The U.S. Copyright Office received 74 comments proposing exemptions to the DMCA's anti-circumvention provision as part of its triennial DMCA rulemaking proceeding. In this and subsequent posts, we will summarize the key exemption proposals made in this first round of comments. If you can offer specific factual or legal...

The administration has justified the secret National Security Agency (NSA) warrantless domestic surveillance program by contending that going around the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) is necessary to conduct the war against terrorism. Attorney General Gonzalez claimed "[t]he operators out at NSA tell me that we don't...

This week at MacWorld, Apple unveiled version 6.0.2 of iTunes, which it simply claimed "includes stability and performance improvements over iTunes 6.0.1." Among these so-called improvements is the Apple iTunes MiniStore -- a localized "recommendation" engine that would look at what you listen to and then suggest additional songs and...

There's a new trend underway among indie labels, dubbed "digital vinyl": offering free MP3 downloads for customers who buy albums on vinyl. First Merge Records offered free downloads to those who bought vinyl releases by Clientele and Robert Pollard. Now Saddle Creek Records has announced that they will...

Last week, the Violence Against Women and Department of Justice Reauthorization Act of 2005 was signed into law and a blow was struck against free speech on the Internet. VAWDOJRA is a complex bill, covering a wide variety of topics, but one subsection received little attention: Section 113. Dubbed...

It was thanks to the work of independent security researchers that the security risks in Sony-BMG's copy protected CDs were discovered. But what about the copy-protected CDs being sold by EMI labels (including Virgin, Capitol, and Liberty Records), which use similar copy protection technologies from Macrovision Corporation?
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"The proposed settlement will provide significant benefits for consumers who bought the flawed CDs," said EFF Legal Director Cindy Cohn. "Under the terms, those consumers will get what they thought they were buying--music that will play on their computers without restriction or security risk. EFF is continuing discussions with Sony...