The Supreme Court’s Van Buren decision today overturned a dangerous precedent and clarified the notoriously ambiguous meaning of “exceeding authorized access” in the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, the federal computer crime law that’s been misused to prosecute beneficial and important online activity. The decision is a victory...
It’s hard to believe that when Governor Newsom identifies a total of $7 billion for California’s legislature to spend on broadband access—coming from a mix of state surplus dollars and federal rescue money to invest in broadband infrastructure— that the legislature would do nothing.
This blog post is part of a series, looking at the public interest internet—the parts of the internet that don’t garner the headlines of Facebook or Google, but quietly provide public goods and useful services without requiring the scale or the business practices of the tech giants. Read our ...
This post was co-written by EFF Legal Intern Lara EllenbergIn going after internet service providers (ISPs) for the actions of just a few of their users, Sony Music, other major record labels, and music publishing companies have found a way to cut people off of the internet based on mere...
EFF has long fought to reform vague, dangerous computer crime laws like the CFAA. We're gratified that the Supreme Court today acknowledged that overbroad application of the CFAA risks turning nearly any user of the Internet into a criminal based on arbitrary terms of service. We remember the...
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...
