The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) safe harbors are a vital protection for websites and Internet services of all sizes. But thanks to a new Copyright Office rule, website owners could lose safe harbor protections if they don’t register online by December 31. And that’s not all: Hollywood lobbyists are...

Have you encountered difficulties repairing or tinkering with your devices because of technology that stops you from figuring out how it works? EFF wants your stories so that we can defend your right to get around those roadblocks.
We want to hear about your experiences with anything that has...

For the fourth year, EFF is naming and shaming government officials and agencies around the country who stand in the way of transparency. We honor these information gatekeepers with The Foilies, our tongue-in-cheek “awards” during Sunshine Week, which runs from March 11-17, 2018. Think of it like “The Golden Raspberries,”...

Of the many reasons why social media platforms should resist pressure to “voluntarily” censor their users, one stands out: history shows that they will do it badly, taking down valuable and lawful content in the name of enforcing community standards. The result: practical speech discrimination.
Facebook’s adult content...

Update 02/26/2018: The Patent Trial and Appeal Board has ruled [PDF] that the Saint Regis Mohawk Tribe cannot claim sovereign immunity to avoid an Inter Partes Review. It further held that the proceeding could “continue even without the Tribe’s participation in view of Allergan’s retained ownership interests in the...

Earlier this year nearly 200 Internet engineers and computer scientists sent a letter to the FCC that explained facts about the structure, history, and evolving nature of the Internet. The reasons we laid out in that letter for writing it then still apply to the draft now:
Based...

The World Trade Organization (WTO), the multilateral global trade body that has almost all countries as members, has been eyeing an expansion of its work on digital trade for some time. Its current inability to address such issues is becoming an existential problem for the organization, as its relevance...

The government recently revealed for the first time that federal agents maintained an open investigation of our client, Academy Award-winning documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras, for six years despite never finding any evidence that she committed a crime or was a threat to national security.
Coming up empty handed...

SESTA and FOSTA Could Hide Trafficking from Law Enforcement
In the most illuminating part of last week’s House subcommittee hearing on the Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (FOSTA, H.R. 1865), Tennessee Bureau of Investigation special agent Russ Winkler explained how he uses...

In a promising step toward transparency, the Eastern District of Texas (the court that sees many of the nation’s patent cases) recently announced an amendment to its Local Rules that would require parties to file redacted versions of documents that contain confidential information. Previously, parties would file whole...