U.S. IP Policy Spins Out of Control in the 2018 Special 301 Report
Certain reports and publications from U.S. government agencies, such as those of the Congressional Research Service, have become important reference works due to their reputation for being relatively in-depth, up to date, and factual. The United States Trade Representative's (USTR) Special 301 Report [PDF], the latest annual edition...
The Fate of Text and Data Mining in the European Copyright Overhaul
The current European Digital Single Market copyright negotiations involve more than just the terrible upload filter and link tax proposals that have caused so much concern—and not all of the other provisions under negotiation are harmful. We haven't said much about the text and data mining provisions that...
Axon’s Ethics Board Must Keep the Company in Check
EFF, together with 41 national, state, and local civil rights and civil liberties groups, sent a letter today urging the ethics board of police technology and weapons developer Axon to hold the company accountable to the communities its products impact—and to itself. Axon, based in Scottsdale, Arizona, is responsible for...
Platform Censorship Won't Fix the Internet
The House Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing on “The Filtering Practices of Social Media Platforms” on April 26. Public attention to this issue is important: calls for online platform owners to police their members’ speech more heavily inevitably lead to legitimate voices being silenced online. Here’s a quick...
We’re in the Uncanny Valley of Targeted Advertising
Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s founder and CEO, thinks people want targeted advertising. The “overwhelming feedback,” he said multiple times during his congressional testimony, was that people want to see “good and relevant” ads. Why then are so many Facebook users, including leaders of state in the U.S. Senate...
Privacy as an Afterthought: ICANN's Response to the GDPR
Almost three years ago, the global domain name authority ICANN chartered a working group to consider how to build a replacement for the WHOIS database, a publicly-accessible record of registered domain names. Because it includes the personal information of millions of domain name registrants with no built-in protections for...
Congressmembers Raise Doubts About the “Going Dark” Problem
In the wake of a damning report by the DOJ Office of Inspector General (OIG), Congress is asking questions about the FBI’s handling of the locked iPhone in the San Bernardino case and its repeated claims that widespread encryption is leading to a “Going Dark” problem. For years, DOJ...
Busting Two Myths About Paid Prioritization
Eight out of 10 Americans support net neutrality, which makes opposing it a bad look for both politicians and corporate PR. So everyone says something along the lines of being in favor of net neutrality or an Internet Bill of Rights. Every time, however, giant Internet service providers (ISPs)...
No, Section 230 Does Not Require Platforms to Be “Neutral”
One jaw-dropping moment during the Senate’s hearing on Tuesday came when Sen. Ted Cruz asked Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, “Does Facebook consider itself a neutral public forum?” Unsatisfied by Zuckerberg’s response that Facebook is a “platform for all ideas,” Sen. Cruz continued, “Are you a First Amendment speaker expressing...
User Privacy Isn't Solely a Facebook Issue
During Congressional hearings about Facebook’s data practices in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica fiasco, Mark Zuckerberg drew an important distinction between what we expect from our Internet service providers (ISPs, such as Comcast or Verizon) as opposed to platforms like Facebook that operate over the Internet.Put simply, an ISP...
