04.22.2005, PC Pro

href="http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/72090/us-law-firm-hunts-down-man-for-email-trespassing.html">"US
Law Firm Hunts Down Man for Email Trespassing"

A San Francisco legal firm is using the power of the law to chase down
someone for sending in a solitary email - on the pretext that it is
trespassing on their systems.

Law Firm Shearman & Sterling have subpoenaed a bulletin board for the
identity of a member who posted a message, which was later sent as an
email to the company and which it found offensive.

. . . EFF staff attorney Kurt Opsahl, said: 'The Constitution does not
permit subpoenas for identity just because someone was upset ... While
it is unfortunate that a Shearman employee received an offensive email
message, Shearman cannot manufacture a cause of action out of thin air
just so it can unmask an anonymous speaker.'

04.21.2005, Newsday

href="http://thedaily.washington.edu/index.lasso?-database=DailyWebSQL&-table=Articles&-response=wnpage.lasso&-keyField=__Record_ID__&-keyValue=12797&-search">"Bill
Would Impose Tough Penalties for File-Sharing"

By Richard J. Dalton Jr.

It won't win an Oscar, but it may be Hollywood's favorite title of the
year: The Family Entertainment and Copyright Act.

The bill, passed on Tuesday by the House, proposes up to three years
in prison for anyone who electronically distributes a movie that
hasn't been released on video or DVD, or songs or software that
haven't been released to the public.

. . . That means someone who has a movie on his computer that can be
shared via a file-sharing software could face up to three years in
prison, said Fred von Lohmann, staff attorney at the Electronic
Frontier Foundation, a San Francisco-based organization supporting
civil rights online. "It seems to me that that's not likely to be the
first priority, but it is theoretically possible," he said . . .

4.30.2005, Washington Post

"Security Concerns Prompt Passport Redesign"
By Sara Kehaulani Goo

The State Department plans to improve technology that will be embedded in new U.S. passports after tests this month revealed that information in the documents could be vulnerable to identity theft.

Frank E. Moss, the State Department's deputy assistant secretary for passport services, said the agency will include new high-tech security features that will minimize the risk of identity theft, even if the change delays plans to start issuing the passports to new applicants later this year.

. . . The State Department said it wants to use it because it will be a standard around the world. Moss said earlier this month that the technology will also help to process visitors more quickly at borders and airports.

But Lee Tien, senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a civil libertarian group that focuses on technology issues, questioned that rationale.

"If you have to have the passport physically scanned, then where's all the supposed convenience of being able to read the passport at a distance," he asked. The argument for having the technology "is sort of falling apart," he said.

04.20.2005, San Francisco Chronicle

href="http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/04/20/MNGA4CBJH81.DTL">"Hybrids
could pay more gas tax"

By Edward Epstein

. . . When the project begins later this year or early next year,
every time a volunteer motorist fills up, the odometer's information
will be electronically downloaded and the fee automatically added to
the gas purchase price at the pump, just like today's per-gallon gas
taxes. The GPS equipment tells the state when a vehicle has left
Oregon, so motorists won't be charged for those miles. Oregon figures
it will charge the volunteers 1.25 cents per mile in taxes . . .

But privacy advocates are worried. "It's one more step to a
surveillance society,'' said Kurt Opsahl, staff attorney for the San
Francisco-based Electronic Frontier Foundation. "The right to travel
freely without telling anyone is fundamental to our notions of
privacy.''

04.18, 2005, New York Times

href="http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/18/technology/18blog.html?ex=1271476800&en=111917866fc30918&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss">"When
the Blogger Blogs, Can the Employer Intervene?"

By Tom Zeller

As the practice of blogging has spread, employees like Mr. Kennedy are
coming to the realization that corporations, which spend millions of
dollars protecting their brands, are under no particular obligation to
tolerate threats, real or perceived, from the activities of people who
become identified with those brands, even if it is on their personal
Web sites.

They are also learning that the law offers no special protections for
blogging - certainly no more than for any other off-duty activity.

As Annalee Newitz, a policy analyst with the Electronic Frontier
Foundation, a digital rights advocacy group in Washington, put it,
"What we found is there really is quite a bit of diversity in how
employers are responding to blogging" . . .

Ms. Newitz and others have cautioned that employees must be careful
not to confuse freedom of speech with a freedom from consequences that
might follow from what they say. Indeed, the vast majority of states
are considered "at will" states - meaning that employees can quit, and
employers can fire them, at will - without evident reason (barring
statutory exceptions like race or religion, where discrimination would
have to be proved).

"There really are no laws that protect you," Ms. Newitz said.

04.18.2005, New York Times

href="http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/18/business/media/18ratings.html?ex=1114574400&en=89e4345183e76988&ei=5070">"Please
Don't Call it a G-Rated Dispute"

By PAMELA LICALZI O'CONNELL

The Motion Picture Association of America's ratings code - G, PG,
PG-13, R and NC-17 - is so familiar that the initials are used in
everyday conversation about subjects that have nothing to do with
movies. But that doesn't mean that the association wants just anybody
to use them.

Recently the association sent e-mail messages and letters to people
who write online fan fiction, demanding that they stop tagging stories
with the ratings. Fan fiction, which uses characters from popular TV
shows, movies and novels in original stories, has used movie ratings
for years as a way to help adults find stories with mature content and
to steer children away from it. Too many children looking for Harry
Potter stories were stumbling onto new and unexpected uses for wands
. . .

Wendy Seltzer, a lawyer with the Electronic Frontier Foundation,
argues that the association would have a point only if the fiction
sites had claimed that association reviewers had rated the
works. Using the ratings as a rough comparison is not a trademark
infringement, she said: "It's like saying a beverage tastes like
Coke."

04.14.2005, EWeek
"Apple
Decision a Threat to Journalists, Claims EFF"

By Wayne Rash

A decision by a local California judge poses grave threats to First
Amendment protections for journalists, said a group of major media
organizations in response to the latest actions in Apple Computer
Inc.'s suit involving some bloggers who let a few of Apple's product
plans out of the bag. . . .

Last week, the judge's decision was appealed by the Electronic
Frontier Foundation, which is representing the bloggers, Jason
O'Grady, Monish Bhatia, and Kasper Jade. Apple is not charging that
the bloggers stole the trade secrets. Instead, the company has sued 25
unnamed individuals, apparently Apple employees, and wants the
bloggers' records and e-mail to finger the guilty parties.
According to the amicus curiae brief filed by the Reporters Committee
for Freedom of the Press last week, Apple has made little effort to
find the people at the company who may have leaked the information
itself . . .
"If this had been Ziff Davis, Apple would never have tried this," said
Kurt Opsahl, a staff attorney for the EFF who is handling the legal
challenges for the bloggers. Opsahl said that the case has reached the
point where the question is no longer whether the bloggers were
journalists, because the judge had already said they were. He said
that the case now goes beyond that question into dangerous
constitutional waters . . .

04.10.2005, Washington Post
"Maverick Billionaire Blogging Back"
By Howard Kurtz

When he wanted to disclose last month that he was funding the
Electronic Frontier Foundation in a Supreme Court appeal of an
entertainment industry lawsuit against online sharing of music and
videos, [Mark Cuban] did it on his blog:

``This isn't the big content companies against the technology
companies. This is the big content companies, against me. Mark Cuban
and my little content company.''

04.08.2005, Newsday
"Filmmakers fear huge losses from a program that makes copying
easy"

href="http://thedaily.washington.edu/index.lasso?-database=DailyWebSQL&-table=Articles&-response=wnpage.lasso&-keyField=__Record_ID__&-keyValue=12797&-search">"Bill
Would Impose Tough Penalties for File-Sharing"

By RICHARD J. DALTON JR.

Last week the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments against
Grokster,
which entertainment industry giants sued, claiming the file-sharing
software could be held liable for copyright infringement of music and
movies. But the next frontier in file-sharing is emerging: a faster
way to download movies.

At the center of the controversy is a free software called BitTorrent,
which enables transmission of large files such as movies in minutes
instead of hours, making it the Napster of video downloading . . .

"It's really a powerful publishing tool for independent artists,
people who can't afford corporate Web hosting," said Fred von Lohmann,
senior staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a San
Francisco-based group focusing on civil rights and technology . . .

04.08.2005, On Philanthropy

href="http://www.onphilanthropy.com/prof_inter/pi2005-04-08a.html">"Profile:
The Electronic Frontier Foundation"

. . . As a nonprofit membership organization, the EFF is in the unique
position of using the internet as its primary source of communication
with constituents. However, unlike most nonprofits, the EFF does not
use the information gathered online from its members to advance its
fundraising initiatives. Transparency is paramount to the EFF,
according to Terri Forman, who is the organizationb
href="http://thedaily.washington.edu/index.lasso?-database=DailyWebSQL&-table=Articles&-response=wnpage.lasso&-keyField=__Record_ID__&-keyValue=12797&-search">"Bill
Would Impose Tough Penalties for File-Sharing"
s Director of Development. While some nonprofits share the names of
their donors with other nonprofits, EFF is strictly opposed to this
practice. Their privacy policy is plainly stated, assuring its
potential members that the
by+panel+picks+controversial+chairman/2100-7348_3-5657746.html">"Homeland
Security panel picks controversial chief"

By Declan McCullagh

The Department of Homeland Security's privacy board chose as its
chairman Paul Rosenzweig, a conservative lawyer best known in
technology circles for his defense of the Pentagon's Total Information
Awareness project. Bowing to privacy concerns, Congress pulled the
plug on the program two years ago . . .

"I don't really regard Paul as a privacy advocate," said Lee Tien, a
lawyer with the Electronic Frontier Foundation in San Francisco. "I
think he's much more focused on whatever homeland security mission
there is. He tends to view privacy as something to be circumvented."

04.05.2005, Canadian Content
"MGM
vs. Grokster case moves to the Supreme Court"

As the case between film studio Metro Goldwyn Mayer and file-sharing
software firm Grokster continues in the US Supreme Court, protesters
from the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) adopted a new
tactic. EFF Staff Technologist Seth Schoen acquired several Betamax
tapes. As Jack Valenti, head of the Motion Picture Association of
America (MPAA), arrived at the courthouse, EFF Media Coordinator
Annalee Newitz asked Valenti to sign one of the tapes; Valenti
complied with her request.

04.04.2005, Kansas City Star

href="http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/news/politics/11310554.htm">"Patriot
Act up for renewal, but law's effectiveness unclear"

By Andrew Zajac

. . . But even in the cases cited by Gonzales, it's not clear how much
help the Patriot Act provided. In addition to the Bjarnason case, the
other case Gonzales has been emphasizing is the safe recovery of a
baby cut from her murdered mother in December in Missouri.

The baby, Victoria Jo Stinnett, was found unharmed, according to
Gonzales, because of a Patriot Act provision that allowed government
officials to contact an Internet service provider and collect
information on e-mail traffic between the victim and the accused
murderer without getting a judge's approval. In this case, FBI
spokesman Jeff Lanza estimated it would have taken "at least an hour
or more" to get a search warrant from a judge. "We had the ability to
get the records immediately and we did," he said.

The Patriot Act's opponents dismiss this.

"They may be able to move marginally faster, but I don't think that
warrants tossing aside the Fourth Amendment," which prohibits improper
searches and seizures, said Kevin Bankston, an attorney with the San
Francisco-based Electronic Frontier Foundation, a group that addresses
civil rights issues raised by new technologies . . .

04.03.2005, E-Commerce Times

href="http://www.ecommercetimes.com/story/Regulation-of-Blogs-Political-Activity-Sparks-Furor-41704.html">"Regulation
of Blogs' Political Activity Sparks Furor"

. . . The possibility of new rules restraining the robust nature of
the Internet has provoked an uproar among civil libertarians and in
the online world, whose participants pride themselves on freewheeling,
uninhibited debate.
Ren Bucholz, a staffer with the civil liberties group Electronic
Frontier Foundation, said the crucial question is how the commission
will distinguish between personal speech and political contributions.
"I'm nervous about how this line is going to be drawn because we're
going to end up setting some arbitrary box around political
communication," Bucholz said . . .