The Federal Congress of Argentina is currently debating a new law on intermediary liability, which would establish a safe harbor of protection for Internet intermediaries (such as ISPs, social media platforms, and search engines) from liability for content uploaded or transmitted by third parties. For the most part, the law...

No single messaging app can perfectly meet everyone’s security and communication needs, so we can’t make a recommendation without considering the details of a particular person’s or group’s situation. Straightforward answers are rarely correct for everyone—and if they’re correct now, they might not be correct in the future.At time of...

In a big win for free speech, the California Court of Appeal has rejected Olivia de Havilland’s right of publicity and false light claims against FX. The court’s ruling [PDF] explains that the First Amendment protects creative works about celebrities whether the work in question is fact, fiction, or...

With Facebook in a dominant position in hosting a huge portion of the world’s social conversation, we’ve been worried about the incredible power the company has accumulated and the risks that poses to privacy and democratic conversation.Last week’s news about Facebook and Cambridge Analytica has shown that our worst fears...

In its landmark Alice v. CLS Bank decision, the Supreme Court returned some much-needed balance to the patent system. The court invalidated an abstract software patent, essentially ruling that adding “on a computer” to an abstract idea does not make it patentable. The Alice ruling has been particularly important...

There is no such thing as a perfect or one-size-fits-all messaging app. For users, a messenger that is reasonable for one person could be dangerous for another. And for developers, there is no single correct way to balance security features, usability, and the countless other variables that go into making...

The Supreme Court says that copyright requires "escape valves" like fair use to comply with the First Amendment, which guarantees freedom of expression. Fair use -- and its non-US cousin, Fair Dealing -- allows people to make new works from copyrighted materials without permission, especially when it comes to political...

UPDATE, March 23, 2018: President Donald Trump signed the $1.3 trillion government spending bill—which includes the CLOUD Act—into law Friday morning. “People deserve the right to a better process.”Those are the words of Jim McGovern, representative for Massachusetts and member of the House of Representatives Committee on Rules, when, after...

In 2014, the U.S. Supreme Court decided a case that, for the most part, banned the kind of “do it on a computer” style patents that have plagued the U.S. patent system for decades. Ever since then, IP maximalists have been doing whatever they can to roll back or...

Criminal justice advocates have been working hard to abolish cash bail schemes and dismantle the prison industrial complex. And one of the many tools touted as an alternative to incarceration is electronic monitoring or “EM”: a form of digital incarceration, often using a wrist bracelet or ankle “shackle”...