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Electronic Frontier Foundation
Privacy’s Defender: My Thirty-Year Fight Against Digital Surveillance

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Our Work

Legal Case

CoStar v. LoopNet

On June 20 2006 EFF filed an amicus brief arguing that a battle between Internet real estate services over copyrighted images should not threaten the rights of users to surf webpages and send emails anonymously.
The case began when CoStar a real estate information database subpoenaed LoopNet an online...

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Legal Case

Craigslist v. Superior Court of California

EFF and a coalition of public interest groups and law professors have asked a California appeals court to protect craiglist from a lawsuit that could spur websites to be less helpful in responding to complaints about user behavior.
In Scott P. v. craigslist Inc. the plaintiff complained about a...

Legal Case

Diebold v. North Carolina Board of Elections

EFF fought for transparent elections, forcing e-voting companies to comply with North Carolina state law. In November 2005, Diebold Election Systems filed suit against the North Carolina Board of Elections to avoid a law requiring vendors to place their machines' source code into escrow. EFF intervened in the case, getting...
Legal Case

Diehl v. Crook

EFF filed suit on November 1 2007 against the man behind "craigslist-perverts.org" -- a website that publicized responses to fake personal advertisements posted on Craigslist.org -- on behalf of an online journalist who criticized the controversial outing campaign and received legal threats in return.
In a March 2007 settlement...

Legal Case

Doe v. 2TheMart.com

EFF handled this leading case with the ACLU of Washington State. In it a federal district court in the Eastern District of Washington held that the identities of 23 participants in an Infospace chatroom were protected from disclosure. The case contained a strong endorsement of the right to anonymous speech...

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Legal Case

Doe v. Cahill

EFF fought for bloggers' rights, defending the anonymity of an online speaker. In two messages from September of 2004, someone writing under the alias Proud Citizen criticized Patrick Cahill, a member of the Smyrna Town Council in Delaware. Cahill and his wife sued for defamation and sought to unmask the...
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Legal Case

Dominick v. MySpace

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) asked a judge in Illinois to reject a Petition to identify an anonymous MySpace user who allegedly posted fake profiles of an Illinois official because the request would violate both the First Amendment and federal statute.
In May of 2008 Cicero Town President...

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Legal Case

DontDateHimGirl.com

EFF urged a Pennsylvania court to dismiss defamation claims against the controversial website DontDateHimGirl.com arguing that federal law shields the website from liability to protect the free flow of information online.
DontDateHimGirl.com was created by Tasha Joseph as a forum for women to share information about men. One of...

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Legal Case

E. Van Cullens v. John Doe

John Doe is an anonymous poster to two Internet message boards who made two statements critical of a publicly-traded company run by Plaintiff Cullens. In an effort to prevent Doe from further posting his opinions about the company on the Internet Cullens filed a libel suit against Doe in Illinois...

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Legal Case

eBay v. MercExchange

EFF helped convince the U.S. Supreme Court to invalidate a dangerous patent law precedent that threatened free speech and consumers' rights. The court unanimously held that issuing automatic injunctions in patent cases improperly removed discretion from trial judges to weigh competing factors, including the effect that enforcing the patent would...
Legal Case

Echostar v. Freetech

EFF has asked a federal court to reject efforts by Echostar to get the names and addresses of every customer that purchased a free-to-air satellite receiver. Echostar claims that the receiver can be modified to pirate DISH satellite TV programming. EFF argues that Echostar's demand which seeks all purchasers regardless...

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Legal Case

Electric Slide Litigation

The man who claims to have created "The Electric Slide" agreed to call off his online takedown campaign and stop threatening anyone using the popular line dance for non-commercial purposes. The agreement settles a lawsuit filed by EFF on behalf of videographer Kyle Machulis who posted a concert video to...

Legal Case

Elektra v. Barker

This is one of the thousands of cases filed by RIAA member companies against individuals for P2P file sharing. EFF filed an amicus brief on behalf of the defendant asking the court to reject the recording industry's claims that file sharing infringes the distribution right. (According to the recording industry...

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