Fair Use Is Not An Exception to Copyright, It’s Essential to Copyright
Over the past two years, as talk of copyright reform has escalated, we’ve also heard complaints about the supposed expansion of fair use, or "fair use creep.” That kind of talk woefully misunderstands how fair use works.
Fair use provides breathing space in copyright law, making sure that...
What You Can Learn from Oakland's Raw ALPR Data
Police cars mounted with automatic license plate readers (ALPRs) wind their way through the streets of Oakland like a “Snake” game on an old cell phone. Instead of eating up pixels of food, these cameras gobble down thousands of license plates each day. And instead of growing a longer tail,...
New Report on Bulk Collection Shows That There’s No Magical Solution to Bad Policy
The National Academy of Sciences has released Bulk Collection of Signals Intelligence: Technical Options, a report on technical solutions to the problem of bulk collection. The report, which was made public on January 15, was the result of Barack Obama's Presidential Policy Directive 28 (PPD 28). PPD...
HealthCare.gov Sends Personal Data to Dozens of Tracking Websites
The Associated Press reports that healthcare.gov–the flagship site of the Affordable Care Act, where millions of Americans have signed up to receive health care–is quietly sending personal health information to a number of third party websites. The information being sent includes one's zip code, income level, smoking status, pregnancy...
Where Copyright Fails, New Laws and Guidelines Help Secure Your Right to Tinker
It may seem odd to say so during Copyright Week, but copyright in itself isn't very important. Sure, EFF expends a lot of time and energy arguing about copyright law, and some of our adversaries spend even more. But we don't do so because copyright has any independent value. Rather,...
Asset Forfeiture and the Cycle of Electronic Surveillance Funding
Who Will Own the Internet of Things? (Hint: Not the Users)
We're taking part in Copyright Week, a series of actions and discussions supporting key principles that should guide copyright policy. Every day this week, various groups are taking on different elements of the law, and addressing what's at stake, and what we need to do to make sure...
It's Copyright Week: Let's Take Copyright Back
We're taking part in Copyright Week, a series of actions and discussions supporting key principles that should guide copyright policy. Every day this week, various groups are taking on different elements of the law, and addressing what's at stake, and what we need to do to make sure...
Cory Doctorow Rejoins EFF to Eradicate DRM Everywhere
San Francisco - Leading digital rights champion and author Cory Doctorow has rejoined the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) to battle the pervasive use of dangerous digital rights management (DRM) technologies that threaten users' security and privacy, distort markets, confiscate public rights, and undermine innovation.
Doctorow will be a special...







