Payment Processors Are Profiling Heavy Metal Fans as Terrorists
If you happen to be a fan of the heavy metal band Isis (an unfortunate name, to be sure), you may have trouble ordering its merchandise online. Last year, Paypal suspended a fan who ordered an Isis t-shirt, presumably on the false assumption that there was some association...
Net Neutrality Won't Save Us if DRM is Baked Into the Web
Yesterday's record-smashing Net Neutrality day of action showed that the Internet's users care about an open playing field and don't want a handful of companies to decide what we can and can't do online.
Today, we should also think about other ways in which small numbers of companies,...
Industry Efforts to Censor Pro-Terrorism Online Content Pose Risks to Free Speech
In recent months, social media platforms—under pressure from a number of governments—have adopted new policies and practices to remove content that promotes terrorism. As the Guardian reported, these policies are typically carried out by low-paid contractors (or, in the case of YouTube, volunteers) and with little to no transparency...
Historic Day of Action: Net Neutrality Allies Send 1.6 Million Comments to FCC
Stalemate Continues in Negotiations Over European Copyright Filters
This week is an important one in the ongoing negotiations over new copyright rules in Europe—which will have reverberations all over the world. As you may recall, the negotiations centre around two worrisome proposals being pushed by publisher and music industry lobby groups for inclusion in a new Digital...
Requiring Judicial Review for Every Gag Order Is a Simple Way to Have Our Backs: Apple Does but Google and Facebook Fall Short
As a civil liberties organization, it’s our job to evaluate how tech companies handle our most private data and to encourage them to do better year over year. Our Who Has Your Back report is designed to do both, which is one reason we revisit the report’s criteria every...
Amid Unprecedented Controversy, W3C Greenlights DRM for the Web
Early today, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) standards body publicly announced its intention to publish Encrypted Media Extensions (EME)—a DRM standard for web video—with no safeguards whatsoever for accessibility, security research or competition, despite an unprecedented internal controversy among its staff and members over this issue.
EME...
EFF Condemns Detentions at Turkish Digital Security Meeting
Turkish police officers in plainclothes yesterday raided a digital security training meeting on the island of Buyukuda in Istanbul, seizing equipment and detaining ten attendees, including Idil Eser, the director of Amnesty International Turkey. The human rights defenders are still being held in separate detention centers, and were...
Photographer Attacked by Ludicrous Online Voting Patent
Ruth Taylor never expected that her hobby would get her sued for patent infringement. Her photography website, Bytephoto.com, barely made enough advertising revenue to cover hosting costs. The site hosts user-submitted photos and runs weekly competitions, decided by user vote, for the best. Ruth’s main business is her own photography....









