Celebrity Rights Shouldn’t Trump Constitutional Rights: EFF Supports Challenge to Dangerous Publicity Rights Decision
A federal appeals court struck a blow against free speech in a May 21 ruling against a video-game creator and EFF won’t let it stand unchallenged.
Working with a coalition of groups representing filmmakers, vidders, and fair-use advocates, EFF today filed a friend-of-the-court (in Latin, amicus curiae) brief...
A Junk Decision on Warrantless DNA Collection
You lost some important Fourth Amendment protection when the Supreme Court ruled yesterday in Maryland v. King that the police can take a DNA sample from an arrestee without a search warrant for purposes of general law enforcement rummaging.
The court was reviewing the constitutionality of...
Internet Surveillance and Free Speech: the United Nations Makes the Connection
Frank La Rue, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression and Opinion delivered this week a landmark report [PDF] on state surveillance and freedom of expression. In preparation, the Special Rapporteur reviewed relevant studies, consulted with experts including EFF, and participated in the state surveillance...
EFF Urges Appeals Court to Affirm Libraries' Right to Digitize Books
San Francisco - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) urged an appeals court today to affirm that the fair use doctrine protects the creation of an invaluable digital library.
For the past eight years, major university libraries have collaborated with Google to digitize their collections. One result has been the...
White House Takes Aim at Patent Trolls
Jeremy Hammond Case Demonstrates the Draconian Nature of the CFAA
In the months since Aaron Swartz’s death, it’s become clear to the American public that the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (“CFAA”) has become one of the most dangerous and abused criminal laws available to prosecutors. One of its biggest problems—its draconian sentencing scheme—is on full display in the...
The White House Takes Aim at Patent Trolls
Frustration with patent trolls, and momentum for reform, has been building for some time now. Today, the stakes got even higher when the White House announced that it was actively taking on the troll problem. This is big news, and not just because of the seven legislative...
All Drone Legislation Must Meet These Three Requirements
All but seven states have proposed or adopted legislation relating to the domestic use of drones, or unmanned aerial systems, in domestic airspace, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Now, at the invitation of the Aerospace States Association, EFF has rung in with the three crucial elements...
Singaporean Websites Must Pay To Mention Singapore... And Not Mention Gay People At All
It's been a bad month for Singaporean netizens. First came the news that the Media Development Authority (MDA), the country's press oversight agency, now requires that websites that have more than 50,000 viewers and that post one "Singapore news programme" (a loosely defined term that basically includes any news about...
Why Wait for Congress? States Passing Electronic Privacy Legislation
State legislatures had a busy week passing electronic privacy laws. Will Congress follow?
First, the Texas legislature unanimously passed HB 2268, which requires state law enforcement to obtain a search warrant before accessing emails and other forms of electronic communications content from service providers. This law...






