The Washington Post reports that FCC Chairman Genachowski is considering basing the FCC’s proposed net neutrality rules on precisely the legal foundation discredited in a recent court ruling: Specifically, he is exploring a legal push under the current legal framework for broadband, which is under Title I, that would make possible the FCC’s push for [...]
“Connections.” It’s an innocent-sounding word. But it’s at the heart of some of the worst of Facebook’s recent changes. Facebook first announced Connections a few weeks ago, and EFF quickly wrote at length about the problems they created. Basically, Facebook has transformed substantial personal information — including your hometown, education, work history, interests, and activities [...]
In March, we wrote about Playstation 3 owners who were up in arms after Sony announced that a new firmware “upgrade” would actually disable a feature that enables users to run GNU/LINUX and other operating systems on their PS3 consoles. In response, a class action lawsuit has now been filed against Sony on behalf of [...]
Should US and European law enforcement agencies be given unrestricted access to commercial and travel transactions from individuals around the world without judicial oversight? That was the question on the table in a heated debate in the European Parliament this week. In the early years of the so-called “War On Terror”, the US government created [...]
Piracy was once a word synonymous with the sea and rebellious sailors sailing across the ocean and plundering merchant vessels en route to their destinations. In more recent years, however, piracy is a word having to do with plagiarism. Most specifically, lawsuits against piracy is being aimed at online downloads/uploads where individuals are sharing content [...]
Contributory copyright infringement is the act of linking to or transmitting information on how to access copyrighted material illegally from another source. For example posting a link to an illegitimate download of a song would be contributory copyright infringement. You might not be hosting the song on your server, and you might not have been [...]
The answer is yes, downloading or streaming copyrighted material without purchasing legitimately from it’s owner is illegal. The source of the download does not matter, whether it is from LimeWire, BitTorrent, Youtube, Newsgroups or even physical sources like a flash drive. That doesn’t mean that illegal downloading doesn’t happen on the internet, because it most [...]
The terms copyright and trademark are two of the most frequently confused terms in the world of intellectual property. Basically copyright pertains to original works and who can reproduce Knowing the correction definition of each is key to a greater understanding of just how copyright and trademark laws work, so pay attention here. Also note [...]