Amid the uproar last week over the introduction of the Induce Act, the Senate quietly passed the PIRATE Act -- legislation that would force taxpayers to foot the bill for the recording industry's misguided war on peer-to-peer file sharing. Essentially unchanged from the version released in March,...
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit delivered (PDF) some very bad news for online privacy today. Ruling in U.S. v. Councilman, the court held that it was not a violation of criminal wiretap laws for an email service provider to monitor the content of users' incoming...
While we at EFF have been critical of the overbreadth of the Induce Act, some have asked "what would you suggest that would target P2P while leaving things like the iPod intact?" Answer: It's not a question of more laws, it's a question of new business models. ...
What would the world look like under Senator Orrin Hatch's (R-UT) Inducing Infringements of Copyright Act (PDF)? To give you a glimpse, we drafted a mock legal complaint (PDF) against Apple for "inducing" copyright infringement by manufacturing the iPod, CNET for reviewing the iPod, and Toshiba for providing...
Anil Dash and Matt Haughey took advantage of the ability to add to/improve upon public domain materials by adding linky goodness and improved readability to Cory Doctorow's much-discussed and most excellent speech on DRM @ Microsoft. Then someone else took the next logical step and created a...
Our own Cory Doctorow counts the ways in a recent speech at Microsoft.Here, a snippet; below, the whole shebang:Here's what I'm here to convince you of:1. That DRM systems don't work2. That DRM systems are bad for society3. That DRM systems are bad for business4. That DRM systems are...
Rumor has it that Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) will be introducing a bill tomorrow that would add a new Section 501(g) to the Copyright Act granting copyright owners a cause of action against those who "induce" copyright infringement (cf. patent law). This bill, dubbed the INDUCE Act, would...
Thanks to the smart reporting of JD Lasica, you may know that the RIAA is asking the FCC to lock down digital radio with content protection (echoes of the "broadcast flag" for digital television). EFF, joined by the Brennan Center, filed its comments today explaining why this...
On the heels of our announcement yesterday, the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that DirecTV cannot sue individuals for "mere possession" of technology that is capable of intercepting DirecTV's satellite signal. This is a major victory, since this legal theory has been one of the fulcrums...
This just in: satellite television giant DirecTV has decided at last to stop suing or threatening to sue people for merely possessing smart card devices. Instead, it will pursue lawsuits against only those people it suspects of actually using the devices to illegally intercept the company's satellite signal. ...
What do copyright reformers and independent auto mechanics have in common? They're both frustrated by mega-corporations that use digital locks to keep people from fully using the things that they buy. The potential solution, at least for mechanics, is the Motor Vehicle Owner's Right to Repair Act of 2003 (...
In a victory for the First Amendment rights of Internet users, jurors returned a verdict today acquitting University of Idaho graduate student Sami Omar Al-Hussayen of terrorism charges. Hussayen had been charged in federal court with providing "material support" to terrorists in the form of "expert advice and assistance,"...
Over the past three days, the Standing Committee has been meeting to consider a treaty to protect broadcasters' rights. Thanks to Jamie Love, of the Consumer...
