In The News: April, 2007
April 30th, 2007
Administrators Limit Student Site's Content
Clifford M. Marks, Harvard Crimson
Less than a week after this month's launch of CrimsonConnect.com, a student-driven portal created as an alternative to the University's my.harvard.edu Web site, the project's leader received an e-mail from Harvard administrators requesting that PIN-protected content be removed from the portal...
"I will say that in general, factual information is not something the University can restrict as a copyright thing," said Jason Schultz, a staff attorney who specializes in intellectual property law at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. "From a legal point of getting sued, factual information is one of the solid grounds you can have for republishing."
April 30th, 2007
Property web site takes snooping a step further
Sue McAllister, San Jose Mercury News
It's simple these days to find vast amounts of free real estate information online, including photos of houses for sale, value estimates and recent sales data - information that until recently was hard for most consumers to find...
Government databases of property records for years have been sold to private companies who use them for marketing purposes, among other things, said Lee Tien, senior staff attorney for San Francisco's Electronic Frontier Foundation, which addresses such questions as whether the government should be archiving as much information as it does.
"Public records have always been a double-edged sword for privacy, but it didn't hit us in the face most of the time," the way it does in the Internet age, he said. Some consumers will be upset about PropertyShark's display of data, he said, "then we'll have a public dialogue about it, which is the way it has to be."
April 29th, 2007
Baldwin's big mouth sends new message
CW Nevius, San Francisco Chronicle
Actor Alec Baldwin isn't likely to win Father of the Year. However, he's well on his way to winning Phone Message of the Year...
"I'll bet you will be able to find that phone tape in 50 years,'' says Jason Schultz, staff attorney for the San Francisco-based Electronic Frontier Foundation, a free-speech and privacy nonprofit.
April 28th, 2007
Studios want security at cinemas to stop piracy
CBC
Hollywood studios are stepping up their efforts to prevent movie piracy in Canada by hiring security to search for camcorders at the openings of blockbuster movies...
Ren Bucholz of online advocacy group Electronic Frontier Foundation said studios are looking in the wrong place to stop pirates.
April 27th, 2007
New spyware legislation a mixed bag
Nate Anderson, Ars Technica
A comprehensive spyware bill recently cleared the House Energy & Commerce Committee's Subcommittee on Commerce, Trade, and Consumer Protection (it flows trippingly from the tongue, no?) and is busy stirring up controversy...
Fred von Lohmann, a senior staff attorney for the EFF, said in a statement that "this is a terrible move" because "software and adware vendors are trying to quietly block consumer class actions that could target their misbehavior." The EFF believes, for instance, that it could not have brought suit against Sony BMG for the rootkit that was installed on many of the company's CDs if this law had been in place at the time. "If Congress is serious about enacting tough anti-spyware laws," von Lohmann continued, "it should create incentives that would encourage private citizens to pursue the bad guys."
April 26th, 2007
Carte Blanche Criminal Law a Threat to Innovation
Ag-IP-news
The European Parliament voted today on the first Community criminal law ever, the Criminal Measures IP directive...
An alliance of European Consumer's Organization (BEUC), Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), Foundation for a free Information Infrastructure (FFII) and the European Bureau of Library, Information and Documentation Associations (EBLIDA), representing European consumers, innovators and library associations, strongly oppose certain provisions of the proposed directive on the enforcement of Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs).
April 26th, 2007
To avoid court showdown, lawmakers may tweak online trademark registry program
Linda Fantin, Salt Lake Tribune
Legislative leaders are looking to tweak a troublesome trademark protection program rather than defend it in court, after an unprecedented meeting with Internet power brokers who would prefer the new registry be scrapped...
The Electronic Frontier Foundation says the law may be in conflict with existing federal laws and is "a dangerous step toward transforming trademarks into monopolies on language" that courts have struck down.
April 26th, 2007
IPRED2 passes, with tweaks to protect personal copying
Mark Ballard and Lucy Sherriff, The Register
The European Parliament voted yesterday to pass legislation that could still see people copying music or movies for their own personal use stand in the dock alongside hard-nosed counterfeiters and commercial copyright blaggers...
Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) spokesman Danny O'Brien says there were really only two good possible outcomes: the first would have been an outright rejection. The other would be that the directive was so badly drafted and so unclear that the council would be unwilling to let it pass into criminal law and would tear it apart.
April 26th, 2007
IP Enforcement Directive Clears EU Parliament But Opposition Remains
Dugie Standeford, Intellectual Property Watch
A European Commission proposal to criminalise intentional, for-profit intellectual property counterfeiting and piracy won backing from the European Parliament on 25 April. The 374-278 first-reading vote on an amended version of the IP enforcement rights directive, known as IPRED2, followed months of controversy and heavy lobbying which show no signs of abating...
Defining commercial scale as "obtaining by a commercial advantage" does not make it clear "if saving money by filesharing instead of buying CDs would give anyone a commercial advantage or not," said Erik Josefsson, the Electronic Frontier Foundation's (EFF's) European affairs coordinator. If it did, he said, the act of sharing files would, under Zingaretti's definition, not be considered private use for personal and not-for-profit purposes.
April 26th, 2007
Controversial copyright directive passes European Parliament
Timothy B. Lee, Ars Technica
The Second Intellectual Property Enforcement Directive (IPRED2), which we last covered earlier this month, came another step closer to passage yesterday, as it was approved by the European Parliament...
Ren Bucholz of the Electronic Frontier Foundation notes that the relatively close vote-374 to 278-points to growing opposition to the directive across Europe. The directive will now go to the Council of the European Union, which is made up of representatives of the governments of each of the EU's member countries.
April 25th, 2007
U.S. Chamber of Commerce: Companies Should Be Allowed To Break Law if Helping Government
Ryan Singel, Wired News
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is arguing to a federal appeals court that laws shouldn't apply to companies that help the government in the name of homeland security and that the court should dismiss a suit against AT&T for allegedly violating federal privacy laws in helping the government spy on Americans without warrants...
The group filed an amicus brief with the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals last month, as the court prepares to hear an appeal of a lower court decision allowing a suit against AT&T by the Electronic Frontier Foundation to proceed, despite the government's attempt to squash the case by arguing that the case will imperil national security.
April 24th, 2007
YouTube Is Not A Crime: EFF And Viacom Settle Up
Scott Gilbertson, Wired News
The EFF has dismissed its lawsuit against Viacom. The suit was originally filed last month on behalf of MoveOn and Brave New Films after Viacom sent a massive number of DMCA takedown notices to YouTube which resulted in the removal of content that was in no way related to Viacom,
In a note on the EFF site yesterday the foundation writes that it dropped the suit because "Viacom acknowledged their mistake, told us about the policies it has put in place to protect fair use on YouTube, and agreed to introduce improvements to those policies."
April 23rd, 2007
SF Activist Groups Drop Viacom Lawsuit Over Colbert Parody
KTVU and Bay City News
Two activist groups Monday dismissed a lawsuit they filed in federal court in San Francisco last month against Viacom International Inc. for demanding removal of a parody of the Colbert Report from YouTube...
Fred Von Lohmann, an Electronic Frontier Foundation lawyer who represented MoveOn.org, said the media conglomerate had taken important steps "to respect newsworthy and transformative uses of their material."
The attorney said, "We hope other media companies will follow Viacom's lead."
April 23rd, 2007
Viacom: We goofed on Colbert parody takedown notice; case dismissed
Eric Bangeman, Ars Technica
The Electronic Frontier Foundation and Viacom have agreed to dismiss a lawsuit accusing Viacom of misusing the DMCA after the entertainment company admitted it erred in issuing a takedown notice to YouTube. The EFF and the Stanford Law School's Fair Use Project filed the lawsuit after Viacom issued the DMCA takedown notice over a clip parodying comedian Stephen Colbert, whose Colbert Report airs on Viacom's Comedy Central channel...
"With Viacom sending more than 160,000 DMCA takedown notices, it may not even be aware which videos it told YouTube to remove," said the EFF. "If that's right, then Viacom will inevitably end up censoring some perfectly legitimate videos-surely, the MoveOn/Brave New Films video is not the only example of a fair use that got caught in Viacom's driftnet."
April 23rd, 2007
Activist groups drop lawsuit against Viacom over removal of parody on YouTube
Anick Jesdanun, Associated Press
Activist groups dropped a federal lawsuit against Viacom Inc. on Monday after the parent of Comedy Central acknowledged it made a mistake by asking YouTube to yank a parody of the cable network's "The Colbert Report"...
The Electronic Frontier Foundation declared victory in announcing that Viacom agreed to add information on its Web site about its stance on such parodies and to set up an e-mail address to receive complaints about possible errors in the future.
April 23rd, 2007
Policing Web Video With 'Fingerprints'
Kevin J. Delaney, Brooks Barnes, and Matthew Karnitschnig, Wall Street Journal
Can "fingerprinting" bring a truce to the Web's video-copyright wars?..
Video-sharing sites such as YouTube say they are protected from liability for copyright claims under "safe harbor" provisions in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998. But, under the DMCA, sites that have "actual knowledge" or control of infringing content can lose such protections. "What these filters do is potentially create more knowledge, more awareness of what's going on," says Fred von Lohmann, senior intellectual-property attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation in San Francisco. "There is some residual risk that you could lose the safe-harbor protections if you have too much of that kind of knowledge."
April 23rd, 2007
EFF Makes Viacom Cry Uncle On Fair Use
Jason Lee Miller, WebProNews
We've said it before: It's not a good idea to eff with the EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation). Now that Viacom has admitted it effed up by ordering the take down of a parody on YouTube, the EFF and Stanford Law's Fair Use Project (FUP, or as they collectively should be known, EFF-FUP) have dismissed their lawsuit.
April 23rd, 2007
EFF Drops Viacom Suit
Mat Honan, Wired News
The EFF announced that its dropping its lawsuit against Viacom on Monday after the company admitted error in issuing a DMCA takedown notice against a YouTube parody of The Colbert Report. The DMCA takedown prompted the EFF to file a lawsuit on behalf of the video's creators, MoveOn.org and Brave New Films. The EFF has now dismissed that suit following action from Viacom.
April 21st, 2007
www.denverpost.com/opinion/ci_5707972
Editorial: "Increase information access", Denver Post
The 1966 federal Freedom of Information Act is an incomparable tool for citizens, businesses, organizations and journalists who need access to government documents.
Unfortunately, it's a tool that the government all too often makes as hard as possible to use.
A recent Washington Post item noted the FBI had told a federal court that it could comply with a request from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a group that works to protect privacy - but it couldn't finish the work until 2013.
April 20th, 2007
Utah's Scared of the Internet
Jason Lee Miller, WebProNews
Utah lawmakers are at it again, mulling a legislative crackdown on open wi-fi connections because they make it easier for children to access online pornography...
The Electronic Frontier Foundation has already taken Utah to task on "dangerous" laws. Given that the EFF isn't afraid of the FBI or the European Union, and has a history of spanking its opponents, Utah may be in for some trouble.
April 19th, 2007
Copyright protection warning for Web 2.0 start ups
Gavin Clarke, The Register
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has given Web 2.0 media sharing start-ups some non-technical advice: run your ideas past a lawyer first to stay on the right side of copyright law...
"One of the big mistakes I see in this space is failure to engage legal counsel soon enough. Often these involve business issues - like how do you want users and employees to interact on the site," staff attorney Fred von Lohman said.
April 19th, 2007
Judge rules county violated election law
Ian Hoffman, The Daily Review
A state judge has found that elections officials in Alameda County violated the California Constitution and election law by refusing to provide data about Diebold touchscreen voting machinery to proponents of a failed ballot initiative seeking a recount...
Matt Zimmerman, an electronic-voting expert at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, applauded the ruling is "an absolute, best-case scenario." "There's certainly no motivation here for elections officials to want to voluntarily turn this over because any indication that anything went wrong implicates their administration and their selection of the machines in the first place," Zimmerman said. "We haven't had a good ruling like this to tell elections officials to follow the law."
April 18th, 2007
Open Source, Transparency and Electronic Voting
John P. Mello Jr., TechNewsWorld
Transparency has become a rallying cry for critics of existing electronic voting systems mad by secretive corporations jealously guarding the software code inside their products...
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has been frustrated by the clandestine nature of the electronic voting systems it has encountered, according to Staff Attorney Matt Zimmerman.
Speaking before a congressional subcommittee on elections last month, Zimmerman testified, "EFF has served, among other roles, as both election observers and as legal counsel for voters who felt compelled to challenge the use of results of apparently malfunctioning voting equipment.
"In both capacities, we and others have been severely hampered by the lack of transparency inherent in the current closed technological regime.
"For both of these purposes, the use of open or disclosed source voting technology as a component of a more open election process would immediately and demonstrably lead to a more competent electorate," he stated.
April 17th, 2007
Internet freedom group wants delay in Utah law
Glen Warchol, Salt Lake Tribune
A organization dedicated to protecting Internet freedom Monday asked Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff to halt implementation of Utah's new Trademark Protection Act, saying it will harm consumers and threatens free speech.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation urged Shurtleff to delay the law's June 30 implementation because consumer groups and law professors "believe that the legislation's restrictions on using trademarks to trigger competitive advertising will have a devastating effect on Internet users, online speech, and Internet commerce."
April 17th, 2007
Google plan raises privacy issue
Joseph Menn, Los Angeles Times
Google Inc.'s purchase of DoubleClick Inc. would create the world's single largest repository of details about people's behavior online, an unnerving prospect for some privacy experts...
"This is something that is concerning," said Kurt Opsahl, an attorney with the nonprofit Electronic Frontier Foundation.
April 17th, 2007
Privacy concerns dog Google-DoubleClick deal
Stefanie Olsen, CNET
There is growing unease among consumer privacy advocates over Google's proposed $3.1 billion acquisition of DoubleClick...
"This is bringing together two very large advertising networks. To the extent that information is being centralized raises concerns that it could become a target" for hackers or overzealous government investigators, said Kurt Opsahl, senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a legal advocacy group. "Google said it has no plans to integrate the two services...but that doesn't mean that later, you might not develop those plans."
April 14th, 2007
Soldiers' stories and then some -- series brings home both sides of war
David Wiegand, San Francisco Chronicle
"America at a Crossroads" is the 11-part documentary series supposedly designed to prove that the Public Broadcasting System isn't a teeming nest of lily-livered, anti-war, Bush-bashing liberals, so please don't cut off our funding...
But perhaps the scariest film of all is "Security Versus Liberty: The Other War" (9 p.m. Friday), which reminds us that the protection of liberty is often at odds with liberty itself. The film looks at the ongoing tug of war between the Bush administration, armed with the Homeland Security Act, and groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union and the San Francisco-based Electronic Frontier Foundation, not to mention a group of Connecticut librarians who fought the government's efforts to acquire information on book borrowers through something called a National Security Letter.
April 13th, 2007
EFF Sues For Release of NSL Abuse Records
Joe Lewis, WebProNews
On the heels of Congressional hearings and extensive media coverage of a Justice Department report documenting abuse of privacy measures, the Electronic Frontier Foundation is seeking an emergency order that would require the FBI to surrender and make public all records regarding the misuse of National Security Letters (NSLs) to collect private information from American citizens...
"Congress has already dedicated several hearings to the FBI's abuse of investigative power and is thinking about how to prevent such abuses in the future," said EFF Staff Attorney Marcia Hofmann.
"But if there is going to be meaningful debate about this issue, we need more information than what the Administration chooses to make public, and we need it now."
April 13th, 2007
Higher digital music prices not a good deal
Brian Garrity, Reuters
Four years ago when Apple launched the iTunes Music Store, the company preached the good news of an easy-to-understand pricing structure for consumers: all tracks at 99 cents, most albums for $9.99...
In Apple's case, critics like Peter Eckersley of the Electronic Frontier Foundation contend that consumers actually are getting a raw deal by being charged a 30% premium to effectively buy back their rights. And while audio quality is improved, it still doesn't match CD quality.
April 12th, 2007
Utah vs. Google: Trademark Debates Heat Up
Joe Lewis, WebProNews
The Utah State Legislature has passed a bill that would make it illegal to purchase keywords relating to a competitor's product in order to show up alongside them in search results. The Trademark Protection Act has come under much public scrutiny, most notably by Google...
As if the mounting case against the Constitutionality of the bill weren't bad enough for Utah, now the Electronic Frontier Foundation is involved.
April 12th, 2007
Google vs. Utah: State takes flak for its attempts to police Web
Linda Fantin and Glen Warchol, Salt Lake Tribune
Corynne McSherry is an attorney with the San Francisco-based Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF)...
McSherry says Utah's new law poses a serious problem for the state, noting the EFF probably would support a lawsuit. Keying off a trademark to give consumers information about competitive products is fair use and protected under federal trademark law, she says.
"If it weren't, we wouldn't have the Pepsi Challenge, Apple wouldn't be able to make fun of Microsoft on national television every night, and Burger King wouldn't be able to put up a billboard next to a McDonald's," McSherry says.
"If I were a Utah taxpayer, I would wonder why my representative wanted to vote for a bill that hurts me as a consumer and one the state's own counsel said is unconstitutional."
April 12th, 2007
EFF takes up arms against Euro copyright move
Lucy Sherriff, The Register
The European wing of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has taken on the might of the European Commission by beginning its opposition to IPRED2, the proposed new directive that aims to harmonise European copyright laws...
Their new site says: IPRED2's new crime of "aiding, abetting and inciting" infringement again takes aim at innovators, including open source coders, media-sharing sites like YouTube, and ISPs that refuse to block P2P services.
April 11th, 2007
FBI Gets Six Years for FOIA Request
Ellen Nakashima, Washington Post
The oldest reported Freedom of Information Act request in the federal government resides at the Justice Department and is 18 years old -- or, as the National Security Archive, a research group that tracks these things, likes to say, "old enough to enlist in the Army and go to Iraq."
So perhaps it should be no surprise that the FBI has just told a federal court that it will need until 2013 to process a request for information from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a privacy organization.
April 11th, 2007
National Security Letters Back in the Spotlight
Luke O'Brien, Wired News
The FBI's controversial use of National Security Letters to illegally obtain phone, email and banking records of American citizens will be under the microscope again today as an NSL recipient testifies in front of Congress about his experience...
In related news, the Electronic Frontier Foundation has sued the Justice Department to force the FBI to release all records concerning the illegal use of NSLs. The EFF claims the FBI is dragging its feet and has failed to meet a 20-day timeline set by Congress.
April 10th, 2007
Students sue antiplagiarism website for rights to their homework
Ben Arnoldy, Christian Science Monitor
In a table-turning episode in the digital copyright wars, four teenagers are suing a business for allegedly trampling on their copyrights. Their product: homework...
"There are a lot of businesses that depend on making [digital] copies in order to index, or make things searchable, or create filters, or [perform] matching. All of these kinds of things today are valuable and in high demand," says Fred von Lohmann, a lawyer with the Electronic Frontier Foundation in San Francisco. "You'll see a lot more cases involving indexing copy."
April 10th, 2007
A "new kind of identity theft": Utah bans keyword advertising by rival firms
Nate Anderson, Ars technica
Utah is best known for snow, salt, and Mormons, but the state also has a large business community that has no plans to keep turning the other cheek when it comes to keyword advertising...
This entire issue is really just the extension of comparative advertising into a new medium. As the EFF points out, this sort of thing has been legal in the off-line world for decades. "Comparative advertising uses those shorthand terms to provide more information about the trademarked product and competitive products," says Corynne McSherry."That's why comparative trademark use is clearly protected under federal trademark law. If it weren't, Pepsi wouldn't be able to tell consumers that more people think Pepsi tastes better than Coke, and Apple wouldn't be able to make fun of Microsoft on national television every night."
April 10th, 2007
Just An Online Minute... Utah, Land Of Dumb Internet Laws?
Wendy Davis, MediaPost
Utah has quietly passed a new law that aims to regulate search advertising by prohibiting marketers from bidding to appear as sponsored links when people search for names of their rivals. For instance, the law would ban Dell Computer from bidding to appear as a paid search ad when search users query on the term IBM...
The Electronic Frontier Foundation and others have come out strongly in favor of allowing trademarks to trigger paid search links, arguing that such ads benefit consumers.
April 9th, 2007
Can Data Have a Life After a Death?
Stanley P. Jaskiewicz, Law.com
Everyone who has worked with a computer, even before the arrival of the Internet, knows the sickening feeling of loss. Without warning, hours of your work suddenly vanish from the screen...
According to Cindy Cohn of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the practical solution recommended by the Army memo -- "to make explicit plans ahead of time to grant or deny access to their private e-mail accounts -- whether that involves handing passwords to a trusted friend or loved one, leaving word with their families that they would like the privacy of their e-mail respected even after death, or any number of other options" is "good advice for soldiers and their families, but it applies to everyone with an e-mail account."
April 9th, 2007
RIAA and movie industry want to pretext
Nick Farrell, The Inquirer
The RIAA and the movie industry are lobbying lawmakers in a bid to get it excused from tough laws on pretexting...
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) said that if the RIAA gets away with its changes it will create a loophole which is so big that nobody else has to follow the law either.
April 9th, 2007
Sites uncover online dating web of lies
Jessica Yadegaran, Contra Costa Times
Beware of Gregory from Oakland. He is not single. Rather, he is married, and cheats on his wife Saturday nights before church, no less. Not only that, but "he dyes his hair and lies about his age," according to a post by his anonymous ex-girlfriend on Dontdatehimgirl.com...
Some men have pursued legal action, with no success.
"The soap box is not liable for what the speaker says," explains Kurt Opsahl, an attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, citing Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. Passed in 1996, it protects Web site owners from content posted by third parties.
The speaker, however, still remains liable. Even an anonymous defamer can be tracked down through his or her IP address, Opsahl says.
April 7th, 2007
MarketWatch writer leaves amid conflict report
Mark Boslet, San Jose Mercury News
The blogosphere has been called the Wild West of the 21st century, a free-wheeling panoply of information from sources trustworthy and not...
"The blogosphere has a relatively unregulated context, and I think that is a good thing," said Fred von Lohmann, senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. "Readers have to become critical consumers of information."
April 7th, 2007
Music and movie piracy hunters go after privacy law
Dawn C. Chmielewski and Marc Lifsher, Los Angeles Times
The music and movie industries are lobbying state legislators for permission to deceive when pursuing suspected music pirates...
"I don't see why the recording industry shouldn't have to follow the same laws that everyone else follows," said Fred von Lohmann, senior staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital rights advocacy group in San Francisco. "It appears they want to make the loophole so big that nobody else has to follow the law, either."
April 5th, 2007
Protecting Your College From Patent Lawsuits Over Technology
The Chronicle of Higher Education
Companies are being granted what critics call overly broad patents on common technologies that colleges use. The companies are attempting to enforce the patents - by demanding the payment of royalties - on such routine activities as streaming videos online and administering tests over the Internet...
Jason Schultz, a lawyer and advocate for liberal rights in cyberspace, will answer your questions about patent law, what colleges should be concerned about, and how colleges can protect themselves from lawsuits.
April 5th, 2007
Utah Ban On Trademarked Keywords Rankles Groups
Thomas Claburn, InformationWeek
Utah last month enacted Utah SB 236, the "Trademark Protection Act," a law that effectively prohibits the competitive use of trademarked terms as keyword advertising triggers...
"Aside from its constitutional flaws, the law is just bad public policy," said Corynne McSherry, an attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, in a recent blog post. "It undermines the fundamental purpose of trademarks: to improve consumer access to accurate information about goods and services."
April 4th, 2007
Utah Law Bans Competitor Keyword Bids
David Utter, WebProNews
The Utah State Legislature has passed a Trademark Protection Act that creates a new type of mark called an electronic registration mark; it probably will not survive a Constitutional test according to the state's own general counsel...
Banning such competitor trademark usage would undermine legally permitted comparative advertising, according to the EFF's Corynne McSherry. "That's why comparative trademark use is clearly protected under federal trademark law. If it weren't, Pepsi wouldn't be able to tell consumers that more people think Pepsi tastes better than Coke," she wrote.
April 3rd, 2007
DRM activists hail EMI Apple deal
Shaun Nichols, IT Week
Digital rights groups have reacted with cautious optimism after EMI announced that it had struck a deal with Apple to distribute its titles in the iTunes Music Store without digital rights management (DRM) technology.
"Certainly this is a step in the right direction," Derek Slater, activism coordinator for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told vnunet.com. "It is long past time that the record labels opened up."
April 2nd, 2007
Google to sell EchoStar satellite TV ads
Michael Liedke, Associated Press
Google Inc. will sell and select some of the ads shown to EchoStar Communications Corp.'s 13.1 million satellite TV subscribers, marking the online search leader's latest effort to extend its marketing muscle beyond the Internet...
The privacy controls built into Google's TV advertising system will depend largely on how well EchoStar shields the data collected from its set-top boxes, said Kurt Opsahl, a staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an online civil liberties watchdog.
"The more you aggregate the data, the less troubling it becomes" from a privacy rights perspective, Opsahl said.
April 2nd, 2007
Jobs Unlikely to Push for Lift of Video DRM
Nancy Gohring, PC World
Apple Inc. CEO Steve Jobs may be pushing for music labels to lift copyright protection on digital music but he doesn't appear so eager to do the same for video content, despite his position as the largest shareholder in Walt Disney...
The Electronic Frontier Foundation is another group that has been pushing the music and video industries to drop DRM. While the EMI announcement is a step in the right direction, "why shouldn't this apply to video sold in the iTunes video store? It seems the basic reason for removing DRM should apply there too," said Derek Slater, activism coordinator for EFF.
April 1st, 2007
New rules have passport lines out the door
Suzanne Bohan, San Mateo County Times
Corinne Monge likes to travel to Mexico, but has an expired passport...
When she gets her new document in several weeks, she'll be joining the ranks of Americans carrying ultra secure passports, complete with embedded chips, aimed at foiling attempts by terrorists and others with criminal intent from gaining entry into the country...
Privacy advocates such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation fear that anyone with strong intent to read travelers' digital information could devise a system to do so.
