Congress Should Just Say No to NO FAKES

There is a lot of anxiety around the use of generative artificial intelligence, some of it justified. But it seems like Congress thinks the highest priority is to protect celebrities – living or dead. Never fear, ghosts of the famous and infamous,...

Making the Law Accessible in Europe and the USA

EFF Legal Intern Alissa Johnson contributed to the writing of this blog post.Earlier this month, the European Union Court of Justice ruled that harmonized standards are a part of EU law, and thus must be accessible to EU citizens and residents...

SXSW Tried to Silence Critics with Bogus Trademark and Copyright Claims. EFF Fought Back.

Special thanks to EFF legal intern Jack Beck, who was the lead author of this post. Amid heavy criticism for its ties to weapons manufacturers supplying Israel, South by Southwest—the organizer of an annual conference and music festival in...

EFF to Ninth Circuit: There’s No Software Exception to Traditional Copyright Limits

Copyright’s reach is already far too broad, and courts have no business expanding it any further, particularly where that reframing will undermine adversarial interoperability. Unfortunately, a federal district court did just that in the latest...

Save your Twitter Account

Amid reports that the site formerly known as Twitter is dropping in value, hindering how people use the site, and has had controversial removals of accounts. It has never been more precarious to rely on the site, now called X, as a historical...

It's Copyright Week 2024: Join Us in the Fight for Better Copyright Law and Policy

We're taking part in Copyright Week, a series of actions and discussions supporting key principles that should guide copyright policy. Every day this week, various groups are taking on different elements of copyright law and policy, addressing...

Equitable Access to the Law Got Stronger: 2023 Year in Review

It seems like a no-brainer that everyone should be able to read, copy, and share the laws we all must follow, but few things are simple in the internet age. Public.Resource.Org’s victory at the D.C. Circuit appeals court in September, in which the...

EFF to Copyright Office: Copyright Is Indeed a Hammer, But Don’t Be Too Hasty to Nail Generative AI

Generative AI has sparked a great deal of hype, fear, and speculation. Courts are just beginning to analyze how traditional copyright laws apply to the creation and use of these technologies. Into this breach has stepped the United States...

Victory! Embedded Links to Photos on Instagram Don’t Infringe Photographers’ Copyrights, Court Rules

Every day, we visit websites or read news articles that contain photos embedded from somewhere else, usually other websites or servers where the images were first published or stored. What’s happening behind the scenes when you click on a website...

To Save the News, We Must Shatter Ad-Tech

The news is in trouble. It’s not just the mass closures of newsrooms - it’s also the physical and ideological attacks on journalists.News websites are plastered with ads, but more than half of the money those ads generate is siphoned off by...

What the Supreme Court’s Decision in Warhol Means for Fair Use

The Supreme Court has issued its long-awaited decision in Andy Warhol Foundation v. Goldsmith, a fair use case that raised fundamental questions about rights and obligations of commercial artists. The Court’s opinion did not answer many of those...

The DMCA Cannot Protect You From Your Own Words

There is a loud debate raging over what companies should and shouldn’t be doing about the things people say on their platforms. What people often seem to forget is that we already know the dangers of providing a quick way for people to remove...

In SAS v. WPL, the Federal Circuit Finally Gets Something Right on Computer Copyright

Figuring out the correct boundaries of software copyright protection is a difficult task. As several judges have put it, “applying copyright law to computer programs is like assembling a jigsaw puzzle whose pieces do not quite fit.” Last week, the...

For Would-Be Censors and the Thin-Skinned, Copyright Law Offers Powerful Tools

We're taking part in Copyright Week, a series of actions and discussions supporting key principles that should guide copyright policy. Every day this week, various groups are taking on different elements of copyright law and policy, and addressing...

Fair Use Creep Is A Feature, Not a Bug

Lawyers, scholars, and activists, including EFF, often highlight Section 512 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and Section 230 (originally of the Communications Decency Act) as the legal foundations of the internet. But there’s another, much...

The Andy Warhol Case That Could Wreck American Art

Without strong fair-use protections, a culture can’t thrive.

Victory! Court Rules That DMCA Does Not Override First Amendment’s Anonymous Speech Protections

Copyright law cannot be used as a shortcut around the First Amendment’s strong protections for anonymous internet users, a federal trial court ruled on Tuesday.The decision by a judge in the United States District Court for the Northern District...

EFF to Court: Security Research Is a Fair Use

We live in a world increasingly governed by technology. Too often, that technology includes security vulnerabilities that could allow malicious actors access to our most important and private information. That’s why it’s so important that security...