Contract and Copyright Trump Fair Use and Competition in BnetD Case St. Louis - Fair use was dealt a harsh blow today in a Federal Court decision that held that programmers are not allowed to create free software designed to work with commercial products. At issue in the case...

San Francisco, CA - Last week, House Republicans circulated draft legislation that contains provisions from the never-introduced "Domestic Security Enhancement Act of 2003," otherwise known as "PATRIOT II." The draft legislation is meant to implement intelligence reforms recommended by the 9/11 Commission Final Report. But its reach goes far...

Washington, DC - The federal government on Tuesday announced plans to order all airlines to turn over the personal records of every air passenger who traveled domestically in June 2004, for use in testing the Transportation Security Administration's latest passenger-profiling scheme, "Secure Flight." The TSA's previous plans for a profiling...

Consumer and Public Interest Groups Seek to Narrow and Invalidate Ambiguous Patents that Harm Society Washington, DC - Consumers Union, the publisher of Consumer Reports magazine, and two public interest organizations, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and Public Knowledge, filed a friend-of-the-court brief today with the US Court of...

Electronic Frontier Foundation Supports BBC's "Creative Archive" London, UK -- The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) provided written testimony on Saturday to the UK government committee evaluating the charter renewal for the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). The testimony supports the BBC's request to build the "Creative Archive," a groundbreaking project that...

Today, the Copyright Office provided the Senate Judiciary Committee with recommended language meant to replace Senator Orrin Hatch's "Induce Act," S. 2560. The proposed language targets companies who make "public dissemination" technologies, where those companies make money from, or attract users with, copyright infringement. The proposal is a break...

The Washington Post reports that the House Judiciary Committee has marked up and reported H.R. 4077, the Piracy Deterrence and Education Act (PDEA). The measure is now ready for a vote by the entire House of Representatives. The Senate has taken no action on any companion bill. The PDEA...