Today (September 30) Yahoo is shutting down the DRM servers used in the Yahoo Music store. In a stand up move, the company is offering coupons or refunds to customers who find their songs unplayable after the shutdown. The action was praised by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which was lobbying the company to delay the DRM shutdown.

In a statement, the EFF says: "Yahoo's decision sets a good precedent for when this problem inevitably arises again, vendors that sold DRM-crippled music must either continue supporting tech neither they or their customers like - as MSN Music chose to do - or take Yahoo's path and fairly compensate consumers with refunds."

The House of Representatives on Sunday cleared the intellectual property enforcement bill that would create an "IP coordinator" position in the White House...

The measure has received wide support from the business community, including from groups like the Recording Industry Association of America and the AFL-CIO, but it is opposed by public interest groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Public Knowledge.

The fate of technological innovation may once again be at stake in Arista v. LimeWire, the recording industry lawsuit that seeks to hold a technology company liable for the actions of its users. In an amicus brief submitted to the court, the EFF and a coalition of digital rights groups say that this case's outcome may be as important as the MGM v. Grokster case—perhaps even as important as the Sony Betamax ruling.

When Merlin Mann is on the go and needs to access his computer information he steps into the cloud...

Some are leery of cloud computing because it puts control of cherished data in the hands of companies that run the servers, raising questions about privacy and what happens when there are hardware or Internet problems. "You don't know where your data is really being stored," Danny O'Brien of the Internet rights group Electronic Frontier Foundation said.

Jammie Thomas, who was ordered to pay $222,000 to a group of music labels for allegedly pirating songs using the Kazaa peer-to-peer service, has been granted a new trial...

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, which had filed briefs in the case, supported the judge's ruling. "EFF applauds Chief Judge Davis's thorough rejection of the RIAA's effort to rewrite copyright law and thereby avoid the trouble of actually proving any infringement has occurred," Corynne McSherry wrote in a blog post. "And we wholeheartedly endorse the court's call to amend the Copyright Act's oppressive damages provisions."

US cable provider Comcast has presented its long-term solution for managing broadband traffic...

"The new system appears to be a reasonable attempt at sharing limited bandwidth among groups of users," wrote EFF staff technologist Peter Eckersley.

"Comcast's objective here is still largely to prioritise non-peer-to-peer traffic above peer-to-peer traffic. But the criterion they use is the amount of data a cable modem sends during each 15 minute period, which is a much fairer rule than examining the traffic protocol."

Since 2007, in a "quiet" reversal of a two-decades-old policy, US customs officials have been able to read and copy personal documents of people -- including US citizens -- not suspected of wrongdoing that enter the United States, two civil rights organizations said Tuesday...

"Your laptop computer likely contains a massive amount of private information such as personal e-mails, financial data or confidential business records," said EFF lawyer Marcia Hofmann.
"The Department of Homeland Security has given its agents increasingly broad authority to search, copy, and store that information. Congress needs to step in now to stop these invasive practices and protect travelers," said Hofmann.

The law firm Jones Day is "abusing" its trademark in an attempt to squelch a Web publisher's legitimate news articles, digital rights groups said in court papers filed in the case.

In a friend-of-the-court brief filed in federal district court in Chicago late last week, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Public Citizen, Public Knowledge and the Citizen Media Law Project argue that Jones Day's lawsuit against the real estate BlockShopper.com should be dismissed.

"A large firm with overwhelming resources seeks to use trademark law to prevent a small real estate news site from conveying accurate information about the firm and its associates," the groups wrote. "The use in question is clearly a fair use."

The U.S. government has quietly recast policies that affect the way information is gathered from U.S. citizens and others crossing the border and what is done with it, including relaxing a two-decade-old policy that placed a high bar on federal agents copying travelers' personal material, according to newly released documents...

Marcia Hofmann, staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said that laptop computers may contain "a massive amount of private information such as personal e-mails, financial data or confidential business records" and that the government should not violate travelers' constitutional rights in the name of national security.

Large Chicago law firm Jones Day is suing a tiny Internet startup called BlockShopper over the use of the humble hyperlink. But BlockShopper has picked up a pair of allies in the form of the EFF and Public Citizen, and the two groups jointly filed an amici curiae brief with the court that points out the obvious: "linking is what web sites do—that is, after all, why it is called the 'World Wide Web'."

The U.S. Department of Justice's current position on a law governing electronic storage raises questions about how it might prosecute the hacker who accessed Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin's Yahoo e-mail account, according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF)...

"We are pointing out the irony that the DOJ would take a position that would actually make it harder to prosecute somebody for accessing stored e-mail" without authorization, said Kurt Opsahl, a senior staff attorney at the EFF who wrote the blog post.

The government has invoked the retroactive immunity provision of the recently-passed FISA Amendments Act in a motion to end the ongoing lawsuits against telecoms charged with complicity in the National Security Agency's controversial program of extrajudicial wiretapping. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, which is spearheading the litigation, promises to fight the immunity clause on constitutional grounds—and has given Ars Technica a sneak preview of the argument it plans to make...

Does that mean the corpulent contralto should start practicing her warm-up scales? Perhaps not: EFF attorney Cindy Cohn has a four-part constitutional harmony for Judge Walker to hear before he strikes the set. In an interview with Ars Technica last week, she outlined the argument she plans to present.

Internet companies led by Google Inc. joined groups representing Web users in challenging the Bush administration's bid to toughen international enforcement against copyright pirates...

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, representing Web users, sued the U.S. trade office last week, demanding it reveal details of the negotiations.

A leaked draft of the deal showed that the treaty could force Internet service providers to cooperate with copyright holders, the group said.

How can you prevent a Palin webmail hack from happening to you? The short answer: you can't...

The hacker could face felony charges for violating the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, but could also avoid prosecution thanks to a Department of Justice loophole, according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey on Saturday denied that the Bush administration -- in conjunction with the nation's telecommunication companies -- devised a "dragnet" electronic surveillance program that funneled Americans' communications to the National Security Agency without court warrants...

The lawsuit was brought in 2006 by the San Francisco-based Electronic Frontier Foundation. The EFF's lawsuit includes documents from a former AT&T technician that the EFF claims describe a secret room in an AT&T building in San Francisco that is wired up to share raw internet traffic with the NSA.

A battle is brewing over a secretive intellectual property agreement being negotiated by the U.S. and several other nations. Leaked documents indicate the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) would allow multiple countries to enforce each others' intellectual property laws. That, some fear, could pose substantial risks to your privacy rights.

Two public interest groups, the Electronic Frontier Foundation Latest News about Electronic Frontier Foundation and Public Knowledge, filed a lawsuit this week to gain access to the documents. Their previous requests for information, they say, have gone unfilled.

Broadening its fight against the government's "unconstitutional and illegal dragnet surveillance" of millions of Americans, a watchdog group today filed a lawsuit against the National Security Agency, the president, vice president and other government agencies and officials involved in the domestic surveillance program...

"The suit alleges that the spying violates the constitution, as well as a variety of federal privacy laws," Kevin Bankston, a senior attorney with the EFF, said on a conference call with reporters.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation and Public Knowledge are two public interest groups leaving no stone unturned when it comes to trying to uncover details about the proposed Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement.

Perhaps no topic over the past year has been cause for more uneasy speculation within the intellectual property community than the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), primarily because the negotiating process for this treaty has been behind tightly closed doors. Now two US-based public interest organisations have filed suit against the US trade office in charge of the negotiations, in hopes of being able to gain access to the records currently under lock and key.

ACTA was announced in October 2007 as a partnership to combat counterfeiting and piracy that the US and several of its trading partners view as critical threats to their businesses and the cause of billions of dollars in lost revenue annually.

...

Now, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a California non-profit focussing on the defence of civil liberties in the digital age, and Public Knowledge, a Washington, DC non-profit engaged in consumer advocacy on issues of intellectual property law and technology have filed suit against the USTR to try and obtain the information.

After signing onto a letter earlier this week that demanded access to draft work being done by Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) negotiators, the EFF and Public Knowledge took their complaints about the secret treaty a step further today and filed a lawsuit to gain access to negotiating materials.

The suit (PDF), filed in the DC federal court, uses the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) as the basis for its demands. After reading the leaked Wikileaks documents on the treaty, the EFF and Public Knowledge made a FOIA request to the US Trade Representative. In a letter dated June 11, the groups asked for a comprehensive list of materials dealing with ACTA, including participant lists, agendas, presentations, memoranda, and correspondence.

A non-profit Internet rights group on Thursday filed a lawsuit against President George W. Bush and others in his administration for the "massively illegal" surveillance of emails and telephone calls without court warrants...

"Our goal in this new case against the government, as in our case against AT&T, is to dismantle this dragnet surveillance program as soon as possible," said EFF senior staff attorney Kevin Bankston.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a California-based privacy group, filed a lawsuit against the National Security Agency (NSA), President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, and several other administration officials on behalf of AT&T customers in an effort to stop the government's warrantless wiretapping program.

The lawsuit "is aimed at ending the NSA's dragnet surveillance of millions of ordinary Americans and holding accountable the government officials who illegally authorized it," according to a statement from EFF.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation filed a lawsuit Thursday against the Bush administration on behalf of AT&T customers to halt what it called the "massively illegal" warrantless surveillance of Americans' Internet and telephone communications...

"For years, the NSA has been engaged in a massive and massively illegal fishing expedition through AT&T's domestic networks and databases of customer records," senior staff attorney Kevin Bankston said in a statement. "Our goal in this new case against the government, as in our case against AT&T, is to dismantle this dragnet surveillance program as soon as possible."

A pair of public interest groups have filed suit against the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative to force disclosure of details about a “secret intellectual property enforcement treaty” that the Bush administration is currently negotiating with numerous countries...

“ACTA raises serious concerns for citizens’ civil liberties and privacy rights,” EFF international policy director Gwen Hinze said in a statement. “This treaty could potentially change the way your computer is searched at the border or spark new invasive monitoring from your ISP. People need to see the full text of ACTA now so that they can evaluate its impact on their lives and express that opinion to their political leaders. Instead, the USTR is keeping us in the dark while talks go on behind closed doors.”

Remember the international trade proposal recently leaked to Wikileaks that aims to "criminalize the non-profit facilitation of unauthorized information exchange on the internet?" That proposal (The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, or ACTA) already took aim at BitTorrent websites like the Pirate Bay, but also potentially whistleblowers, and even legit distribution systems like Tor. It's also believed that the global proposal, being hashed out in secret between governments and the entertainment industry, includes mandatory ISP piracy filters.

According to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the EFF and at least one-hundred different groups have written a letter demanding that the details of the agreement be made transparent to the general public. "Because the text of the treaty and relevant discussion documents remain secret, the public has no way of assessing whether and to what extent these and related concerns are merited," say the public interest groups in their letter. The ACTA is on the fast-track to being approved by year's end, according to the groups.

There's been speculation for months concerning the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement. If ratified, many suggest it would criminalize peer-to-peer file sharing, subject iPods to border searches and allow internet service providers to monitor their customers' communications.

...

The groups include Consumers Union, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Essential Action, IP Justice, Knowledge Ecology International, Public Knowledge, Global Trade Watch, U.S. Public Interest Research Group, IP Left (Korea), Australian Digital Alliance, The Canadian Library Association, Consumers Union of Japan, National Consumer Council (UK) and Doctors without Borders' Campaign for Essential Medicines.

The government must obtain a warrant based on probable cause of criminal activity before directing a wireless provider to turn over records that show where customers used their cellphones, a federal judge ruled Wednesday, in the first opinion by a federal district court on the issue.

...

"This is a great ruling for location privacy and for people who think the government should have probable cause before they track you," said Jennifer Granick, an attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which filed a friend-of-the-court brief in the case.

It only took a few days after politicians returned from their summer holidays for Hollywood and the major record labels to resume their legislative push to rewrite and expand digital copyright law.

The Recording Industry Association of America and the Motion Picture Association of America are lobbying for a pair of bills that enjoy bipartisan support. Both are designed to give the federal government more power to police copyright violations, and both are likely to run into opposition from political foes of the RIAA and MPAA.

...

A group of librarians and nonprofit groups, including the American Library Association, Public Knowledge, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, sent a letter to senators on Wednesday that says copyright holders--and not government lawyers funded by tax dollars--should be the ones filing the lawsuits.

A dozen special-interest groups urged lawmakers Wednesday to squelch proposed legislation that for the first time would allow the U.S. Justice Department to prosecute civil cases of copyright infringement.

Oxy The Enforcement of Intellectual Property Rights Act, (.pdf) scheduled to be heard in the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday, also creates a Cabinet-level copyright-patent czar charged with creating a worldwide plan to combat piracy. The czar would "report directly to the president and Congress regarding domestic and international intellectual property enforcement programs."

...

The dozen groups include American Association of Law Libraries, American Library Association, Consumer Federation of America, Consumers Union, Digital Future Coalition, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Essential Action, IP Justice, Knowledge Ecology International, Medical Library Association, Public Knowledge and Special Libraries Association.

On April 6, 2008, a clip of an Oklahoma police officer assaulting a man appeared on the popular video-sharing site YouTube. Tagged with “police,” “brutality” and “beat up,” it received over 20,000 views in the ten brief days that it was available.

Taken from inside the police cruiser, the clip shows a tan Toyota pickup stopped along an icy, tree-lined road. The officer is telling the man in the passenger-side seat to step outside. “Sir, turn around and put your hands behind your back,” the officer says, moving to make an arrest.

...

“YouTube takes the position of neutrals,” said Corynne McSherry, staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. “They say, ‘If we get a [DMCA] notice to take a video down, we’ll take it down. If we get a notice to put it back up, we’ll put it back up.”