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Free Software Foundation attacks DRM in HTML video

The Free Software Foundation, never a friend to digital rights management, has taken issue with its arrival in the Web standards world.

In a letter from the FSF, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Creative Commons, and other allied groups yesterday, the group called on the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) to keep DRM out of the standards it defines.

"We write to implore the World Wide Web Consortium and its member organizations to reject the Encrypted Media Extensions (EME) proposal," the groups said. "DRM restricts the public's freedom, even beyond what overzealous copyright law requires, to the perceived … Read more

Want to unlock your phone? Fix the DMCA

This week, a new federal mandate kicked in that makes it illegal for you to unlock a phone that you bought locked from a carrier. The rule states that unauthorized unlocking of a phone you bought -- even if you paid full price for it, minus a carrier subsidy -- is a violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Specifically, it violates a portion of the law enacted in 2000 that makes it illegal to bypass technology designed to restrict access to a certain product. And that provision has bedeviled consumers, researchers, and lawyers for 12 years -- it's … Read more

Dancing baby vs. YouTube-Prince case set to go to trial

The woman who posted a video of her children dancing to the Prince tune "Let's Go Crazy" and has since waged nearly a six-year legal fight with Universal Music Group over the clip, may see her day in court.

US District Judge Jeremy Fogel ruled today that a summary judgment will not decide this case, which means that if the two parties don't settle, this lawsuit will proceed to a jury trial.

The whole suit got started in 2007 when Prince asked YouTube to remove the clip of the dancing boys. When the clip got scrubbed, … Read more

Surveillance a la Skype: EFF, others seek answers

Microsoft needs to open up about the trustworthiness of its Skype software for confidential conversations, according to an open letter to the company posted today.

The letter, from an array of privacy advocates, Internet activists, journalists, and others, calls on Microsoft to provide public documentation about the security and privacy practices around Skype, which facilitates video and voice communications over the Internet. Microsoft completed its $8.5 billion acquisition of Skype in October 2011.

The authors of the letter say they're worried in particular about the access that governments have to both Skype conversations themselves and to the user … Read more

Secret document on FISA snooping law released -- sort of

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has been successful in having a secret document released by the U.S. government, that helps U.S. authorities to interpret the federal snooping law, the Foreign Intelligence Services Act (FISA).

The trouble is, the document is pretty much entirely all redacted. (So much for transparency...)

In a nutshell, last month the U.S. Congress reauthorized the FISA Amendments Act for another five years, allowing the U.S. government and its law enforcement agencies to conduct "unconstitutional surveillance," according to the EFF. However, the law is complicated and lengthy, and there is a "… Read more

Critics raise specter of police state in challenge to new Calif. law

California voters yesterday approved a new law billed as curbing human trafficking. A lesser-known section of Proposition 35, however, requires residents convicted of indecent exposure and other sex-related crimes to register their social-networking profiles and e-mail addresses with police.

That violates the First Amendment's guarantee of freedom of speech, including anonymous speech, the ACLU and the Electronic Frontier Foundation said in a lawsuit (PDF) filed today.

Prop 35 takes effect immediately and sweeps broadly. It says that California residents convicted of crimes since 1944 including misdemeanor indecent exposure -- courts have included in that category nude dancing on a … Read more

EFF: TV networks use 'craven' tactics against streaming service

The Electronic Frontier Foundation is backing startup Aereo, which is embroiled in court with broadcasters and television networks over copyright issues.

The digital rights group urged a federal appeals court on Friday to throw out the case, which is designed to shut down Aereo's streaming services. Aereo offers consumers the means to stream broadcast television, sent through the Internet to a customer's devices via tiny antennas currently hosted on a Brooklyn rooftop. Each "rabbit ear" is assigned to an individual user, who can then choose which signals should be transmitted to mobile devices.

Broadcasters and television … Read more

Feds uphold jailbreaking laws on DVDs, game consoles, tablets

The U.S. Copyright Office published its new set of rules on whether people can jailbreak smartphones, tablets, and gaming consoles today; it also outlined the guidelines on DVD copying.

Overwhelmingly, its conclusions were that besides smartphones, all of the above remain illegal.

Every three years the Copyright Office takes requests from digital rights proponents and opponents to re-examine the laws under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act that dictate whether people can unlock or jailbreak their varied devices. Today, in a lengthy document (PDF), the government listed all of the changes it made.

The key developments are that people cannot … Read more

Supreme Court closes door on warrantless eavesdropping suit

The long-standing warrantless spying case ended at the hands of the Supreme Court today. After six years of working its way up through the courts, the Electronic Frontier Foundation's lawsuit against the National Security Agency -- which aimed to hold telecom companies liable for allowing government eavesdropping on U.S. residents -- was terminated.

The Supreme Court declined to review a lower court ruling on the case today, closing the door on further appeals. Its decision did not address the merits of the case.

Hepting v. AT&T was a class-action suit filed by the American Civil Liberties … Read more