Last week, a federal district court judge in Oregon raised eyebrows when he rejected claims that a self-proclaimed Internet investigative journalist did not enjoy the protections of the state’s reporter’s shield law in a defamation lawsuit brought against her by Kevin Padrick, an Oregon attorney who was one of...

Proposal Would Gut Privacy Laws, Allow Unprecedented Data-Grab by Government
We’re for better network, computer, and device security. Unfortunately, "cybersecurity" bills often go off track—case in point: the " Internet kill switch. " The latest example comes courtesy of the leaders of the House Intelligence Committee. Committee Chairman...

Yesterday, EFF—along with the Cato Institute, the Center for Democracy and Technology, Public Knowledge, and TechFreedom—submitted an amicus brief to the Supreme Court in FCC v. Fox, which asks the Court to declare unconstitutional the FCC’s heavy-handed and outdated indecency policy for broadcast TV. The policy...

The saga of the lost iPhone prototype -- the 2010 incident at least, not the most recent one -- has finally concluded. On Tuesday, Brian Hogan (who allegedly found the iPhone 4 prototype in a Redwood City bar) and Sage Wallower (who allegedly helped Hogan contact various web...

When the Supreme Court decided Bilski, we lamented that the “Court regrettably failed to provide guidance in the future about business method patents.” Now we are faced with the result of that failure: a string of cases that leaves us scratching our heads and wondering what, if anything, Bilski...

We've watched this year as Amazon, Google, and Apple have raced to roll out cloud-based music locker services. Each of these company's services signals something in common: an apparent fear of liability for de-duplicating files uploaded by their customers. (De-duplicating means that the service does not store multiple...

The parade of cases undermining the first sale exception of copyright law continued this week with an unfortunate ruling from the Second Circuit.
The “first sale” principle is what allows the purchaser of a copy of a book or CD or other copyrighted work to later resell that copy...

Last week, TorrentFreak ran an interesting pair of posts offering opposing views on an issue that has become increasingly important with the rise of the copyright trolls: whether a person who runs an open wifi network can be held liable when others use the network for copyright infringement.
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A federal appellate court this week issued a fascinating decision on whether the much-maligned “hot news doctrine” – which confers a quasi-property right in facts -- will survive in the digital age. The answer? Yes, but barely, and not as an easy way to defend an outdated business model....

Today the Supreme Court upheld the Federal Circuit's rule that, in litigation, a patent may only be proved invalid by clear and convincing evidence. EFF filed an amicus brief in the case – Microsoft Corp. v. i4i Limited Partnership – supporting Microsoft's request that the standard for proving...