case, including internal AT&T documents and a declaration from a retired AT&T telecommunications technician.
February 19th, 2007
Steve Jobs Changes His Tune
Red Herring
Steve Jobs has talked the talk and now a growing chorus of critics is urging him to walk the walk...
Derek Slater, activist at the privacy rights group Electronic Frontier Foundation, says Mr. Jobs could demonstrate that he is serious about abolishing copyright protection schemes by selling DRM-free music from independent artists on iTunes. "He should put his music store where his mouth is," says Mr. Slater. "That would be an important step."
February 17th, 2007
Troops' blogs under scrutiny
Fred Reed, Washington Times
Once again, technology has outrun the laws we use to regulate it. Consider the Pentagon's current automated surveillance of troops' blogs. Is it necessary? Legal? Constitutional?..
The Electronic Frontier Foundation has filed suit, demanding details of the unit's operations.
In particular, the organization wants to know whether the military is censoring the opinions of troops, which would be a violation of the constitutional right to free speech.
February 16th, 2007
EFF cries foul over YouTube takedowns
Shaun Nichols, IT Week
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has condemned Viacom's demand that YouTube remove 100,000 videos from its site because it believes that much of the material does not violate Viacom copyrights...
"If they are making these kinds of blatant mistakes, who can tell how many fair uses of Viacom content they also targeted in their 100,000 takedowns? Hundreds? Thousands?" said the EFF.
February 16th, 2007
"Wiki can link to controversial documents, judge rules"
The Register
Drugs giant Eli Lilly has failed in its bid to restrict a wiki from linking to documents that could be damaging to its business. The ruling of a New York court said the court could not rule against the internet "in its various manifestations"...
"This ruling makes it clear that Eli Lilly cannot invoke any court orders in its futile efforts to censor these documents off the internet," said EFF staff attorney Fred von Lohmann. "We are disappointed, however, that the judge failed to appreciate that its previous orders constituted prior restraints in violation of the First Amendment."
February 16th, 2007
Discovery Upset About Parody Spanking
David Utter, SecurityProNews
The Electronic Frontier Foundation sparred with Discovery Communications over the media company's efforts to silence a website that criticized a Discovery marketing campaign...
"Once again, a business is trying to use false legal claims to chill criticism," said EFF Staff Attorney Corynne McSherry. "Fortunately, more and more, the targets of these kinds of threats are fighting back."
February 16th, 2007
For Your Eyes Only?
PBS Now
This week, NOW reports on new evidence suggesting the existence of a secret government program that intercepts millions of private e-mails each day in the name of terrorist surveillance... Featuring EFF Staff Attorney Kevin Bankson.
February 16th, 2007
Just An Online Minute... EFF Reaches Out To Viacom Victims
Wendy Davis, MediaPost
The civil liberties group Electronic Frontier Foundation appears to be mulling some sort of legal action against Viacom stemming from its recent demand that YouTube remove 100,000 clips - including clips with no connection to Viacom - from the site.
"Were You Caught in the Viacom Takedown?" the EFF asks in its own video, quietly uploaded to YouTube late last week. In the clip, the EFF says it wants to hear from any innocent parties caught in the recent dragnet. "If your video was taken down after complaints from Viacom, but contained either no viacom content at all, or fair use extracts, the Electronic Frontier Foundation would like to hear from you," the company wrote in comments posted with the clip - viewed nearly 9,000 times as of Friday morning.
February 15th, 2007
Why is this man smiling?
Andy Ihnatko, Chicago Sun-Times
We're just a half a dozen weeks into 2007 and yet it's already turning out to be a banner year for startlingly weird announcements from tech CEOs...
The Electronic Frontier Foundation praises Jobs for taking such a clear public stand on the issue. But they (quite correctly) wonder why, if he's all gung-ho against DRM, Jobs doesn't allow independent labels that are already selling music on the iTunes Store to sell their wares unlocked and unprotected.
February 15th, 2007
EFF takes Viacom to task over YouTube takedown
Greg Sandoval, CNET
A watchdog group is encouraging those wrongly accused of posting pirated Viacom material on YouTube to stand up to the giant conglomerate--even if it means a court fight...
EFF spokeswoman Rebecca Jeschke says lawyers in her organization want to make sure that Viacom didn't go after people with legitimate fair-use claims.
February 15th, 2007
EFF takes Viacom to task over YouTube takedown
Greg Sandoval, CNET
A watchdog group is encouraging those wrongly accused of posting pirated Viacom material on YouTube to stand up to the giant conglomerate--even if it means a court fight...
EFF compared Viacom's actions to fishermen who cast a wide net and mistakenly trap a porpoise. The group suggested in a note on its Web site that some of those accused of copyright violations may need legal help.
"It may make more sense to go to court to assert your rights," EFF attorney Fred von Lohmann wrote on the organization's site.
February 15th, 2007
MySpace suit dismissed by judge in Texas
Ellen Lee, San Francisco Chronicle
A Texas judge has dismissed a lawsuit against MySpace that had blamed the popular Web site for not establishing enough safeguards to protect underage users...
Kurt Opsahl, a staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said that such rules could stifle the Internet.
"The soap box is not liable for what the speaker has said or done," he said. "These services could not exist in a world where the services were liable for what the user had done."
February 14th, 2007
http://www.thephoenix.com/article_ektid33885.aspx
Clif Garboden, Boston Phoenix
The Phoenix newspapers and thePhoenix.com were major winners in this year's New England Press Association (NEPA) Better Newspaper Competition...
Other Boston first-place awards went to Mike Miliard (Social Issues Feature), and David S. Bernstein (Transportation Reporting). Milliard won for his feature on the emerging importance of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Bernstein for writing the truth behind the recent MBTA fare hike.
February 14th, 2007
Judge puts case against Sprint in NSA suit on hold
Reuters
A U.S. judged issued an order on Wednesday putting on hold court proceedings against Sprint Nextel Corp. (S.N: Quote, Profile , Research), which faces a lawsuit claiming it helped the U.S. National Security Agency track international calls.
The stay order by U.S. District Court Judge Vaughn Walker will put the lawsuit on hold pending an appellate review of the Hepting v. AT&T lawsuit in the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.
February 13th, 2007
I love freedom, and I love the EFF
Popgadget
The Popgadget masthead says that we embrace technology, and we're also quite the fans of freedom...
The Electronic Frontier Foundation was founded by some cool cats who recognized that computers and directories should be subject to the same Constitutional protections afforded to our homes and filing cabinets. The EFF has done quite a bit to help the technology minded, and we've all benefited from their legal pursuits to protect innovation, free speech, consumer rights, and privacy.
February 13th, 2007
Judge says Internet documents fall outside injunctions' reach
Michael Muskal, Los Angeles Times
A federal judge in New York gave websites a partial victory by acknowledging today that when documents are published on the Internet they take on a life of their own, an existence that cannot be reversed by a court...
Fred von Lohmann, a staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a San Francisco-based group that works for digital rights, praised what he agreed was a split decision. The foundation represented an anonymous individual who was earlier barred by Weinstein from posting web links to the Zyprexa documents.
"My client is pleased because he is no longer part of the injunction," Von Lohmann said in a telephone interview. "The bad news is that others still are restrained and that the judge didn't decide this based on the 1st Amendment."
February 13th, 2007
SCO Vs. Blogger
Daniel Lyons, Forbes.com
For three and a half years, a blogger named Pamela Jones has led a relentless online crusade against software maker SCO Group, posting thousands of articles bashing the company for suing IBM over the Linux operating system...
Other companies have taken legal action against bloggers only to have those actions backfire. In January, Apple was reportedly forced to pay $700,000 to cover the legal expenses of bloggers against whom it had tried to take legal action, thanks to the efforts of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a San Francisco group that defends bloggers.
February 13th, 2007
Rules For The Revolution Podcast
Colette Vogele
Jason is a staff attorney for the EFF specializing in intellectual property and reverse engineering. He currently leads EFF's Patent Busting Project and also teaches graduate classes on Cyberlaw at UC Berkeley's Boalt Hall School of Law and School of Information.
In this episode, Jason discusses the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (the "DMCA") and how podcasters and video bloggers are affected by this law enacted nearly 10 years ago.
February 9th, 2007
MFPs anti-counterfeiting measures toughen up
Dan Littman, InfoWorld
Last time we tested similar MFP systems, we found that they adhered to federal anti-counterfeiting guidelines that recommended overlaying all color jobs with the machine's serial number, encoded in big yellow dots. The dots were almost invisible, but not quite... Of course, many anti-counterfeiting measures may never be known, in the interest of keeping those secrets out of criminals' hands. That inherent secrecy caught the eye of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), which has concerns about some of the anti-counterfeiting measures and the practice of printing encoded information -- including those aforementioned yellow dots -- onto documents to identify the printer that created them.
February 9th, 2007
Lactivist Gets Apology From Pork
Jason Lee Miller, WebProNews
"That'll do pig, that'll do," is how SEM-at-home mom and Lactivist Jennifer Laycock concluded her beef with the National Pork Board after receiving a heartfelt apology and the promise of a donation from to the Mother's Milk Bank of Ohio...
Bloggers, especially in the SEM community, were outraged by the threats in the "lawyer crafted nasty gram," and by one especially egregious accusation to be noted later, and rallied behind Laycock by blogging to everybody they knew, threatening a Google bomb if the National Pork Board didn't back off. And then, the Electronic Frontier Foundation stepped in on her behalf as well.
February 9th, 2007
SF JUDGE WEIGHS 2 ISSUES IN SURVEILLANCE LAWSUITS
Bay City News
A federal judge who is presiding over more than 30 domestic surveillance lawsuits heard two hours of legal arguments by attorneys on two key procedural issues today but deferred ruling on them...
That lawsuit, known as the Hepting case, was filed against AT&T by four Californians represented by the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
February 8th, 2007
Judge To Decide Whether NSA Spy Suit Continues
KC Jones, InformationWeek
The Electronic Frontier Foundation will argue Friday that the lawsuits over the National Security Agency's spy program should proceed while the government asks a higher court to overturn a judge's decision to continue hearing the case.
At issue is whether the U.S. government was within the law to monitor domestic phone calls and other communication originating from parties outside the United States in an effort to quash terrorist activities. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has since said the Bush administration will reverse its stance on domestic spying.
February 7th, 2007
US surveillance of soldiers' blogs sparks lawsuit
John Leyden, TheStreet.com
The US Army is being sued by a privacy group that wants the military to come clean about how it monitors websites and soldiers' blogs for potential military leaks...
"Soldiers should be free to blog their thoughts at this critical point in the national debate on the war in Iraq," EFF staff attorney Marcia Hofmann said. "If the Army is colouring or curtailing soldiers' published opinions, Americans need to know about that interference."
February 7th, 2007
Soldiers' Blogs Monitored; Group Sues For More Info
KC Jones, InformationWeek
It's no secret that the military monitors soldiers' Web postings, can remove certain items, and will punish those posting content that violates military rules...
"Soldiers should be free to blog their thoughts at this critical point in the national debate on the war in Iraq," EFF staff attorney Marcia Hofmann said in a prepared statement. "If the Army is coloring or curtailing soldiers' published opinions, Americans need to know about that interference."
February 6th, 2007
EFF to fight for digital rights in Europe
James Niccolai, InfoWorld
Consumers in Europe have another group looking out for their digital rights with the opening of a Brussels office by the U.S. nonprofit group the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF)...
Erik Josefsson will be the EFF's European Affairs Coordinator. He was previously the head of the Swedish chapter of the Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure, which helped overturn the proposal for a unified patent system in Europe.
February 5th, 2007
Privacy group sues Army over surveillance of soldiers' blogs, Web sites
Todd R. Weiss, ComputerWorld
A U.S. Army unit that monitors thousands of Web sites and soldiers' blogs looking for sensitive military information has been hit with a Freedom of Information Act (FoIA) lawsuit by a San Francisco-based privacy group that wants to know more about the monitoring program...
Marcia Hofmann, a Washington-based staff attorney for the EFF, said the FoIA lawsuit is aimed at protecting free speech and privacy and helping soldiers and other Americans understand how and why Web sites and soldiers' blogs are being monitored. "The idea is to get more information on what the Army is doing," Hofmann said. "Some soldier bloggers choose not to blog because of concerns about what they can and can't say" online.
February 4th, 2007
TiVo sees if you skip those ads
David Lazarus, San Francisco Chronicle
TiVo revealed the other day that it's offering TV networks and ad agencies a chance to receive second-by- second data about which programs the company's 4.5 million subscribers are watching and, more importantly, which commercials people are skipping...
"It's a constant struggle to maintain your privacy in the modern era," said Kurt Opsahl, a staff attorney at San Francisco's Electronic Frontier Foundation. "We have entered an era in which more and more information about you is being collected and maintained."
February 3rd, 2007
'Electric Slide' on slippery DMCA slope
Daniel Terdiman, CNET
The inventor of the "Electric Slide," an iconic dance created in 1976, is fighting back against what he believes are copyright violations and, more important, examples of bad dancing.
"Someone who performs it noncommercially or adds their own artistic flair to the dance has a pretty good fair-use argument that their performance is noninfringing," Schultz said.
February 2nd, 2007
Data Privacy Bill Expected to Target Retailers, Banks
Brian Krebs, Washington Post
Data privacy is likely to be among the hottest technology issues to face Congress this year, in part due to interest from the new chairman of the House Financial Services Committee...
While some major corporations -- most recently Microsoft -- have expressed support for some kind of federal consumer privacy law to govern how companies can use, combine and trade consumer data, the effort to produce baseline privacy protections for consumers may set off contentious policy debates, said Fred von Lohmann, a senior staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
"The question with this issue -- as with others -- becomes, is this an area where dueling interest groups will make it difficult for Congress to come to an effective solution, or is it something that's moving so fast that anything Congress is likely to do will end up obsolete a year or two from now?" he said.
February 1st, 2007
EFF demands evidence of US army blog censorshop
PC Pro
The Electronic Frontier Foundation has filed a lawsuit against the US Department of Defense, demanding information on how it monitors soldiers' blogs.
Soldiers should be free to blog their thoughts at this critical point in the national debate on the war in Iraq,' said EFF staff attorney Marcia Hofmann. 'If the Army is colouring or curtailing soldiers' published opinions, Americans need to know about that interference.
