Last weekend, Darren Barefoot posted Get a First Life, a hysterical parody of virtual world Second Life's website. The creators of Second Life responded with a letter that is so right-thinking and clever that it would horrify the over-reaching copyright and trademark holders whose missives litter the archives of...

Microsoft is trying to set its Zune media player apart from the iPod by showcasing its remarkably limited sharing feature. Many reviews have harped on how shared songs can only be played three times over three days. But the restrictions are actually even worse -- if you read the...

The Santa Barbara News-Press needs a lesson in the First Amendment. Insisting that an anonymous comment posted for a few hours on a news blog skewed a labor unionization vote, the publisher of the newspaper is demanding that Google disclose the blogger's account information.
It all started last...

Time and again, we've seen the DMCA takedown process abused to censor legitimate speech. It's not everyday that one of these stories ends with a quote like this:
"I would like to make it clear that I regret filing DMCA claims in this case, because the...

EFF's audio segment, Line Noise, returns with a visit to the Consumer Electronics Show. Activist Derek Slater takes a look at the latest gadgets, with an eye to how the market has been affected by the shifting sands of copyright law.
As ever, you can hear this episode...

The new Congress has barely begun, but the major record labels are already up to their old tricks.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein has re-introduced the PERFORM Act, a backdoor assault on your right to record off the radio. Satellite and digital radio stations as well as Internet webcasters would have...

Way back in 1996, Congress directed the FCC to foster useful, competitive alternatives to cable providers' proprietary set-top boxes. As we saw at CES, several alternatives that rely on CableCARD technology are finally coming to market, and now the FCC has taken another step towards putting them on a...