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EFFecting Change Livestream Series: How to Protest with Privacy in Mind

Deeplinks Blog

Deeplinks Blog

First Post-Grokster Cold Front?

As mentioned last week, the post-Grokster world may create new concerns for companies creating technologies that enable new digital uses like "place-shifting." Because these companies forthrightly promote activities that should qualify as fair uses, but have generally never been ruled on by a court, they are put in a...

Blogging and the Workplace

EFF Adds New Section on Labor Law to Legal Guide for Bloggers San Francisco, CA - Blogging can affect a blogger's work life in countless ways. Some people have been fired for things they've said in their blogs, while others worry that their bosses may be monitoring their blogging activities...

EU Parliament Votes Down Software Patents, 648-14

Big news. As reported by the BBC, the European Parliament has voted down the Computer-Implemented Inventions Directive, a law that would have given broad authority to the European Patent Office to start issuing US-style software patents in the EU. Rejection of this law is a huge, huge victory for...

A Worthy First Step

Neither the MGM v. Grokster ruling nor the 12,000+ lawsuits filed against individuals will succeed in solving the P2P problem: getting artists fairly compensated for filesharing. EFF advocates collective licensing as a better solution for the P2P dilemma, a solution that aligns the incentives of copyright owners with, rather...

Yet More Lost in the Shuffle

Imagine if "Macworld" couldn't be used to name a publication devoted to Macintosh-related products. Sounds bizarre, no?
Some don't seem to think so. EFF announced Monday that it has filed a lawsuit against French pharmaceutical giant Sanofi-Aventis Group on behalf of Medical Week News, publishers of the medical news...

Trademark Owners Can't Control Your Desktop

Decision in Internet Ads Case Protects Consumers New York - The Second Circuit Court of Appeals issued a decision this week that promises to prevent trademark owners from asserting control over the computers of consumers who visit the trademark owners' websites. The case, 1-800 Contacts v. WhenU, questioned...

Grokster = More Fair Use Cases?

One potential consequence of the MGM v. Grokster ruling may be an uptick in courts deciding fair use cases involving personal, noncommercial activities like "time-shifting" and "space-shifting."
A variety of new digital technologies are advertised and promoted for uses that the technology vendors believe to be fair uses. For...

Clarifying Inducement: What's the Remedy?

The Court also leaves open precisely what the remedy is if one is found to have actively induced infringement.
Here, too, the relationship to patent law may be relevant. In that context, the appropriate remedy has not included forbidding distribution of the defendant's technology. Rather, the remedies have prohibited...

Clarifying Inducement: How Is Patent Law Relevant?

Justice Stevens' Sony opinion discusses in some detail how patent law's "staple article of commerce" doctrine will be imported into copyright. The Grokster decision purports to import the active inducement standard from patent law, too. But it's unclear whether the Court actually has done so.
First, patent law requires...

Fear Mongering

Today, during an interview on the News Hour with Jim Lehrer, lead counsel for the movie studios and record labels, Don Verrilli, accused me of "fear-mongering." While I suspect his barb may be something out of MPAA/RIAA talking points, others who I respect have suggested that the ruling...

Unavoidable Inducement?

In light of the decision, some on the petitioners' side argue (once again) that the standard only targets "bad actors," not harming any legitimate businesses. However, in some ways, the decision may make it difficult for legitimate businesses to avoid inducement.
In the respondents' press conference, Grokster counsel...

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