It's been quite troubling that for years various schools have simply accepted propaganda and totally inaccurate "teaching materials" about copyright and used them to teach students...

Luckily, the EFF has finally launched a much more accurate and reasonable curriculum that was actually created by those who know the subject matter, rather than corporate execs and lobbyists.

Not pleased with the copyright curricula generated by Big Content, the Electronic Frontier Foundation has produced classroom materials of its own. Not surprisingly, fair use, the public domain, and artists who love P2P file-sharing of their music all make appearances.

Say you create a Web site poking fun at a company that irks you. But since you’ve identified it by name and used its logo, it slaps you with a trademark complaint, saying that you are blurring the connection between the company and its logo in the minds of the public. Before long, your Internet service provider has taken your site down. What to do?

Corynne McSherry lays out a few guidelines designed to keep site owners from being caught in trademark and copyright disputes in a new paper published by the tech-advocacy group Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Massachusetts' highest court ruled there was no probable cause for Boston College police to seize computers from the room of a student who was being investigated for allegedly sending an e-mail claiming that a fellow student was gay...

The search was challenged by attorneys from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a civil rights group, and the Boston office of law firm Fish & Richardson PC, which represented Calixte in the case.

A few weeks back, we wrote about a court ruling that said that Yahoo was protected against actions by users, thanks to Section 230 safeharbors, but that the company had effectively given up some of that protection by promising to remove some content...

Public Citizen, EFF, CDT and the Citizen Media Law Project all joined in with an amicus brief. Hopefully the court realizes the earlier sloppy ruling was a mistake, and the ability to dismiss using Section 230 safe harbors remains.

State police have returned electronics gear belonging to a Boston College computer science student, after a state supreme court judge last week threw out a search warrant that had led to its confiscation...

The ruling drew praise from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an Internet civil liberties organization that assisted in Calixte's defense.

"We're grateful that the court was able to see through the commonwealth's smokescreen and rectify this mistake," said the foundation's civil liberties director Jennifer Granick.

Investigators were tipped that habitual criminal Bernardo Garcia was back to making and dealing methamphetamine in 2005 but they needed more evidence to nail him...

"We're seeing more and more cases," said Jennifer Granick, civil liberties director at the San Francisco-based Electronic Frontier Foundation. "The law is struggling to understand the way in which these kinds of sophisticated tracking technologies change the calculus for what is private and what is an overly invasive technique."

A coalition of digital rights groups is warning that language in a recent federal appellate ruling about Yahoo "threatens significant mischief" to other Web companies.

Public Citizen, joined by the Center for Democracy & Technology, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Citizen Media Law Project, filed papers Thursday asking the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals to rewrite its opinion by deleting a passage that could make it costlier for Web sites to defend themselves in court.

Because copyright and trademark lawyers have had such itchy trigger fingers when it comes to issuing DMCA takedown notices, there’s a lot of confusion out there what exactly constitutes infringement, and what webmasters can and can’t do with intellectual property...

The Electronic Frontier Foundation posted a great, easy to understand guide to dealing with intellectual property with regard to “gripe” or parody websites. In addition to three guidelines dealing with trademarks themselves, the fab-four fair use guidelines regarding copyright are there as well.

You may not know it, but if you have a wireless router, a cordless phone, remote car-door opener, baby monitor or cellphone in your house, the FCC claims the right to enter your home without a warrant at any time of the day or night in order to inspect it...

“It is a major stretch beyond case law to assert that authority with respect to a private home, which is at the heart of the Fourth Amendment’s protection against unreasonable search and seizure,” says Electronic Frontier Foundation lawyer Lee Tien. “When it is a private home and when you are talking about an over-powered Wi-Fi antenna — the idea they could just go in is honestly quite bizarre.”

Computers play an increasingly important role under the hood of our cars, which can make repairing your ride a nightmare...

“The issue goes beyond the importance of being able to get independent repair and maintenance services,” EFF writes. “The use of technological ‘locks’ against tinkerers also threatens user innovation - the kinds of innovation that traditionally have come from independent tinkerers - which has increasingly been recognized as an important part of economic growth and technological improvement.”

Henry McMaster, the South Carolina attorney general who threatened Craigslist with criminal prosecution last week, must assume Web users and the people of his state don't take the time to read...

McMaster never had legal grounds in which to prosecute Craigslist managers, according to Matt Zimmerman of the the Electronic Frontier Foundation. He told CNET News the Communication Decency Act protects Web sites like Craigslist from being held criminally liable for the actions of users.

Craigslist's managers have complied with the wishes of most of the state attorneys general who demanded they rid the site of prostitution ads...

This is at best an empty threat, says Matt Zimmerman, a senior staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

The Communication Decency Act protects Web sites like Craigslist from being held criminally liable for the actions of its users, Zimmerman said, who added that Craigslist has no legal obligation to even review ads before they go online.

The gloves are off, it seems, in the controversy over Craigslist's "erotic services" section. The site's been under fire for the slew of sex-related ads in the category, with several state leaders calling for action and even threatening a criminal investigation against the company. Now, just days after deciding to shut the section down, Craigslist CEO Jim Buckmaster is getting back in the ring and demanding an apology...

"The notion that Craigslist and [its] officers should be held responsible for third-party content on their site because they didn't do enough to satisfy the individual whims of respective state attorneys general is wholly inconsistent with the law," EFF senior staff attorney Matt Zimmerman explains.

A federal judge postponed sentencing in the MySpace suicide case because he is still considering whether the jury's verdict against Lori Drew should stand...

But Drew's lawyers, as well as outside groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation, had argued that ignoring a Web site's terms of service doesn't violate the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act -- a statute aimed at penalizing hacking and identity theft.

It's a simple sheet of paper, some text, and a touch of color, but secrets lie hidden on the surface, invisible specks that hold enormous implications.

"It's not something that's sort of sunk into general public consciousness by this point," says Seth Schoen, a cyber investigator.

Schoen's base of operations is San Francisco's Electronic Frontier Foundation, a civil liberties organization focused on privacy.

Two think tanks concerned with privacy have recommended protections for people who visit government Web sites, while also allowing federal agencies more freedom in using advanced Web tracking technology. Those recommendations were compiled in a report issued May 12 by the Center for Democracy & Technology and the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

The French Senate passed a controversial new law Wednesday that would punish people who illegally share copyrighted music or movies by taking away their right to use the Internet for as long as a year, on a three-strikes-you're-out basis...

"There's no judge keeping an eye on this," says Danny O'Brien, who coordinates international outreach efforts for the Electronic Frontier Foundation. "There's no right of appeal, and it's entirely separate from the usual judicial system."

Time Warner Cable backed down mid-April on its plan to test usage-based pricing for its broadband subscribers, but it likely won’t be the last time the idea is discussed, analysts agree...

“I don’t think it’s the end of it by any means,” said Fred von Lohmann with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, who called the tiered plan a result of the free market. “When consumers have no choice, that’s where the problem lies.”

RealNetworks is upping the ante in litigation seeking to prevent it from distributing DVD-copying software. The company argues the Hollywood studios are a “price-fixing cartel” that have no right to prevent consumers from duplicating DVDs...

Fred von Lohmann, a copyright attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, agreed that “this will be one of their arguments. But whether the court will buy it is another.”

It was the Internet's version of a seedy street corner, a largely unregulated hotbed of prostitution that allowed easy access to illegal sex, authorities say...

Such rhetoric concerned Internet free-speech supporters who said Craigslist's capitulation to law-enforcement pressure set a troubling precedent for other Web sites.

"If law enforcement feels it's a good idea to threaten criminal liability to strong-arm Web sites into doing what they want, I think they will do that," said Matt Zimmerman, senior staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Facing increasing pressure from law enforcement officials to curb ads for prostitution on the Internet, craigslist will eliminate its "erotic services" section and replace it with a monitored "adult services" section...

Despite the legal saber-rattling, Matt Zimmerman, senior staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation in San Francisco, said craigslist had immunity from prosecution under the Communications Decency Act of 1996, which says site operators are not responsible for postings by third parties.

"They got strong-armed by the attorneys general, who had absolutely no legal basis to make threats," Zimmerman said.

The debate rages at the Facebook group “1,000,000 for the TRUTH about the Holocaust"...

Facebook is in a difficult position in trying to define “hate” in a forum of more than 200 million users, said Jennifer Granick, civil liberties director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

“That’s when decisions to remove content become even more relevant because it affects so many people,” she said.

Granick supports keeping these discussions in the open.

“Driving these groups underground doesn’t remove their power or attractiveness,” she said. “It enhances it.”

On a late May morning, Srinandan R. Kasi, general counsel for the Associated Press, eyes four clusters of blue dots scattered across his computer screen as if they were a crime scene. Each dot represents a unique URL hosting content carrying a digital fingerprint of an AP-produced story...

During the last presidential election, for example, some television news outfits succeeded in pulling Internet campaign commercials containing snippets of their programs--despite the obvious fair-use exemption. Campaign managers used the counternotice provision to put their ads back up, said Corynne McSherry, staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, but with more people using the Internet as an information source even a brief interruption can hurt an ad campaign.

"If it's so easy to take material down, you need some check to prevent people from abusing it," McSherry said.

It's not often that the Center for Democracy and Technology and the Electronic Frontier Foundation get together to argue for less-restrictive privacy measures by the federal government. They're more likely to argue for just the opposite.

What started as an accusation of computer fraud by one Boston College student against another went before the state’s highest court today as an electronic privacy issue...

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a San Francisco-based civil liberties group that specializes in privacy cases involving the Internet, is representing Calixte.

Craigslist said today it will remove its erotic services section and replace it with a new adult services category. The change comes after months of pressure from state and local law enforcement officials, worried about prostitution. But internet free speech activists say the move will only open the door for law enforcement officials to bully legally operating websites. Host Cy Musiker talks about the decision with Matt Zimmerman Senior Staff Attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Online classified ads service Craigslist says it will dump the "erotic services" category that law enforcement officials have called a front for prostitution and replace it with a fee-based adult category that will be reviewed by site employees...

Craigslist made the move more as a public relations gesture than a legal one, free-speech advocates say. Under federal law, websites that host third-party material are "absolutely immune" from state criminal law liability, says Matt Zimmerman, an attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a non-profit that advocates free speech online.

Most people in businesses that operate anywhere near the world of Web 2.0 have a least a vague notion of the protections of section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. The law provides wide-ranging protections to “publishers” of others’ content. Thus websites, blogs, listservs, social networks, etc., are not liable for user-generated content that would otherwise create a cause of action...

Speaking at the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Compliance Bootcamp in San Francisco today, EFF staff attorney Marcia Hofmann explained the basic outlines of the law and the cases filling in the limits.

The secrecy surrounding an anticounterfeiting trade agreement that's being negotiated by several countries, including the U.S., is heightening concerns about the intent of the pact...

One of the many troubling aspects of ACTA is that it would criminalize copyright infringement even in cases where there is no profit motive, said Eddan Katz, the EFF's international affairs director.

It would also enable the creation of three-strike and take-down laws around the world, where someone could be disconnected from the Internet for alleged copyright violations, Katz said. ACTA could also mandate that ISPs monitor custom

The iPhone can teach its users how to perform CPR, show them how to mix a White Russian and allow them to identify any song playing on the radio...

Jailbreaking your own iPhone does not infringe on any copyright, and the tools that help iPhone owners modify their devices do not distribute anything that belongs to Apple, said Fred von Lohmann, a senior staff lawyer with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit group that advocates more openness on the Internet. “In our view, consumers are allowed to adapt software for their own personal use,” he said.

You would think that the movie industry, which celebrates documentarians every year at its awards ceremonies, would want to help those same filmmakers overcome the hurdles posed by changing technology...

The MPAA opposed the request, along with a broader one by the Electronic Frontier Foundation that sought permission to take short clips from DVDs for any noncommercial, non-infringing video.

State attorneys general from across the country are stepping up pressure on Craigslist to shutter what they call the nation's busiest virtual street corner, where prostitution runs rampant...

For that reason, federal courts have generally upheld a law that protects Internet intermediaries from criminal prosecution over the content of postings by their users, said Matt Zimmerman of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a San Francisco civil liberties group.

"This is all about bringing public pressure on Craigslist to do something that the law does not obligate them to do," Zimmerman said of the attorneys general.

Law enforcement officials in the US are again putting pressure on Craigslist, hoping to capitalise on increased media scrutiny of the classified-advertising website and press it into more stringent self-policing. But their efforts seem unlikely to work...

“The law is settled here,” said Matt Zimmerman, senior staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an advocacy group based in San Francisco. “There really isn’t a question about whether websites can be held accountable for what their users do.”

The pressure is on Craigslist to clean up its act. If the online classified ad site doesn't remove a section devoted to erotic services in South Carolina by May 15, the state's attorney general, Henry McMaster, says he'll open a criminal investigation into the company's executives, including Chief Executive Jim Buckmaster...

If the case goes to court, South Carolina may have a hard time proving Craigslist is acting illegally. The Communications Decency Act of 1996 protects Web sites that feature third-party content. "While the posters can certainly be charged if they are violating state laws, any intermediaries can't be held responsible," says Matt Zimmerman, senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. "This is very clear."

In the ongoing drama over its Erotic Services section, Craigslist this week urged an Illinois District Court to dismiss a lawsuit brought against it by a Cook County sheriff...

"While the AGs may wish it was not so, federal law protects Craigslist and no amount of posturing will change that fact," Matt Zimmerman, an EFF senior staff attorney, wrote in a blog post. "And that's a good thing. The existence of sites that rely on third party content depends on strong uniform legal protections against liability based on material posted by users. If site operators were forced to screen all third party contributions under risk of civil or criminal penalty, the Internet would lose many of the vibrant services that have made it so dynamic."

President Obama was supposed to champion the geek ethos by sweeping into DC and backing network neutrality, mashups, and transparency—but the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Public Knowledge both say they're not impressed by the "transparency" seen so far on the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA).

While state attorneys general hammered away this week on Craigslist Inc.'s racy ads, a major digital rights advocacy group says law enforcement doesn't have a legal leg to stand on...

Matt Zimmerman, a senior staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said in a blog post Wednesday that he believes if any of the attorneys general launch charges against Craigslist, they're sure to lose the case.

Internet rights champions on Monday accused Apple of stifling free speech by bullying OdioWorks into ending online sharing of ways to get iPods to work with music websites other than iTunes.

Attorneys from nonprofit Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) teamed with OdioWorks lawyers to file a lawsuit against California-based Apple in a U.S. federal court.

Conservative talk show host Michael Savage's commentary has offended groups from parents of autistic kids to Muslim leaders...

Banning Savage in Britain could create an example of "the Streisand Effect," said Danny O'Brien of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which seeks to preserve "freedoms in the networked world"...

"I'm sure right now, there are millions of people in the U.K. searching online to find out more about Michael Savage and what he said that was so offensive," said O'Brien, the foundation's international outreach coordinator. "I'd be more concerned if the U.K. law was attempting to block Mr. Savage's commentary online."

The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) continues to withhold important details about a closely held copyright enforcement trade agreement, despite promises from U.S. President Barack Obama to release more information, two digital rights groups said Wednesday...

"We are very disappointed with the USTR's decision to continue to withhold these documents," EFF senior counsel David Sobel said in a statement. "The president promised an open and transparent administration. But in this case and others we are litigating at EFF, we've found that the [president's] new guidelines liberalizing implementation of the Freedom of Information Act haven't changed a thing."

When The Pirate Bay released new Facebook features last month, the popular social networking site took evasive action, blocking its members from distributing file-sharing links through its service.

Now legal experts say Facebook may have gone too far, blocking not only links to torrents published publicly on member profile pages, but also examining private messages that might contain them, and blocking those as well.

“This raises serious questions about whether Facebook is in compliance with federal wiretapping law,” said Kevin Bankston, a lawyer with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, responding to questions from a reporter about the little-noticed policy that was first reported by TorrentFreak.

Critics of Craigslist are calling for the site to remove its erotic services section in response to controversy. But threats by South Carolina Attorney General Henry McMaster to pursue a criminal investigation lack substance, according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation digital rights advocate organization.

When news first broke two weeks ago that she had been wiretapped, South Bay Rep. Jane Harman fought back in a tone of populist outrage...

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, which has led the legal battle against unwarranted wiretapping, called Harman's recent outrage "the height of hypocrisy."

"When countless ordinary Americans are being wiretapped without warrants, Harman declares the program `both necessary and legal,"' wrote EFF staffer Tim Jones. "But when Harman herself is victim to a court-approved wiretap, she decides it's `a gross abuse of power."'

Hollywood has locked horns with the technology industry over who will control digital entertainment and how it is watched...

Fred Von Lohmann, a senior lawyer with the Electronic Frontier Foundation suggested the picture is not so black and white.

"Hollywood says that without encryption, the DVD market would collapse. I say, the pirates have already won, the software to copy is free and you're still selling DVDs."

"The sky has not fallen," added Mr Von Lohmann.

In a closed meeting in a Manhattan office building, three attorneys general, and representatives from six other states, pressed lawyers from Craigslist to permanently remove the site's erotic services section...

"Congress' rationale, which I think was a good one, that we want to not make illegal content legal or somehow inexcusable but place the onus on the people who are behaving badly in the first place," said Matt Zimmerman, a senior staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Apple, EFF square off over jailbreaking; Via wants to see Nano in servers; and criminals use LexisNexis for identity theft.

Three groups representing libraries, including the American Library Association, the largest such group in the United States, have asked a federal judge to exercise “vigorous oversight” over a class-action settlement between Google, authors and publishers...

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, an online civil liberties group, has said that it, too, plans to ask the court to ensure that Google does not monitor the reading habits of users of its Book Search service.

“What we’d like to see Google do is make affirmative representations as to how they will protect privacy,” said Cindy Cohn, legal director of the foundation.

From COINTELPRO to the illegal targeting of antiwar activists and Muslim-Americans, the FBI is America's premier political police agency. And now, from the folks who brought us Wi-Fi hacking, viral computer spyware and al-Qaeda triple agent Ali Mohamed comes the Bureau's Department of Precrime!

A chilling new report by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) reveals the breadth and scope of the FBI's Investigative Data Warehouse (IDW), the Bureau's massive data-mining project.

To jailbreak or not to jailbreak the iPhone.

That was the heated topic of discussion late Friday between Apple’s iPhone marketing czar Greg Joswiak, Fred von Lohmann, the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s copyright genius, Copyright Office officials including registrar Marybeth Peters, the record labels, movie studios and software industry.

On Sunday, a movie is due to get its premiere. It's a 40-minute high-definition film, released over the Internet, made by fans who are earning no profit on it...

It's an interesting question to Fred von Lohman, an attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Von Lohman says it's not really clear whether Bouchard and his crew of volunteers are in violation of the copyright for Tolkien's work.

Warner Music's well-publicized licensing dispute with YouTube has resulted in numerous clips being removed from the site...

"Larry Lessig is not alone," said Corynne McSherry, an attorney with the digital rights group Electronic Frontier Foundation. "Unfortunately, this is one of many, many, many examples where obvious fair uses get taken down."

Apple's iPhone marketing chief will square off against the Electronic Frontier Foundation and others Friday as the U.S. Copyright Office considers whether to allow an exemption to the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) that would permit jailbreaking...

The problem is that the iPhone's digital rights management system not only prevents people from illegally copying its software, it also blocks legitimate users who want to run software on the device that is not approved by Apple, according to EFF attorney Fred von Lohmann. "When an iPhone owner jailbreaks her iPhone, no copyrights are infringed," he said in an e-mail message. "Granting an exemption will not reduce the availability of iPhone firmware or apps -- in fact, it's likely to increase the availability of both, by creating a more competitive, vibrant, consumer-driven marketplace."