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The coming copyright storm
With a fisted left hand, the entertainment industry pays BayTSP run by former black-hat cracker, Mark Ishikawa, up to US$50,000 per month to determine who is illegally copying protected works on the...
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Digital Choice and Freedom Act
Last week, Representative Zoe Lofgren (D-California) introduced the Digital Choice and Freedom Act, proposed legislation that would amend the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) to specifically...
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Technology Consumer Bill of Rights
Senator Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) and Representative Christopher Cox (R-California) have introduced legislation in both US congressional bodies that would protect the rights of consumers to use digital...
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Bad code in Washington
It’s midterm election day in America when some percentage of us — usually less than half — hold our noses and go to the polls. Hopefully by now you’ve taken the time to inform yourself and you’re...
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EFF and the doctrine of pre-emptive litigation
Call it the doctrine of pre-emptive litigation. EFF has filed a lawsuit against Diebold, Inc., the manufacturer of an electronic voting machine that is said to be “unverifiable.” When a citizen votes,...
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Republican staffers may have hacked Democrat computers
Senate Judiciary Committee Republican staffers have reportedly hacked into Democrat computers for more than a year, copying documents and passing them on to sympathetic corporate media hands. So says...
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DMCRA finally gets a hearing
Tomorrow, 12 May 2004, the Digital Media Consumers’ Rights Act (DMCRA), H.R. 107, finally gets a hearing in front of the Trade, Commerce, and Consumer Protection subcommittee of the House Energy and...
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Fair use and the DMCA
Corporate copyright holders have taken to issuing Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) takedown orders with wild abandon. Such wild abandon, in fact, that they’ve begun to overstep legal bounds....
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Joe Biden: Wrong on both the net and tech
If you had any doubt that Barack Obama is a politician like any other, his selection of Senator Joe Biden (D-Delaware) should allay that doubt. Biden’s voting record on copyright, for example, is...
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The blotter: Week ending 28 February 2010
Business CitiBank blocked fabulis.com’s bank account for “objectionable content on their blog.” Fabulis.com appears to be setting up a rather innocuous travel portal for gay men. Censorship Iceland...
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Comes the internet and we still need the wine not the bottle
“We Need To Change Copyright Laws To Save Newspapers” by Eric Clemons and Nehal Madhani is so terribly misguided as to be laughable if it weren’t representative of the views of so many powerful...
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Ron Wyden saves the internet (at least for this year)
The US entertainment cartel‘s latest wet dream, the Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act (COICA), calls for a mandated government-run blacklist where domain name service (DNS), credit...
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EMI asks court to bar EFF amicus brief
UK record label EMI has asked a federal judge in New York to bar the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) from filing an amicus curiae brief in the record label’s lawsuit against MP3tunes. Amicus...
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The blotter: Week ending 1 May 2011
Business The US Supreme Court has ruled (.pdf; 258KB) that corporations can use contracts that include a clause forbidding customers from forming groups for class-action lawsuits and group...
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Internet service providers to shill for entertainment cartel
For years the entertainment cartel has been nipping at the heels of the large internet service providers (ISPs) — AT&T, Cablevision, Comcast, Time Warner Cable, and Verizon — to join in their war...
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Entertainment cartel wants to break the internet
In an effort to eliminate any and all intellectual property infringement online, the entertainment cartel has this recurring wet dream of being allowed to interfere with the internet. Late last month...
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Librarian of Congress DMCA exemptions
When the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) was passed into law in 1998, the Librarian of Congress was charged with the power to grant certain exemptions. The Librarian’s latest exemptions (.pdf;...
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US entertainment cartel gets a pimp
The US entertainment cartel has finally found a pimp, however inadequte it may be: Your internet service provider. After more than four years of navel-gazing and arm twisting, the Copyright Alert...
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There ought to be a three-strikes rule in corporate lawsuits
In 2010, the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York in Viacom v. YouTube, ruled against Viacom finding that YouTube was protected by the “safe harbor” provisions of Section...
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That’s it for Dropbox
Dropbox has recently changed its terms of service to include a forced arbitration clause. “Arbitration is a faster and more efficient way to resolve legal disputes, and it provides a good alternative...
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Forget any pretense of Dropbox security
Earlier this month, I wrote that we would not be renewing our Dropbox accounts when they expire because the cloud storage provider had changed its terms of service to include a forced arbitration...
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WordPress fights bogus DMCA takedowns
The takedown provision of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) — whereby a copyright owner is allowed to submit a good faith statement that the use of infringing material is not authorized and...
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Music publishers open Pandora’s box
Music publishers BMG Rights Management and Round Hill Music have filed a copyright infringement lawsuit (.pdf; 2.3MB) against last-mile internet service provider Cox Communications. Almost certainly,...
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Doctorow rejoins EFF to work on eliminating DRM
Cory Doctorow, who has to be the hardest working person on the internet, has rejoined the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) to continue his work against the pervasive use of digital rights...
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Do you own that new car? Really?
Once upon a time, when you tottered down to your local Chevy dealer, wrote a big check, and drove off in that new Impala, you actually owned the automobile. Same process if you were a farmer and the...
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Hack your tractors
Every three years in the US, the Librarian of Congress considers proposals for exemptions to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) and issues new rules if necessary. Late last month, David Mao...
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Right to repair
The last vehicle I owned that I could actually work on was a 1970 Volkswagen pop-top camper. I was able to do most of the work on that vehicle myself — there was very little that couldn’t be fixed...
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Using copyright to protect us from ourselves
As I’ve written previously, Massachusetts has a “right to repair” law requiring motor vehicle manufacturers to use a standard, open interface for accessing service data and to sell tools and technical...
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Decentralized web summit
Brewster Kahle, founder of the Internet Archive and Thinking Machines, is clearly worried about the state of the open web. He’s managed to curate — if people can be curated, and why not? — a stellar...
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Minnesota’s virtually unknown right to repair legislation
The Minnesota Legislature is currently adjourned sine die. That means they don’t know when they’re coming back. Isn’t that special? We’ll have to wait for the 90th Minnesota Legislature to convene in...
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EFF files lawsuit challenging DMCA anti-circumvention rule
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has filed a long-awaited lawsuit (.pdf; 271KB) challenging the constitutionality of section 1201 (commonly referred to as the “anti-circumvention rule“) of the...
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Two year anti-circumvention provision exemptions start now
On 28 October 2016, two very-much ignored but crucial exemptions (.pdf; 308KB) to section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) took effect. Commonly known as the anti-circumvention...
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Google goes evil by default (and you can’t turn it off)
Back in late 2013, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) — the primary standards body for the web — announced that Tim Berners-Lee, the organization’s director, had determined that “playback of...
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DRM in HTML5 coming soon to a browser near you
In an 11 March 2017 article for the Guardian, Tim Berners-Lee — the inventor of the world wide web — posits three changes that must be made to save his progeny: Regain control of our personal data...
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W3C will publish video DRM, ignoring member objections
In April 2017, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) held a controversial standards-setting vote, pitting open web advocates against corporate electronics, internet, and content entities over the issue...
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