In The News: March, 2007
March 30th, 2007
Hollywood copes with tech frets
Ben Fritz, Variety
Nearly five years after the launch of iTunes, music execs are in more of a panic than ever. Due in part to online file-sharing and casual sharing of burned CDs among friends, album sales fell 20% this year and digital downloads, while growing, aren't nearly enough to make up the difference...
"DRM is not only useless against piracy, but it's counter-productive because it gives otherwise legitimate consumers one more reason to prefer the illegitimate copy," says Fred von Lohman, senior intellectual property attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation and a prominent DRM critic.
March 30th, 2007
Adult site's legal battle could aid Web hosting services
Anne Broache, CNET
A federal appeals court ruling in a case involving an adult publisher appears to have delivered broader legal protections for online service providers against lawsuits claiming privacy violations and other illicit behavior by their users...
"This is a very important decision for anyone who runs an online business where you handle other peoples' content, whether it be people who create photos or artwork or anything or whether it's users who log in and upload stuff and comment on things," said Jason Schultz, a staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which has filed briefs supporting Google's arguments against Perfect 10.
March 28th, 2007
Cuban, EFF lawyer spar over YouTube and the DMCA at EFF Pioneer Awards
Nate Anderson, Ars technica
Wearing jeans, sneakers, and a T-shirt that read "I'd rather be fighting the man," Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban last night defended his view that YouTube is eroding support for copyrights and that its actions should not qualify for "safe harbor" under the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA)...
The occasion for the remarks was the EFF's annual "Pioneer Awards," which were this year handed out at the ETech conference in San Diego.
March 28th, 2007
EFF Pioneer Awards: And the winners are ...
Wendy M. Grossman, The Register
Computer rights activist and science fiction writer Cory Doctorow, security expert Bruce Schneier, and Yale law professor Yochai Benkler are the latest to be given Pioneer Awards by the Electronic Frontier Foundation. The 16th annual awards were handed out last night at the Emerging Technology conference in San Diego.
March 27th, 2007
Brussels downbeat on US passenger snoop plan
Mark Ballard, The Register
Transatlantic talks over the US grab for European personal data in its war on terror are floundering, the European Parliament heard yesterday...
Some members of the European Parliament, meanwhile expect that the PNR agreement will be made redundant by the Open Skies agreement for air transport, which is due to be signed in Washington on 30 April. Open Skies contains security provisions that experts at the Electronic Frontier Foundation fear might provide a legal basis for PNR and other US collations of European personal data such as its Automated Targeting System, which builds database profiles of people on its controversial watch-lists.
March 26th, 2007
www.publicradio.org/columns/futuretense/2007/03/26.shtml
Audio: "EFF honors pioneers of the digital age" Jon Gordon, NPR: Future Tense
Tomorrow night, the Electronic Frontier Foundation hands out its annual Pioneer Awards...
Receiving the award tonight are security expert Bruce Schneier, writer and activist Cory Doctorow, and Yale Law School professor Yochai Benkler.
March 23rd, 2007
MoveOn.org files suit against Viacom over online video
Joe Garofoli, San Francisco Chronicle
The continuing war over who controls content on the Internet continued Thursday with reaction to a federal lawsuit by the Internet political group Move-On.org against media behemoth Viacom that opposes the removal of an online video parody of a television parody...
"Sure, it's a funny video, but there's a serious side to this," said Corynne McSherry, a staff attorney with Electronic Frontier Foundation. "We hope that content owners should think twice before they order material taken down. And we want people to know that they have options when something they post to YouTube gets taken down."
March 23rd, 2007
Lime's Gorton Trades Fast, Fights Suit, Seeks Car-Free Utopia
Lisa Kassenaar, Bloomberg
Step off the elevator into Lime Group's offices atop an 11-story brick building in New York's Chinatown into a crowd of more than 60 stone Buddhas and Asian lions, all handpicked by the company's founder, Mark Gorton...
"He's a classic entrepreneur,'' says Fred von Lohmann, an intellectual property attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit group based in San Francisco. "He has a lot of businesses going at the same time, and if they don't work out, he'll start three more.''
March 22nd, 2007
Viacom sued over Colbert parody on YouTube
Elinor Mills, CNET
Viacom is misusing U.S. copyright law by forcing YouTube to remove a parody video of The Colbert Report, according to a lawsuit filed against the media conglomerate Thursday...
"If you watch this clip for 10 seconds it is clear that it's a parody and it is fair use," said Corynne McSherry, staff attorney at the EFF, which is working on the case with Stanford University's Center for Internet and Society.
March 22nd, 2007
COPA Online Porn Law Struck Down
Lisa Vaas, eWeek
A federal court judge on March 22 struck down the Child Online Protection Act (PDF), saying it violates the First and Fifth Amendments and is "impermissibly broad and over-vague"...
The March 22 ruling is a victory for the American Civil Liberties Union, which had brought the suit against the government along with plaintiffs that included online sex health sites, San Francisco poet laureate Lawrence Ferlinghetti and the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
March 22nd, 2007
abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?section=local&id=5140715
Video: "Recording Industry Targets UC Downloaders" Wayne Freedman, ABC 7 News (San Francisco)
Despite efforts by the music industry, it says it is losing $2 billion dollars a year to file sharing pirates and many of them are college students doing it through servers provided by universities. Now, the record companies are clamping down on them, as well. It puts U.C. Berkeley, among others, in a tough position of trying to balance privacy while upholding the law...
This did not go over well at the Electronic Frontier Foundation in San Francisco, which defends the rights of cyberspace users.
March 22nd, 2007
Viacom Sued for Colbert Takedown; NBC Takes Up with Fox
Natalie Finn, E! Online
Despite its ability to offer unlimited space for an infinite amount of creative material, the Internet sure seems awfully crowded these days. With lawsuits, that is...
Viacom, the cable network's parent company, improperly asked YouTube to pull the spoof because the clips taken from the show were protected under federal copyright law's "fair use" provision, according to the lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in San Francisco by the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Stanford Law School's Center for Internet and Society.
March 22nd, 2007
Inside Move: MoveOn sues Viacom
Ben Fritz, Variety
While Viacom is busy suing Google over videos that were just taken down from YouTube, MoveOn.org is suing the conglom over a video that just went back up...
EFF attorney Fred Von Lohman said the plaintiffs will continue to seek damages.
"If Fox News got 'The Daily Show' yanked one night because it used a Fox News clip and then the next day said 'oops, that was a mistake,' I don't think they'd be OK with that," he told Daily Variety.
March 22nd, 2007
Parodies prompt laughs, lawsuits
Laura Parker, USA Today
Parodies of famous people and name brands are sparking an increasing number of lawsuits...
On Thursday, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) asked a federal judge to protect the free-speech rights of MoveOn.org. The group's satirical film of The Colbert Report was removed from YouTube after a copyright complaint by Viacom, owners of Comedy Central, which produces the show.
The EFF last year persuaded a federal judge to protect the free-speech rights of Stuart Frankel, whom the creators of Barney had threatened to sue because his website pokes fun at the popular children's TV character.
March 22nd, 2007
Music industry threatens student downloaders at UC
Ellen Lee, San Francisco Chronicle
The music industry has sent hundreds of threatening letters to college students across the nation, including dozens at UC Berkeley and UC Santa Cruz, as part of its campaign against illegal music downloading...
Corynne McSherry, a staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said the latest campaign seems like little more than a scare tactic. "These letters are scary. The first impulse is, 'How do I make this go away?' " she said. "If their goal is to stop illegal file sharing, this is not a very effective way of doing it."
March 18th, 2007
EFF calls for greater commitment against digital TV copy protection
Heise Online
Back in 2005, the Electric Frontier Foundation (EFF) voiced its concerned about the Digital Video Broadcasting Forum's (DVB Forum) standardization of Content Protection Copyright Management (DVB-CPCM). Now, the EFF has published a briefing paper reiterating the Foundation's concerns about the drawbacks of CPCM and complaining about the general support among lawmakers for Digital Rights Management (DRM). The foundation says that politicians are making it easy for the media industry to use DRM techniques as it sees fit, with criminal prosecutors even investigating cases in which DRM was cracked for legal purposes.
March 16th, 2007
Victims fight back against DMCA abuse
Nate Anderson, Ars Technica
DMCA takedown notices: sure, they provide an easy way for companies or individuals to get copyrighted information pulled from sites like YouTube, but what happens when the process is abused? The DMCA does require takedown notices to be made under threat of perjury, and damages are possible against those that abuse the takedown process by using it for frivolous or fraudulent purposes. The EFF has recently filed two cases against alleged DMCA abusers, and may be prepping a third against Viacom.
March 16th, 2007
Trial could test digital media rights
Rick Merritt, EE Times
Trial begins Monday here for a civil suit that could become a test case on questions about what fair use rights systems makers and end users have with their digital media. The DVD Copy Control Association (DVD CCA) is suing Kaleidescape Inc., claiming the company's home servers violate in several ways a contract designed to protect DVDs from being copied...
"This is a case where what is essentially a cartel is stifling legitimate innovation where there is clear market demand and a technical capability," said Fred von Lohmann, a senior staff attorney with the EFF.
March 15th, 2007
La Fundaci?n Frontera Electr?nica, defensora de los ciberderechos, desembarca en Europa
El Pais
Por primera vez en su historia, la veterana organizaci?n prociberderechos Fundaci?n de la Frontera Electr?nica (EFF) ampl?a su radio de acci?n m?s all? de Estados Unidos y se establece en Bruselas. Erik Josefsson, un conocido activista contra las patentes de software, ser? la cara de la EFF europea. En su mira est?n las leyes de propiedad intelectual y la retenci?n de datos.
La misi?n de la EFF en Europa ser? "poner luz sobre lo que est? sucediendo en Bruselas y utilizar nuestra experiencia en el desarrollo de leyes y pol?ticas", explica Josefsson, quien afirma que, en ?reas como los derechos de autor o la televisi?n digital, "Estados Unidos ha vivido mucho tiempo bajo los efectos de una peligrosa legislaci?n basada en malas decisiones pol?ticas. Europa no deber?a cometer los mismos errores".
March 15th, 2007
Critics to Google: Privacy, please
Alex Pham and Michelle Quinn, Chicago Tribune
Google Inc.'s memory is getting a little shorter. Just not short enough for some...
"There is more that could be done," Kurt Opsahl, staff attorney with privacy group Electronic Frontier Foundation, said about Google's new policy. "It would be nice to see the window narrowed to a shorter time frame. The shorter the better."
March 15th, 2007
DRM coming to a TV near you
Shaun Nichols, Vnunet.com
A cabal of TV studios and entertainment executives is planning to tighten the guidelines on digital video broadcasts, according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF)...
"The restrictions can be changed at the whim of the rights holder. It may be that today you can record your favourite programme and transfer it to DVD for long-term storage. But next week, you could be prevented from recording or archiving to DVD," said the EFF.
March 15th, 2007
Google's Privacy Move: Not Nearly Good Enough
Preston Gralla, ComputerWorld
Google has finally made a move to protect people's search privacy -- but its actions don't go nearly far enough. Its decision to make search records anonymous after 18 to 24 months is barely a good enough first step...
Kevin Bankston, a staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation in San Francisco told Computerworld "We'd love to see a shorter retention period and more complete anonymization."
Bankston would like the policy extended to other Google services, such as Gmail.
March 14th, 2007
Videos Pulled From Web Sites Draw Suits
Amanda Bronstad, National Law Journal
The creators of videos that have been improperly removed by YouTube and other Internet service providers after allegations of copyright violations are fighting back with a new breed of lawsuits...
Jason Schultz, staff attorney at the EFF, a nonprofit civil rights group based in San Francisco, said that he anticipated that more lawsuits will be filed in the coming year. "What you're seeing now is the growing conflict between how easy it is to censor someone using that law and the growth of what's being called user-generated content on the Internet," he said. "This conflict will generate some legal disputes within the year."
March 14th, 2007
DVB broadcast flag will require government support, but may not get it
Nate Anderson, Ars Technica
The Digital Video Broadcasting (DVB) consortium sets digital television transmission specs for much of the world, but in recent years the group has turned its attention to crafting something far more controversial: a broadcast flag...
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is the only public-interest group that sat in on DVB's technical meetings over the last three years, and they recently sounded the alarm over the finalization of the Content Protection and Copy Management (CPCM) system.
March 13th, 2007
Viacom suit may reshape copyright law
Elise Ackerman, San Jose Mercury News
The copyright lawsuit filed Tuesday by Viacom against Google and its YouTube subsidiary could end up rewriting one of the key laws of the Internet age: the Digital Millennium Copyright Act...
"Any ruling in the YouTube case is certain to have implications for companies like Yahoo and eBay, as well as smaller companies like Facebook and imeem," said Fred von Lohmann, an attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation. "All of these companies rely on the exact same principles that YouTube does."
March 12th, 2007
File-Sharing Lawsuit Worries Techies
Brian Deagon, Investor's Business Daily
Two years after winning the landmark U.S. Supreme Court case MGM vs. Grokster, the entertainment industry is back in court to settle a fight some fear could handcuff technology innovation...
"Putting courts in the business of redesigning software is a dangerous precedent to set," said Fred von Lohmann, senior attorney at Electronic Frontier Foundation. "Do we want a world where every new technology gets it own federal judge to sit in judgment over the next software update?"
March 12th, 2007
Spying Too Secret For Your Court: AT&T, Gov Tell Ninth
Ryan Singel, Wired News
AT&T told an appeals court in a written brief Monday that the case against it for allegedly helping the government spy on its customers should be thrown out, because it cannot defend itself -- even by showing a signed order from the government -- without endangering national security...
The telecom giant and the government are appealing a June ruling in a federal district court that allowed the suit brought by the Electronic Frontier Foundation against the telecom to proceed, despite the government's invocation of a powerful tool called the "states secrets privilege," which allows it to have civil cases dismissed when national secrets are involved.
March 12th, 2007
Feds, AT&T: Eavesdropping Trial Would Reveal State Secrets
KTVU/AP
The federal government is urging an appeals court to dismiss a lawsuit challenging President Bush's domestic eavesdropping program, warning that disclosure of such activities could compromise national security...
The court filings on Friday are part of the government's appeal of U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker's decision last year to keep the Electronic Frontier Foundation's lawsuit alive. Walker ruled that warrantless eavesdropping has been so widely reported that there appears to be no danger of spilling secrets.
March 11th, 2007
Lighting a New Frontier
Josh Richman, Oakland Tribune
The Oakland Tribune reported on EFF's ground-breaking FOIA Litigation for Accountable Government Project, which seeks information through Freedom of Information Act about the government's expanding use of new technologies that invade Americans' privacy.
March 10th, 2007
Foundation fights for right to information
Josh Richman, Contra Costa Times
Digital sunshine pours forth from an office near Washington's' Dupont Circle...
Technology's constant evolution makes it "all the more important that we be aggressive and establish our right to get information as soon as possible," FLAG Project Director David Sobel said. Wait any longer and "the information is likely to be obsolete by the time we get it.
"And when it comes to the government's capacity to engage in invasive conduct, I'm still surprised at what we find."
March 9th, 2007
www.wboc.com/Global/story.asp?S=6202763&nav=QEMt
CBS/Associated Press
The FBI improperly and, in some cases, illegally used the USA Patriot Act to secretly obtain personal information about people in the United States, a Justice Department audit concluded Friday...
Cindy Cohn, the legal director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said the government, in general, needs to return to information gathering methods used prior to the Patriot Act.
The FBI must "limit these very powerful tools to situations in which the government is actually tracking suspected terrorists or spies," Cohn told CBS News Radio.
March 8th, 2007
Record firms crack down on campuses
Hiawatha Bray, Boston Globe
The Recording Industry Association of America has opened one of its biggest assaults yet on illegal file swapping with warning letters to 13 colleges, including the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, asking them to identify on-campus file swappers who the industry intends to pursue for copyright violations...
"We think this is clearly, exactly the wrong direction to be taking," said Corynne McSherry, staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an Internet civil liberties group and vocal critic of the music industry's campaign. "It's very clear that illegal downloading is continuing apace and is doing just fine."
March 8th, 2007
News-Press Allegedly Asks Google to Reveal Blog Commenter
Drew Mackie, Santa Barbara Independent
One presumably regular reader of BlogaBarbara - the online journal of Santa Barbara happenings kept by the pseudonymous Sara De La Guerra - would have checked the site yesterday and found a departure from the frequent musings on the internal happenings at the Santa Barbara News-Press: a warning directed specifically at himself or herself that Ampersand Publishing wants to know their name...
Corynne McSherry, an EFF staff attorney who describes the organization as "the ACLU of the internet," said standard procedure of the EFF in these kinds of cases is to demand the subpoenaing party to present just cause for the action in order to ensure that people aren't being exposed for petty reasons. "It's important to understand we're not saying that under no circumstances should you not be able to find out someone's identity if that person has genuinely defamed you... in a way that people would actually believe them," McSherry said. "If that's the case, then you may have a basis for legitimate claim to sue them in a court of law."
March 7th, 2007
Proposed FAIR USE Act to Limit DMCA Restrictions
Tuan Nguyen, Daily Tech
Excessive restrictions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act may be a thing of the past if U.S. Representative Rick Boucher has his way...
According to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), which has stood against the RIAA in many cases, the FAIR USE Act would help consumers who are being sued for wrong doing when they have not committed any crime. "The bill would loosen the grip of the DMCA, which restricts circumvention of digital rights management (DRM) restrictions even for lawful uses," said the EFF in a statement.
March 7th, 2007
Microsoft vs. Google: More at Stake Than Books
Katherine Noyes, TechNewsWorld
Microsoft attorney Thomas Rubin on Tuesday accused Google of taking a "cavalier approach to copyright" and of using its Book Search project to make money off other people's copyrighted creations. His comments have stirred up a debate over the importance of free-market competition versus what is ethical when accessing information.
"My take is that there's something more at stake here than just a spat between Google and Microsoft," Fred von Lohmann, senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told the E-Commerce Times.
"The bigger question is whether or not you agree with Microsoft that only those who collaborate in advance with copyright holders should be able to innovate and build on the value of copyrighted works. This is ironic coming from a company that claims to be in the business of innovation," he noted.
March 6th, 2007
Thread Control: Lessons from USA Today
Catherine Holahan, BusinessWeek.com
When USA Today's staff redesigned the online arm of the national newspaper, they included plenty of space for ordinary readers to "join the conversation"...
The job is somewhat easier online than in print, thanks to a section in the 1996 Communication Decency Act that shields owners of Web forums from the comments made in them. "In essence, Congress has said that the soapbox should not be held liable for what the speaker has said," says Kurt Opsahl, a staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit public advocacy group focused on free speech online.
March 6th, 2007
Microsoft's Accusations Against Google Don't Impress Copyright Gurus
Jessie Seyfer, The Recorder
Copyright experts scoffed Tuesday at attempts by a top Microsoft lawyer to discredit Google's approach to copyrighted material...
The 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals is expected to rule on three related cases on that subject by the end of the summer, said Fred Von Lohmann, a staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation in San Francisco.
Von Lohmann said Rubin's speech, which played up the fact that Microsoft asks copyright holders' permission before using their works, highlighted a way of thinking that he finds highly disturbing. Seeking permission from movie studios and publishing houses before using their material for a new innovation might be something Microsoft -- with its resources -- can do easily, but small-time innovators can't, Von Lohmann said.
March 5th, 2007
Furore after YouTube pulls line dance video
Shaun Nichols, vnunet.com
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has stepped in on behalf of an amateur video maker in a copyright case involving a popular line dance...
"Silver's claim of copyright infringement is absurd and is a classic example of the kind of Digital Millennium Copyright Act abuse that can chill internet speech," said EFF attorney Corynne McSherry.
"Even if Silver had a valid copyright in the dance, which is not at all clear, this is fair use and not infringing."
March 2nd, 2007
Just An Online Minute... Dancing With Absurdity
Wendy Davis, MediaPost
Several weeks ago, Viacom famously demanded that YouTube purge a trove of clips from the site -- including some clips not actually owned by the media company, such as a group of friends having dinner at Somerville, Mass.-restaurant Redbones. As it turns out, Viacom isn't the only one to wrongly ask for clips' removal from YouTube. Richard Silver of Groton, Conn., self-described inventor of the "Electric Slide" dance steps, also recently demanded that YouTube take down a clip showing audience members at a concert performing the dance, according to a new lawsuit by the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
