UPDATE: Gov. Jerry Brown signed SB 71 into law and vetoed AB 76 on June 27, preserving the California Public Records Act. Now, that's total victory.
As the dust settles in the California state house, it’s time for an update on the battle to preserve the...

For the last few years, Australia’s security agencies have been pushing for the mandatory retention of the communications data of every citizen. If implemented, this policy would require private companies to keep communications metadata of all customers for two years. Essentially, it treats every person as a...

The Freedom Online Coalition (FOC) is a group of governments that have declared themselves "committed to collaborating to advance Internet freedom." When the coalition first formed in the Hague two years ago, EFF noted the “disconnect … between what these state leaders practice, and what they preach.” Nonetheless,...

Updated June 23, 2013 with links to video and additional photos.
At the Netroots Nation conference this weekend, Representative Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) was questioned publicly about her stance on NSA spying. While she was quick to defend the program as markedly different from the warrantless wiretapping program established under...

Well, here we go.
The tortured history of Ultramercial v. Hulu continues, with a new ruling from the Federal Circuit upholding one of our favorite, most absurd patents: one that claims a process for doing no more than viewing ads online before accessing copyrighted content. How could...

Yesterday, the Guardian released two previously-classified documents describing the internal "minimization" and "targeting" procedures used by the NSA to conduct surveillance under Section 702. These procedures are approved by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) on an annual basis and are supposed to serve as the bulwark...

This is the 5th article of our Spies Without Borders series. The series are looking into how the information disclosed in the NSA leaks affect Internet users around the world whose private information is...

The German Parliament recently took a huge step that would eliminate software patents (PDF) when it issued a joint motion requiring the German government to ensure that computer programs are only covered by copyright. Put differently, in Germany, software cannot be patented.
The Parliament's motion follows a ...

Yesterday, U.S. Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator ("IPEC" aka the "IP Czar"), Victoria Espinel, released a new three-year plan for enforcing intellectual property laws. The 2013 Strategic Plan is more nuanced and puts more emphasis on data-driven policy that the ...

Earlier this year, we announced that along with the Cyberlaw Clinic at Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society, we were challenging six patent applications that, if granted, could threaten the development of 3D printing technology. We asked you—the community—for help, and your input was invaluable. We're...