The EU copyright directive has caused controversy than any other proposal in recent EU history - and for good reason. In abandoning traditional legal mechanisms to tackle copyright infringement online, Article 17 (formerly Article 13) of the directive introduced a new liability regime for online platforms, supposedly in...
Strong end-to-end encryption is under attack in India. The Indian government’s new and dangerous online intermediary rules forcing messaging applications to track—and be able to identify—the originator of any message is fundamentally incompatible with the privacy and security protections of strong encryption. Companies were obliged to comply with the...
Larry Brandt, a long-time supporter of internet freedom, used his nearly 20-year-old PayPal account to put his money where his mouth is. His primary use of the payment system was to fund servers to run Tor nodes, routing internet traffic in order to safeguard privacy and avoid country-level censorship....
Virtual worlds are increasingly providing sophisticated, realistic, and often immersive experiences that are the stuff of fantasy. You can enter them by generating an avatar - a representation of the user that could take the form of an animal, a superhero, a historic figure, each some version of yourself or...
To celebrate 30 years of defending online freedom, EFF was proud to welcome NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden for a chat about surveillance, privacy, and the concrete ways we can improve our digital world, as part of our EFF30 Fireside Chat series.
A year ago today, President Trump issued an Executive Order that deputized federal agencies to retaliate against online social media services on his behalf, a disturbing and unconstitutional attack on internet free expression.To mark this ignoble anniversary, EFF and the Center for Democracy & Technology are making records...
Derechos Digitales’ fourth ¿Quien Defiende Tus Datos? (Who Defends Your Data?) report on Chilean ISPs' data privacy practices launched today, showing that companies must keep improving their commitments to user rights if they want to hold their leading positions. Although Claro (América Móvil) remains at the forefront as...
The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) Grand Chamber this week affirmed what we’ve long known, that the United Kingdom’s mass surveillance regime, which involved the indiscriminate and suspicionless interception of people’s communications, violated basic human rights to privacy and free expression. We applaud the Strasbourg-based ...
Over the past few weeks, as protests in—and in solidarity with—Palestine have grown, so too have violations of the freedom of expression of Palestinians and their allies by major social media companies. From posts incorrectly flagged by Facebook as incitement to violence, to financial censorship of relief payments made on...
Major publishers want to censor research-sharing resource Sci-Hub from the internet, but archivists quickly respond to make that impossible. More than half of academic publishing is controlled by major publishers using burdensome paywalls. One project in particular, Sci-Hub, has threatened to break down this barrier by sharing articles without restriction...
Woodland, California—The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) sued the California Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training (POST) to obtain materials showing how police are trained in the use of force, after the organization cited third-party copyright interests to illegally withhold them from the public.The lawsuit, filed under California’s Public Records...
Landmark Technology, a patent troll that has spent 20 years threatening and suing small businesses over bogus patents, and received EFF’s Stupid Patent of the Month award in 2019, has been sued by the State of Washington.Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson has filed a lawsuit claiming that Landmark...
An expanding category of software, apps, and devices is normalizing cradle-to-grave surveillance in more and more aspects of everyday life. At EFF we call them “disciplinary technologies.” They typically show up in the areas of life where surveillance is most accepted and where power imbalances are the norm: in our...
At present, IP law is beset with a spate of upheavals originating both from within the system as well as from without. Contemporary political, social and economic exigencies are leading to radical changes in the way IP rights are negotiated, litigated and enforced.At the TILTing 2021 conference, EFF's International Policy...
