Electronic Frontier Foundation

   

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is a non-profit advocacy and legal organization with the stated purpose of being dedicated to preserving first amendment rights in the context of today's digital age. Its stated main goal is to "...educate the press, policymakers and the general public about civil liberties issues related to technology; and to act as a defender of those liberties." It is a membership organization supported by donations and is based in San Francisco.


EFF has taken action in several ways:

  • providing or funding legal defense in court
  • defending the individual and new technologies from the chilling effects of what it considers baseless or misdirected legal threats
  • providing guidance to the government and courts
  • organizing political action and mass mailings
  • supporting new technologies which it believes preserve personal freedoms
  • maintaining a database and web sites of related news and information
  • monitoring and challenging potential legislation that it believes would infringe on personal rights and erode fair use
  • soliciting a list of what it considers patent abuses with intentions to defeat those that it considers without merit

History

The Electronic Frontier Foundation was founded in July 1990 by Mitch Kapor, John Gilmore and John Perry Barlow.

The creation of the organization was motivated by the raid on Steve Jackson Games by the United States Secret Service as part of Operation Sundevil. Its second big case was Bernstein v. United States, where programmer and professor Daniel Bernstein sued the government for permission to publish his encryption software, Snuffle, and a paper describing it. More recently the organization has been involved in defending Edward Felten, Jon Johansen, and Dmitry Sklyarov.

Major supporters

  • On February 18, 2004, the EFF announced [1] (http://www.eff.org/about/20040218_eff_pr.php) that it has received $1.2 million from the estate of Leonard Zubkoff. It will use $1 million of this money to establish the EFF Endowment Fund for Digital Civil Liberties.
  • EFF often receives additional pro bono legal assistance from Prof. Eben Moglen.
  • Lawrence Lessig: EFF boardmember and Stanford professor

Criticisms

The EFF is critized by some who feel that it many times that it advocates for wholesale changes to law (such as pushing for the legalization of P2P, implying some change of the copyright laws) instead of focusing on stopping abuses of the law (such as stopping abusive patents and DCMA complaints).

Milestones and accomplishments

[ these need dates and detail... ]

  • 1990: Founded the organization and successfully represented Steve Jackson Games (SJG) in a Federal court case to prosecute the United States Secret Service for unlawfully raiding their offices and siezing computers.
  • Professor Edward Felten: DMCA used to censor his research to break Secure Digital Music Initiative (SDMI)
  • 2600 Magazine: defense against application of DMCA to publishing the DeCSS code and links
  • Fighting for electronic voting reform
  • Fighting for online privacy
  • Supports the Chilling Effects Clearinghouse efforts to organize a database of IP law abuse and educate potential victims
  • April 19, 2004: Initiated the Patent Busting Project to challenge "illegitimate patents that suppress non-commercial and small business innovation or limit free expression online"
  • As of July 15, 2004: Has emailed 298 issues of the EFFector newsletter, keeping members and subscribers informed of current issues, urging action through Action Alert, and providing a variety of background information and links
  • August 19, 2004: victory (http://www.eff.org/news/archives/2004_08.php#001833) in the MGM vs. Grokster (http://www.eff.org/IP/P2P/MGM_v_Grokster/) appeal. Fred von Lohmann of EFF as lead council representing Streamcast Networks. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that neither were liable for infringements by people using their software to distribute copyrighted works.
  • October 6, 2004: In cooperation with 8 other public interest organizations, submitted a brief (http://www.eff.org/news/archives/2004_10.php#001968) challenging the FCC's authority to impose the broadcast flag mandate, which goes into effect in July 2005.
  • October 15, 2004: Successfully represented the nonprofit ISP Online Policy Group (OPG) and two Swarthmore College students who published security flaws in Diebold voting machines. From the press release: "Diebold is the first company to be held liable for violating section 512(f) of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), which makes it unlawful to use DMCA takedown threats when the copyright holder knows that infringement has not actually occurred."

External links

fr:Electronic frontier foundation de:Electronic Frontier Foundation



Retrieved from "http://www.mywiseowl.com/articles/Electronic_Frontier_Foundation"

This page has been accessed 892 times. This page was last modified 08:44, 26 Nov 2004. All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License (see Copyrights for details).