Anyone familiar with the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) may find that it can be challenging to explain to others, in simple terms, how it threatens our rights online and over our digital devices. We often begin by describing the secretive, corporate-captured process of the negotiations that ultimately led to the...

The First Amendment guarantees that even patent owners are subject to the slings and arrows of public criticism. Today EFF has submitted a motion and amicus brief asking the court to reject a patent owner’s attempt to silence criticism of its lawsuit.
The story begins last October when...

The Board of Supervisors of Santa Clara County, a jurisdiction in central California, is currently weighing a series of local surveillance reforms that could establish a model for other counties and municipalities. At a hearing last Thursday—one of many so far—I spoke in support of the proposed ordinance and...

The White House has submitted two copyright treaties to the Senate for ratification: the Marrakesh Treaty, which would improve access to copyrighted works for people with visual and print disabilities; and the Beijing Treaty, which could create a new layer of monopoly rights for the creators of audiovisual works. International...

Imagine traveling back to 1996 in a typical American living room. What's changed? The TV is three feet thick and weighs 150 pounds. There’s a VHS videocassette recorder underneath, but no Internet-connected devices to be seen.
Now, what hasn't changed?
The cable or satellite tuner box. It’s a...

Zero-rating has become the bleeding edge of the net neutrality debate. India recently decided to reject zero-rating plans such as Facebook's Free Basics, while in the United States carriers push boundaries with zero-rating experiments such as T-Mobile's Binge-On plan (which led to a public spat with EFF over ...

When the text of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) was first released in November last year, it included provisions dictating the kinds of penalties that should be available in cases of copyright infringement. Amongst those provisions, the following footnote allowed countries some flexibility in applying criminal procedures and penalties to...