Fezmid Posted December 22, 2004 Share Posted December 22, 2004 I've posted this before, but EFF.org does some REALLY good work to protect people's online freedoms. If you're looking to donate some money this time of the year and want a good tax deduction, eff.org is a good candidate. They even helped the ever popular JibJab that I've seen posted here so many times in the past. If not for them, the parody would probably not be able to be shown. * We defended Jibjab's fair use of "This Land Is Your Land" in its presidential parody "This Land" and in the process learned that the Woody Guthrie song had fallen into the public domain. Just something to think about. http://www.eff.org/support/ CW Dear EFFector readers, 2004 has been another amazing year here at EFF, with a number of important victories for freedom, privacy, and innovation: * We helped eVisa.com win its fight against the Visa credit card dynasty over fair use of the word "visa" in domain names. * We (with your support) helped derail the government's CAPPS II passenger-profiling system (although we need your help to continue to fight its evil reincarnation, Secure Flight). * We won the Grokster case in the 9th Circuit. The Supreme Court has decided to hear this case in March 2005. * We helped individuals assert their due process rights in cases brought against them by the recording industry. * We put forth our voluntary collective licensing proposal, explaining how artists could get paid without suing music lovers. * We won the case that got Diebold punished for misusing copyright law. * We won the Bunner case, which held that republishing information about reverse engineering was not prohibited by trade secret law. * We started a patent busting campaign and identified the ten most egregious patent threats to technology and freedom. * We were a leader in the fight for a verifiable paper trail on electronic voting machines. * We expanded our international work, participating in the Digital Video Broadcasting group and in WIPO. * We defended Jibjab's fair use of "This Land Is Your Land" in its presidential parody "This Land" and in the process learned that the Woody Guthrie song had fallen into the public domain. * We defended technologists using smart card readers from an overzealous DirecTV. * We (with your support) helped make sure terrible legislation like the PIRATE Act and the Induce Act did not pass. * We drafted a mock legal complaint to show how the Induce Act would kill off technologies like the iPod. * We successfully challenged the Child Online Protection Act at the Supreme Court. * We wrote and circulated a paper on best practices for Online Service Providers. * We fought the expansion of the DMCA, writing amicus briefs supporting Skylink's right to make interoperable garage door openers and Static Control's right to make aftermarket printer cartridges. (We helped win both cases.) * We represented (and continue to represent) Indymedia in an effort to uncover why their servers were seized and to assert their First Amendment rights. * We formed an Advisory Board of some of the smartest people working on these issues. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
flomoe Posted December 22, 2004 Share Posted December 22, 2004 The only thing I don't agree that EFF did was stop the CAPPS II passenger profiling. I am a firm believer in public safety and if that system was in place September 10th, 2001, nothing would have happened the following day. Just my opinion. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fezmid Posted December 22, 2004 Author Share Posted December 22, 2004 The only thing I don't agree that EFF did was stop the CAPPS II passenger profiling. I am a firm believer in public safety and if that system was in place September 10th, 2001, nothing would have happened the following day. Just my opinion. 173020[/snapback] I disagree with that; a secret profiling system that nobody knows what it contains and in which there is no way to modify bad data is a bad idea... And there's no guarantee that it would've prevented 9/11 from what I've read. But we can all have our own opinions on things; overall, the EFF does great work (and note that they even went against DirecTV and I *still* support them! Even though I do believe that 99.9% of the people that DirecTV went after were really making pirated access cards, they went about it all wrong). CW Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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