Entertainment Distributors’ Push For Site-Blocking Power Get More Extreme
Major entertainment companies are asking the courts for more and more power over the basic operation of the Internet. On Tuesday, the major U.S. record labels filed suit against a Florida startup called Aurous, which is developing a music player application that uses BitTorrent. We’ve all seen this...
Third Circuit to the City of New York: Being Muslim is not Reasonable Suspicion for Surveillance
Being Muslim can’t be the basis for law enforcement surveillance. That was the message from the Third Circuit on Tuesday when it told the plaintiffs in Hassan v. The City of New York that their lawsuit could go forward. The plaintiffs are suing over the New York Police...
What Do Yoga and APIs Have in Common? Neither Are Copyrightable
Yesterday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit issued a significant decision rejecting an absurd copyright claim in yoga poses. The decision is pretty entertaining, but its implications are important for technologists as well as yogis.
That’s because the opinion offers a close analysis of...
Update on First Unitarian Church v. NSA: EFF's First Amendment Challenge to NSA Spying
EFF has long believed that the First Amendment is as important to thinking about the NSA's spying as the Fourth Amendment. When the government can track to whom you talk, when and for how long, like it did with the telephone records collection under section 215 of the Patriot Act,...
EFF Provides Evidence to Courts of Verizon Wireless, Sprint and AT&T Participation in NSA Spying
This week EFF presented evidence in two of its NSA cases confirming the participation of Verizon Wireless, Sprint and AT&T in the NSA's mass telephone records collection under the Patriot Act. This is important because, despite broad public acknowledgement, the government is still claiming that it can dismiss our cases...
Court Ruling Against Backpage.com is a Setback for Online Speech in Washington State
The Washington State Supreme Court delivered a disappointing decision last week, allowing a lawsuit to proceed against Backpage.com for the use of its classified ads service by sex traffickers. Three minor trafficking victims brought the suit against Backpage, alleging that the website played a "substantial role" in developing the...
Appeals Court Falls for Government’s Shell Game in NSA Spying Case
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit’s opinion today in Klayman v. Obama is highly disappointing and, worse, based on a mistaken concern about the underlying facts. The court said that since the plaintiffs' phone service was provided by one subsidiary of Verizon—Verizon Wireless—rather...
TVEyes Wide Shut: Ruling on Broadcast Archiving Service Undermines Fair Use
A great decision on the fair use of radio and TV excerpts has been followed up by a troubling one that walks back some of the protections for new and innovative uses of media. Two years ago, Fox News sued a company called TVEyes, which creates a text-searchable database...
Ashley Madison’s Owners Give In to Temptation To Misuse The DMCA
Copyright is a poor tool for making embarrassing information disappear from the Internet. It rarely succeeds, and often draws more attention to whatever was embarrassing or harmful. Copyright isn’t designed for keeping secrets (in fact, it was generally meant to do the exact opposite by encouraging disclosure). Yet people keep...
