EFF Launches Copyright Curriculum To Counter RIAA Propaganda Being Handed Out To Schools

from the good-news dept

It's been quite troubling that for years various schools have simply accepted propaganda and totally inaccurate "teaching materials" about copyright and used them to teach students. These programs have been created by both the RIAA and the MPAA, at times. More recently, a lobbying organization backed by both of those organizations, the Copyright Alliance (which has a long history of making up the most fantastic myths about copyright) has been pushing a copyright curriculum on schools. Tragically, unsuspecting schools have been using the pure propaganda put out by the Copyright Alliance as if it were some sort of impartial and accurate educational material on copyright. It's not. Not even close. Last year, one of the world's foremost experts in copyright, William Patry, took the Copyright Alliance's founder to task for having "chutzpah in abundance" in basically making up what copyright and fair use is about, and presenting himself as some sort of expert on the subject.

Unfortunately, schools that are using these materials often don't realize that they're simply accepting corporate propaganda, assuming that a front group like The Copyright Alliance is some sort of impartial player in the space, even though its curriculum is laughably bad, positioning any kind of copying as a high risk activity that should be avoided. Luckily, the EFF has finally launched a much more accurate and reasonable curriculum that was actually created by those who know the subject matter, rather than corporate execs and lobbyists. The EFF's curriculum is available at Teaching Copyright and is under a Creative Commons license. Unlike many of the propaganda copyright curricula, Teaching Copyright focuses on the broader picture, recognizing the fact that copyright is not for protecting creators, but is a deal between creators and the public to encourage creation within certain important limitations. It covers important concepts such as the public domain and fair use that are either ignored or downplayed in most of the curricula put out by the industry. This is a welcome addition to materials for schools to use to educate students on copyright.

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Company Threatens EFF With Defamation In Response To EFF Trying To Bust Its Patent

from the slappity-slapp-slapp dept

Back in January, we noted that the EFF had scored another hit in its ongoing patent-busting project, getting the USPTO to re-examine a patent held by Seer Systems. It appears that Seer Systems doesn't much like being targeted by the EFF and decided to threaten the group with a defamation lawsuit over how it described Seer's actions. For example the EFF claimed that Seer was "threatening small companies" and Seer disputes the EFF's definition of small. That seems like pretty fine tooth nitpicking there, and hardly defamatory. It certainly feels like a threatened SLAPP, and (luckily) California has a pretty good anti-SLAPP law, which the EFF's attorney has suggested that Seer Systems acquaint itself with before moving forward with any lawsuits. Either way, it's fairly amazing that anyone would think it's a wise move to threaten the EFF with defamation based on something as weak as whether or not some startup is "small" or not.

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EFF And ACLU Sue FBI Over Seizure Of Activists' Computers

from the 4th-amendment-anyone? dept

The EFF and the ACLU has filed yet another lawsuit against the government, highlighting another scary abuse of power that feels straight out of a police state, rather than the free society we supposedly live in. Specifically, the FBI and other law enforcement officials raided the offices of two different activist organizations and seized all of their computers. There are two issues here that are important. First, if the FBI was concerned about the computers being used in commission of a crime, they easily could have followed the same policies used to get records off of computers at libraries (part of the issue is that these organizations offer public access computers to folks visiting their offices). The second issue is that both organizations act as publishers, and federal law makes it clear that the government can't just seize computers of publishers except in extremely narrow circumstances. So, in either circumstance, the Feds should not have seized the computers.

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EFF's Patent Busting Project Scores Another Hit

from the more-good-news dept

While it's taken quite some time, the EFF has had considerable success with its project to bust ten awful patents. The latest is that the USPTO has agreed to re-examine a patent from Seer Systems involving online music. Again, the really tragic thing about all of this is that the EFF started this patent busting project almost five years ago, and the process is still in its early stages. And that's for ten of the most ridiculous patents you'll find today. Think of what a mess it is to challenge so many other bad patents.

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Google Is No Longer Silicon Valley's Legal Defender

from the too-bad dept

When Google settled the lawsuit over its book scanning project, we noted with disappointment how this appeared to signal the end of Google's earlier position of fighting certain legal battles on principle. For a few years, Google's legal team had been taking up a variety of lawsuits purely on principle. In many cases it would have been cheaper and easier to settle, but Google had made clear that it saw those lawsuits as a way to define better law -- and that helped all of Silicon Valley (and, in many cases, the overall economy). Yet, in settling this lawsuit, it became clear that Google was no longer fighting lawsuits on principle, and, in fact would consider settling cases knowing that it actually made life more difficult for the rest of Silicon Valley.

Obviously, as a business concern, this is Google's right -- and some may even say that it's Google's responsibility to its shareholders to do such a thing. I would disagree, simply because, in the long term, by settling these lawsuits, rather than helping to establish what the law says, Google merely invites more lawsuits from more companies hoping to "settle up" as well. Plus, without the law being clear, it creates uncertainty and inefficiency in the market, and that's not good for anyone -- including Google.

Fred von Lohmann, over at the EFF, has written up an op-ed noting pretty much the same thing. The rest of Silicon Valley can no longer rely on Google to fight their legal battles for them -- and, we're all going to be worse off for it in the long run. Not that anyone ever should have expected Google to be the rest of the tech community's legal defender, but it certainly had been a welcome development -- which is apparently now over.

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EFF, ACLU Ask News Networks To Stop Sending DMCA Takedown Notices On Political Videos

from the right-idea,-wrong-approach dept

Following the McCain campaign's request to YouTube that it exempt both major presidential campaigns from the traditional process of notice-and-takedown to DMCA complaints (which YouTube rejected), the EFF and the ACLU have sent a letter to the various television networks who were responsible for the takedowns in the first place, asking them to stop sending bogus takedowns. On top of that, they ask YouTube to reconsider and start responding to counternotices and putting content back online more quickly.

While I can appreciate the stance taken by the EFF and the ACLU, and believe that they are correct that the networks' takedown notices are incorrect, I'm going to have to side with Public Citizen in suggesting that the real answer to this issue is fixing the DMCA, not through asking various parties to simply change their behavior. The real problem is the DMCA and the unclear boundaries of fair use today. While there's clearly not time to fix the law prior to election day, it doesn't seem right to just ask people to ignore the way the law works today. If the law is the problem, fix the law -- don't ask everyone else to play by different rules. That just sweeps the problems of the law under the rug, where they'll get a lot less attention.

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Court Tells Echostar It Doesn't Get Access To Customer Lists Of Satellite Receiver Company

from the chalk-one-up-for-privacy dept

Recently, we wrote about how satellite TV provider Echostar had been sending out subpoenas demanding customer lists from resellers who had sold satellite receivers made by a company named Freetech. Freetech's satellite receivers can be used to receive perfectly legal over-the-air satellite TV signals. Echostar's complaint was that many also used Freetech's receivers to pirate its own DishTV offering. However, that doesn't give Echostar the right to then demand the contact info on everyone who ever bought a Freetech receiver, as many could be using them for perfectly legal purposes. And, historically, with DirecTV, we've seen a similar situation where the DirecTV forced plenty of totally innocent smart card device buyers to pay up by threatening them with lawsuits over pirated satellite TV.

Luckily, it looks like the EFF helped convince the judge that Echostar was out of line, and the judge has said that the buyers' privacy trumps Echostar's right to the info. As the EFF notes, this is a big ruling, in that it's "the first time a federal court has explicitly rejected a third-party subpoena on the basis of the privacy interests of nonparty consumers." Chalk one up for the right to privacy.

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EFF Sues The Gov't Twice In One Day: Over Surveillance And ACTA

from the busy,-busy,-busy dept

The EFF sure has been busy today. First it filed a lawsuit against the US Trade Representative for keeping info on the ACTA negotiations secret, and then it sued the NSA, President Bush and Vice President Cheney over the warrantless wiretapping issue. Must be a busy day at the EFF office. In both cases, it seems likely that the lawsuits may draw some additional attention to the issues, but it seems unlikely to have much of an impact on actual government policies.

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Uri Geller Realizes His Psychic Powers Don't Extend To Twisting Copyright Law

from the stick-to-spoons dept

About a year ago, Uri Geller tried to abuse the DMCA to get videos critical of his "mentalist" act taken down. The videos in question debunked Geller's claims to having supernatural powers, and Geller claimed they were copyright infringement because they used 8 seconds worth of a Geller-copyrighted clip in the entire 13 minute video. Also, it's quite clear from the fact that it was a critique of Geller that this was fair use. Of course, Geller went beyond just issuing a DMCA takedown notice. He also sued. The EFF stepped in and sued Geller back.

It appears that it took some time, but Geller's mental powers do not, in fact, extend to either abusing the DMCA or convincing the EFF that his claim was legit. Instead, Geller appears to have caved completely and settled the case. Beyond just giving up the takedown notice and the lawsuit, Geller has agreed to license the disputed clip under a non-commercial Creative Commons license, meaning that others can make use of those 8 seconds as well (for non-commercial reasons) should they also wish to debunk Mr. Geller's claims of supernatural powers.

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EFF Gets Another Victory Over Bogus Patents

from the good-for-them dept

It's been four years since the EFF first announced its bogus patent busting project, where it lined up 10 awful patents that needed to be revoked. While it's taken some time, slowly but surely it's been winning each battle. Back in January, we noted another win, and now the EFF has announced that the Patent Office has rejected all 95 claims on a patent held by NeoMedia. The patent in question covers scanning a barcode and connecting it to a website to look up info about the product. The EFF presented a bunch of prior art that (of course) the Patent Office had failed to consider. This is just the preliminary rejection, so NeoMedia can (and probably will) respond -- but it's going to have to explain why not a single claim survived.

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Don't You Feel Safer Now That Google Added A Link To Its Privacy Policy?

from the phew! dept

One of the more idiotic accusations thrown at Google of late was this idea that it was somehow a problem that it didn't link directly to its privacy policy from its home page. It had a privacy policy. That privacy policy was easy to find. Almost no one actually reads its privacy policy -- but a bunch of privacy groups who surely had more important things to spend their time on got all upset that Google refused to link from its front page. It appears that Google has now given in and agreed to link to the privacy policy, oddly removing the word "Google" from its copyright notice and replacing it with a link to the privacy policy.

Perhaps more idiotic is the response from a bunch of privacy groups claiming that this somehow makes a difference. It doesn't. It's privacy theater. It looks good, but it means nothing. People still won't read the privacy policy -- and even if they did, they probably wouldn't even remember what it said. Where a privacy policy is linked from a website is meaningless compared to what a company actually does to take the privacy of its users seriously. Getting up in arms over whether or not Google links to the privacy policy from its front page is a joke. And, oh yeah, some are noticing that just linking to the privacy policy probably does not fulfill the legal obligation required by California's law on linking to privacy policies. Perhaps these "privacy advocate" groups have something else to complain about now.

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Senators Not Thrilled About Laptop Searches At The Border

from the back-off,-customs dept

It would appear that the EFF's efforts to get Congress to look into laptop searches at the border has worked. This is over the question of whether or not it's legal, with no suspicion of wrongdoing, for customs officials to take your laptop and search through the contents. Even if the courts have said it's legal, it still seems quite troubling to many people who believe it's an unreasonable search. Some Senators have now asked Customs to reconsider its stance on this, with Senator Russ Feingold noting:

"If you asked [U.S. residents] whether the government has a right to open their laptops, read their documents and e-mails, look at their photographs, and examine the Web sites they have visited, all without any suspicion of wrongdoing, I think those same Americans would say that the government has absolutely no right to do that. And if you asked him whether that actually happens, they would say, 'not in the United States of America.'"

Somehow, I doubt that these hearings will lead to much, but at least someone in DC is concerned about this issue.

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EFF Protects Anonymity Of MySpace User

from the good-for-them dept

While not necessarily true in other countries, the US courts tend to do an excellent job protecting the rights of individuals to criticize others anonymously. Of course, when you're the victim of that anonymous criticism, it's often not very enjoyable -- and many assume that what they don't like must be illegal, and therefore sue. This is especially true in anonymity cases, where the victims feel that it positively must be illegal to be anonymous and make such statements.

The EFF has been defending a number of these cases, and recently filed an amicus brief against the town president of a Chicago suburb who had filed a lawsuit seeking the identity of whoever had set up a MySpace profile mocking the guy. The EFF explained how revealing the identity of the user, without having the president of the town first show proof of defamation, would be a violation of the poster's First Amendment rights to privacy. Luckily, after seeing the EFF's argument, the guy withdrew his lawsuit, though it remains to be seen if he'll try to file again with more proof of defamation.

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EFF Asks Appeals Court To Rehear Case On Laptop Searches At The Border

from the let's-try-this-again dept

Back in April, we noted that an appeals court reversed the one lower court ruling that found that customs agents at the border were overstepping their bounds by searching and confiscating travelers' laptops without probable cause. This brought the 9th circuit into alignment with our circuits, so that, generally speaking, it appeared our judicial system had decided that your 4th Amendment rights do not apply at the border. This is particularly problematic for laptops, because unlike tangible goods that you pack, you don't choose to "pack" all the data on your laptop. In other words, with most tangible goods you bring across the border, it's done as a proactive choice. With the data on your laptop, it's the opposite. Unless you proactively delete it from your computer, it's there.

The EFF already has demanded Congress look into this issue, and now it's urged the full appeals court to review this latest decision. Given that all the other circuit courts have also ruled this way, it may be difficult to get the court to agree to rehear the case (or, if they do, to change the decision). At some point, it's likely this issue will get appealed to the Supreme Court as well -- though it will be interesting to see if the Supreme Court takes the case without a seeing a split in the lower courts.

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Privacy Groups Miss The Point: It's Not Where Google's Privacy Policy Is, It's What It Does

from the focusing-on-the-wrong-thing dept

Last week, we wrote about the ridiculous concerns being raised by a few privacy advocates that (gasp!) Google doesn't include a link to its privacy policy on the front page. This seemed like a really pointless concern since almost no one reads these privacy policies anyway, and those who do often misunderstand the policy anyway. Besides, there are plenty of companies out there that don't even abide by their own privacy policies. In other words, the real issue isn't where the privacy policy is, but whether or not the company actually keeps its promises and treats its users' data properly.

And yet... a bunch of consumer and privacy groups, including ones I respect like the EFF and the ACLU are now trying to turn this into a big deal by publicly demanding that Google add a link to its privacy policy on its home page. This isn't about privacy. This is "privacy theater." It's about putting on a good show that has nothing to do with whether or not Google is doing right by its users. If there's a link to Google's privacy policy on its front page or not, it won't change what Google does with users' info, and it almost certainly won't change the way anyone (other than maybe these groups) view Google. It's all a big show for no reason. There are plenty of important causes that these groups should be working on. Worrying whether or not Google links to its privacy policy from its front page or one page deep is silly pandering.

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IP Lawyer Explains Why Uploading Files May Not Be Distribution For Copyright

from the forget-making-available... dept

While there's been a big ongoing discussion in various courtrooms concerning the question of whether or not making unauthorized files available for download is copyright infringement, there's another interpretation of copyright law that many copyright scholars agree with -- but which the RIAA and the MPAA would certainly prefer you not hear. I'm at the San Francisco MusicTech Summit and on an early (and not particularly well attended) session in the morning, intellectual property lawyer Andrew Bridges made a fascinating argument: that if you follow the actual text of existing US copyright law, uploading unauthorized content does not infringe the distribution rights of copyright. This goes even beyond the whole "making available" question, by saying even the uploading doesn't violate the law directly.

The reasoning requires a very literal reading of the law. Section 106 of copyright law lists out the specific "exclusive rights" granted under copyright law to copyright holders, including things like reproduction rights, performance rights and distribution rights. The text of the distribution right is: "to distribute copies or phonorecords of the copyrighted work to the public by sale or other transfer of ownership, or by rental, lease, or lending;" From this reading, one might conclude that uploading a file is a "copy." But if you go to Section 101, which holds the definitions for the law, it states (quite clearly):

"Copies" are material objects, other than phonorecords, in which a work is fixed by any method now known or later developed, and from which the work can be perceived, reproduced, or otherwise communicated, either directly or with the aid of a machine or device. The term "copies" includes the material object, other than a phonorecord, in which the work is first fixed.

Note the emphasis on material objects. As such, you can read the law, as written, to conclude that passing around the song itself, which is not a material object, is not actually an infringement of the distribution right under the current law.

Now, before people get too excited about this, in a later panel this question was raised again, to the EFF's Fred von Lohmann. He agreed that this appeared to be a literal reading of copyright law -- and that just about every copyright scholar he's spoken to agrees -- but that every time he's argued it in court, the court has disagreed or ignored it. He says he'll continue to make the argument, but that it has not been effective. Also, as Bridges noted in making the original statement, just because the distribution right isn't infringed, doesn't mean there aren't other issues. For example, whoever downloaded the file downloaded it to a material object (the hard drive) probably violates the first exclusive right, the "reproduction" right. And, thus, an argument could be made that the person who uploaded the file contributed to the violation of the reproduction right. However, based on this argument, it does seem clear that uploading a file is not, technically, a violation of the distribution right under copyright law -- not that the courts recognize that. Of course, if the courts ever did recognize this fact, you could bet that within a matter of days, a Congressional Representative would introduce an amendment to copyright law to change the definition of "copy" to include content not tied to a material good.

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FBI Forced To Back Down On Secret Info Request To Internet Archive

from the civil-liberties-matter dept

Congress curtailed the FBI's ability to use National Security Letters (NSLs) a few years ago after it became clear that the FBI was widely abusing the process to request information from organizations with no judicial oversight and with built in gag orders forbidding recipients from talking about receiving the letters. However, the FBI is still using the letters in some cases. Last fall, it sent one to Brewster Kahle and the Internet Archive, demanding info on an Archive user while forbidding Kahle from talking about the letter to anyone but his lawyers. Kahle, the EFF and the ACLU fought back in court and have won, getting the FBI to rescind the demand and also removing part of the gag order, allowing Kahle to say he received the letter (though not discussing what info it demanded). As the EFF points out, this should serve as a blueprint for how others can challenge questionable NSLs as well.

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EFF Asks Congress To Look Into Border Searches Of Laptops

from the some-rules-would-be-nice dept

Last month yet another court ruled that border patrol guards could search the data on mobile phones and laptops without any probable cause. This was troubling for a variety of reasons, since it basically gives them access to all sorts of things that one would have a normal expectation of privacy over. It's quite different than, say, a stack of papers you have brought with you while traveling overseas. In those cases, you made the proactive decision to take those files with you. Yet, since your computer stores everything, you're exposing much more, and doing it without making the proactive decision to bring those files with you. It's also not clear how this applies to network drives. For example, I store some files on a network drive that appears as just another drive off of my laptop, even though it's not in the laptop itself. Can a customs agent start searching that drive as well? This raises some serious concerns, and the EFF is now demanding some Congressional oversight concerning how these laptop and mobile device searches take place, even suggesting that laws be put in place to prevent the abuse of power by customs agents.

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EFF Takes Up The Cause Of Bogus Trademarks On Military Hardware

from the don't-make-a-model-of-a-b-24-bomber dept

A few years back, we highlighted one of the more ridiculous examples of "intellectual property" claims stretched to ridiculous ends: defense contractors were claiming intellectual property rights over the designs of military hardware and were demanding that model toy makers pay up. Despite widespread criticism when this first happened, they're still doing it. The EFF is now hitting back against Lockheed Martin for forcing digital images of a model of a B-24 bomber offline using its trademark on the B-24. As the EFF notes, this particular trademark should never have been granted, as it's completely reasonable to be able to accurately describe what sort of plane it is using the government-given name for it. The EFF has now sent a letter to Lockheed Martin politely requesting it change its position on this matter. Anyone want to set odds on Lockheed Martin changing its mind?

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New RIAA Argument: Throwing A Promo CD In The Garbage = Unauthorized Distribution

from the next-up:-picking-your-nose=distribution dept

Last summer, the EFF sued Universal Music Group, after UMG had eBay takedown the sales of certain CDs. The CDs were promotional CDs, purchased legitimately by a guy going to LA record stores. However, UMG claimed that the CDs, as promotional items, were still the property of Universal Music Group. The EFF charged that UMG was abusing the law, specifically by ignoring the right of first sale, which is enshrined in copyright law allowing you to resell CDs or other works that contain copyrighted material. In response, UMG has now filed a brief that says that throwing out a promotional CD is unauthorized distribution.

Effectively, UMG is saying that merely by putting some fine print on a CD, it can effectively "own" that CD forever. If the court agrees, this would have some rather stunning ramifications, effectively wiping out the first sale doctrine. Record labels could then include similar language on all CDs, not just promo CDs, and then basically create its own copyright rules, preventing any use other than what the record label decided to allow. That would seem to go against much of historical precedent (and basic common sense) surrounding copyright. Courts in the past have noted time and time again that just because you say something is true, it doesn't mean it necessarily is true. Hopefully the court will make that point once again.

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