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Deeplinks Blog

Deeplinks Blog

The Shrinkwrapification of Patented Goods

Lexmark, one of the largest makers of laser printers, is a believer in the "give away the razors, but charge them for the blades" tactic, counting on the fact that consumers routinely underestimate "life cyle costs" for products like printers. In other words, if you low-ball your customers on the...

Federal Court Slams Door on Add-On Innovation

Shuts Down Open Source Videogame Server Project St. Louis, MO - In a decision with dangerous implications for competition, consumer choice, reverse engineering, and innovation, the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals today ruled against three software programmers who created a free, open-source program to allow gamers to play games...
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Time Magazine Swallows FBI Surveillance Story

Time recently published a very brief -- even glib -- article [subscription required] on the FBI's push to expand the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA) to some Internet communications. The article is remarkably uncritical of law enforcement's claims, so we wrote a letter to the editor...

Anonymous Critics' Identities Protected

Free Speech Prevails When Over 100 Defendants Are Dropped from Suit in Utah Utah - Private information about anonymous online critics was protected this week when a Utah man dropped his lawsuit against people who had allegedly made critical comments about him on message boards and blogs, including the...

EFF Launches Cooperating Techs Listserv - Take Two

Not long ago we told you about our new "Cooperating Techs" listserv to help connect technologists with attorneys working on cases that are core to EFF's mission but beyond what we can handle in-house. After a couple of weeks with only a few responses, we realized we made a...

Sun's "Open Media Commons" Is More Like a Gated Community

EFF Warns Consumers That Digital Rights Management Is Incompatible with Fair Use San Francisco, CA - On Monday, Sun Microsystems announced its new "Open Media Commons," a digital rights management (DRM) project that the company claims will foster sharing of media while protecting copyrights. However, Sun has offered no...

DRM By Any Other Name...

Yesterday, Sun Microsystems announced its new "Open Media Commons," with a goal of "[s]pecify[ing] open, royalty-free digital rights management and codec standards" to "ensur[e] intellectual property protection." The problem with this approach is that making DRM "open" and "royalty-free" doesn't make it any less damaging and counter-productive.
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You Can't Resell This Software Even if it Sucks

When seamstress Laura Flores first heard about a software product called Dress Shop that would help her make and print dress patterns, she was thrilled. At last, she could customize classic dress designs on her computer -- and, according to the ads, it would be "fast, fun and easy." At...

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