Librarians Call on W3C to Rethink its Support for DRM
The International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) has called on the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) to reconsider its decision to incorporate digital locks into official HTML standards . Last week, W3C announced its decision to publish Encrypted Media Extensions (EME)—a standard for applying locks to web...
Do Last Week's European Copyright Votes Show Publishers Have Captured European Politics?
Three European Parliament Committees met during the week of July 10, to give their input on the European Commission's proposal for a new Directive on copyright in the Digital Single Market. We previewed those meetings last week , expressing our hope that they would not adopt the Commission's harmful...
Why the Ninth Circuit Got It Wrong on National Security Letters and How We’ll Keep Fighting
In a disappointing opinion issued on Monday, the Ninth Circuit upheld the national security letter (NSL) statute against a First Amendment challenge brought by EFF on behalf of our clients CREDO Mobile and Cloudflare. We applaud our clients’ courage as part of a years-long court battle,...
Security Researcher Meetup With NTIA Rep on Botnets
The U.S. Department of Commerce is leading a new initiative to ‘identify and promote action by appropriate stakeholders’ to address the evolving threats from distributed, automated attacks. Botnets have evolved to yet again pose a real threat to stability and resilience of the Internet ecosystem. Particularly following the growth of...
Microsoft Bing Reverses Sex-Related Censorship in the Middle East
Imagine trying to do online research on breast cancer, or William S. Burroughs’ famous novel Naked Lunch , only to find that your search results keep coming up blank. This is the confounding situation that faced Microsoft Bing users in the Middle East and North Africa for years, made especially...
Network Engineers Speak Out for Net Neutrality
Today, a group of over 190 Internet engineers, pioneers, and technologists filed comments with the Federal Communications Commission explaining that the FCC’s plan to roll back net neutrality protections is based on a fundamentally flawed and outdated understanding of how the Internet works. Signers include current...
EFF to FCC: Tossing Net Neutrality Protections Will Set ISPs Free to Throttle, Block, and Censor the Internet for Users
Washington, D.C.—The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) urged the FCC to keep in place net neutrality rules, which are essential to prevent cable companies like Comcast and Verizon from controlling, censoring, and discriminating against their subscribers’ favorite Internet content. In comments submitted today, EFF came out strongly in...
With Release of NAFTA Negotiating Objectives, Our New Infographic Makes Sense of It All
The United States Trade Representative (USTR) has just released its trade negotiating objectives [PDF] for a revision of NAFTA , the North American Free Trade Agreement between the United States, Mexico, and Canada. NAFTA is expected to open up a new front in big content's neverending battle...
EFF to Minnesota Supreme Court: Sheriff Must Release Emails Documenting Biometric Technology Use
A Minnesota sheriff’s office must release emails showing how it uses biometric technology so that the community can understand how invasive it is, EFF argued in a brief filed in the Minnesota Supreme Court on Friday. The case, Webster v. Hennepin County, concerns a particularly egregious failure to respond to...
Australian PM Calls for End-to-End Encryption Ban, Says the Laws of Mathematics Don't Apply Down Under
"The laws of mathematics are very commendable but the only law that applies in Australia is the law of Australia", said Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull today. He has been rightly mocked for this nonsense claim, that foreshadows moves to require online messaging providers to provide law enforcement...
The Fourth Amendment in the Digital Age: Data Privacy and the Third Party Doctrine
Who has rights to our data, and what information does the Fourth Amendment protect? As the Supreme Court prepares to rule for the first time on search warrants for historical cell site data in Carpenter v. United States, these questions have risen to the forefront of legal conversation. Join the...
California's Top Newspapers Endorse Broadband Privacy Bill
Broadband privacy? Say what? That was probably what you were asking yourself in March when you read about Congress’s vote to repeal privacy rules for your Internet provider. If you were paying attention—and you should in an era where free press , voter privacy , and other constitutional...
Payment Processors Are Profiling Heavy Metal Fans as Terrorists
If you happen to be a fan of the heavy metal band Isis (an unfortunate name, to be sure), you may have trouble ordering its merchandise online. Last year, Paypal suspended a fan who ordered an Isis t-shirt , presumably on the false assumption that there was...
Net Neutrality Won't Save Us if DRM is Baked Into the Web
Yesterday's record-smashing Net Neutrality day of action showed that the Internet's users care about an open playing field and don't want a handful of companies to decide what we can and can't do online. Today, we should also think about other ways in which small numbers of...
