"youtube-dl" is a popular free software tool for downloading videos from YouTube and other user-uploaded video platforms. GitHub recently took down youtube-dl’s code repository at the behest of the Recording Industry Association of America, potentially stopping many thousands of users, and other programs and services, that rely on it.On...

Since its founding in the 1930s, Hewlett-Packard has been synonymous with innovation, and many's the engineer who had cause to praise its workhorse oscillators, minicomputers, servers, and PCs. But since the turn of this century, the company's changed its name to HP and its focus to sleazy ways to part...

EFF turned thirty this year. In our three decades of work, we’ve seen huge shifts in the way technology and the Internet help, harm, and otherwise influence the lives of nearly everyone on the planet—and that includes its enormous influence on electoral politics. Our thirty-year view has allowed us the...

Updated as of 11/5/2020: This blog post has been updated with a statement from Amazon in regards to the pilot program described in the Jackson Free Press. You can find their response at the bottom of the page. This is not a drill. Red alert: The police surveillance...

The video downloading utility youtube-dl, like other large open source projects, accepts contributions from all around the globe. It is used practically wherever there's an Internet connection. It's especially shocking, therefore, when what looks like a domestic legal spat–involving a take-down demand written by lawyers representing the Recording Industry...

The upcoming U.S. elections have invited broad attention to many of the questions with which civil society has struggled for years: what should companies do about misinformation and hate speech? And what, specifically, should be done when that speech is coming from the world’s most powerful leaders?Silicon Valley companies and...

And universities must stand up for the rights of their faculty and students.During the past eight months of the pandemic, we have collectively spent more time online than ever before. Many of us are working and/or learning from home, and staying in touch with friends and family through social media...

The Big Internet Companies Are Too Powerful, But Undermining Section 230 Won’t HelpThe Senate Commerce Committee met this week to question the heads of Facebook, Twitter, and Google about Section 230, the most important law protecting free speech online. Section 230 reflects the common-sense principle that legal liability...

A legacy of the 2016 U.S. election is the controversy about the role played by paid, targeted political ads, particularly ads that contain disinformation or misinformation. Political scientists and psychologists disagree about how these ads work, and what effect they have. It's a pressing political question, especially on the eve...