EFF to Court: Expanding Copyrights In Old Music Recordings Will Squelch Competition In New Music Services
Are you a radio listener? A fan of classic rock or jazz? Do you tune in to Sirius XM’s “60s on 6” channel or seed your Pandora stream with the Rolling Stones? A case in federal appeals court in New York (and a similar case in California) could shake up...
Unrealistic Pleading Standards: Another Injustice for Human Rights Victims
The Second Circuit Court of Appeals dealt a blow to human rights victims when it dismissed Balintulo v. Ford Motor Co. this week. The appellate court distorted Supreme Court precedent, applying an unrealistically and unfairly high pleading standard to a case brought by black South Africans against IBM Corp....
NSA Tries to Blame Privacy Advocates for Keeping Americans' Telephone Records
USA Freedom requires the NSA to stop collecting our telephone records. An open question when the law passed was what should happen to the mountain of records the NSA has already collected. Will the records be destroyed? Will the NSA keep them? Will it be able to keep using...
FilmOn Can Use Cable Systems’ Copyright License to Stream Broadcast TV
Lots of our TV-watching comes over the Internet today. Series programming, reality shows, movies, and even sports are available through Internet-based subscription services—nearly everything except for broadcast TV. That’s because many broadcast stations, whose signals go out over the public airwaves for all to receive, have fought tooth and nail...
We Told You So: OPM Data Breach Reveals Not Only Lame Security But Weak Legal Protections—And It’s Time To Revisit Both
Over 21 million Americans have just had a taste of the federal government's weak computer security. The recent U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) data breach exposed an estimated 21.5 million records, including the highly invasive SF-85, SF-85P, and SF-86 questionnaires used for background...
Victory for CloudFlare Against SOPA-like Court Order: Internet Service Doesn’t Have to Police Music Labels’ Trademark
Striking a blow against the continuing effort to force service providers to serve as IP police, CloudFlare and EFF have pushed back against a court order that would have required CloudFlare to monitor its service to enforce a trademark held by a group of music labels. Last week, Judge Alison...
In Another Post-Alice Brief, EFF Urges Federal Circuit to Apply Law
It has now been just over a year since the Supreme Court issued its opinion in Alice v. CLS Bank. Since then, over 100 cases have looked at whether granted patents meet the standards set in Alice. The result has been overwhelmingly on the side of finding patents...
If At First You Don’t Succeed, Don’t Try Again With Patent Law
Printers aren’t all that expensive. Ink for the printers, on the other hand, can cost more than fine Champagne and tends to be far less delicious. Lexmark, in yet another attempt in a long line of schemes, is trying to use patent law to make sure it stays...
European Copyright Madness: Court Strikes Down Law Allowing Users to Rip Their Own CDs
Today the High Court of the United Kingdom handed down an excellent decision—excellent because the result is so unreasonable, so out of touch with reality, and so divorced from the needs and expectations of ordinary users, that it provides a textbook illustration of the need for urgent reform of the...
European Web Host Ruled Liable for Users' Comments—Even Though It Didn't Read Them
The future for online discussion platforms in Europe is looking cloudy following yesterday's ruling of the European Court of Human Rights in the case of Delfi AS v. Estonia. In a disappointing decision, the court affirmed that Estonian courts were entitled to hold an online news portal liable in...
