Legal Guide for Bloggers | Electronic Frontier Foundation
http://www.eff.org/issues/bloggers/legal

Whether you're a newly minted blogger or a relative old-timer, you've been seeing more and more stories pop up every day about bloggers getting in trouble for what they post.

We had hoped this would go differently.

April 7th, 2009 Friday evening, in a motion to dismiss Jewel v. NSA, EFF's litigation against the National Security Agency for the warrantless wiretapping of countless Americans, the Obama Administration's made two deeply troubling arguments.

Well, damn. I use THREE operating systems, I must be a criminal mastermind. :P

"Aside from the remarkable overreach by campus and state police in trying to paint a student as suspicious in part because he can navigate a non-Windows computer environment, nothing cited in the warrant application could possibly constitute the cited criminal offenses."

"remarkable overreach by campus and state police in trying to paint a student as suspicious in part because he can navigate a non-Windows computer environment"

Reminds me of DC.

teaching copyright fair use

"EFF's Teaching Copyright curriculum was created to help teachers present the laws surrounding digital rights in a balanced way. Teaching Copyright provides lessons and ideas for opening your classroom up to discussion, letting your students express their ideas and concerns, and then guiding your students toward an understanding of the boundaries of copyright law."

There's a lot of misinformation out there about legal rights and responsibilities in the digital era. This is especially disconcerting when it comes to information being shared with youth. Kids and teens are bombarded with messages from a myriad of sources that using new technology is high-risk behavior. Downloading music is compared to stealing a bicycle — even though many downloads are lawful. Making videos using short clips from other sources is treated as probably illegal — even though many such videos are also lawful. This misinformation is harmful, because it discourages kids and teens from following their natural inclination to be innovative and inquisitive. The innovators, artists and voters of tomorrow need to know that copyright law restricts many activities but also permits many others. And they need to know the positive steps they can take to protect themselves in the digital sphere. In short, youth don't need more intimidation—what they need is solid, accurate information

EFF's Teaching Copyright curriculum was created to help teachers present the laws surrounding digital rights in a balanced way.

from EFF. Youth Curriculum

privacy statement, terms of service

TOSBack keeps an eye on 44 website policies. Every time one of them changes, you'll see an update here.

Great new tool from the Electronic Frontier Foundation which allows you to see when a companies online Terms of Service/Privacy Policy is changed

OSBack keeps an eye on 44 website policies. Every time one of them changes, you'll see an update here.

The Terms-Of-Service Tracker

President Obama reportedly gave an iPod, loaded with 40 show tunes, to England's Queen Elizabeth II as a gift. Did he violate the law when he did so? You know your copyright laws are broken when there is no easy answer to this question.

President Obama reportedly gave an iPod, loaded with 40 show tunes, to England's Queen Elizabeth II as a gift. Did he violate the law when he did so?

iPods, First Sale, President Obama, and the Queen of England | Electronic Frontier Foundation

RT @nitot: Obama a acheté de la musique et donné un iPod à la reine d'angleterre. C'est un pirate ! http://tinyurl.com/cob9jm [from http://twitter.com/hvaudaux/statuses/1444222097]

Obama's "hip" gift to the Queen raises some interesting questions and points to a need for more discussion on the topic of what's really copyright infringement.

President Obama reportedly gave an iPod, loaded with 40 show tunes, to England's Queen Elizabeth II as a gift. Did he violate the law when he did so? You know your copyright laws are broken when there is no easy answer to this question.

Copyright Watch, hosted by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, is designed for the purposes of sharing and comparing the copyright laws of countries around the world. As the world has become connected through the Internet the creation and global sharing of content has become very easy. At the same time the misuse of copyrighted content has become easier too. Sometimes copyright violations may be the result of conflicting copyright laws. Copyright Watch aims to provide a place where copyright laws can be compared and changes to copyright laws can be updated. Applications for Education Copyright Watch could be useful for teaching about the differences between copyright laws. Copyright Watch might also be useful as a part of a discussion about the purpose of copyright laws.

Copyright Watch collects and monitors copyright laws from all over the world.

Global Transparency in Copyright Law. "Copyright Watch was begun by an international group of copyright experts, drawn from the Access to Knowledge community. We’d like to thank Corporacion Innovarte, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Electronic Information for Libraries (eIFL.net), the International Federation of Library Associations, Professor Michael Geist, the Third World Network, and the Bangalore Centre for Internet and Society for their support."

Fabulous website to checkout if you are unsure of what copyright laws exist in which countries?

publicly available information"

In conclusion, we at EFF are worried that today's changes will lead to Facebook users publishing to the world much more information about themselves than they ever intended.

The new changes are intended to simplify Facebook's notoriously complex privacy settings and, in the words of today's privacy announcement to all Facebook users, "give you more control of your information." But do all of the changes really give Facebook users more control over their information? EFF took a close look at the changes to figure out which ones are for the better — and which ones are for the worse.

"Panopticlick tests your browser to see how unique it is based on the information it will share with sites it visits."

is it possible to uniquely identify your browser w/o any cookies involved? apparently, that's quite feasible.

Apple's draconian developer licence.

Kill You App Any Time, Ban on Public Statements, I can see way.

Remember when Apple was a friendly company and shared a lot of information with the development community? Not any more.

The EFF gets its hands on, and reviews the Apple Developer Program License Agreement.

Since its incorporation just over five years ago, Facebook has undergone a remarkable transformation. When it started, it was a private space for communication with a group of your choice. Soon, it transformed into a platform where much of your information is public by default.

Article showing comparison of Facebook's privacy policy over the years

History of Facebook privacy erosion.

Facebook's Eroding Privacy Policy: A Timeline

Since its incorporation just over five years ago, Facebook has undergone a remarkable transformation. When it started, it was a private space for communication with a group of your choice. Soon, it transformed into a platform where much of your information is public by default. Today, it has become a platform where you have no choice but to make certain information public, and this public information may be shared by Facebook with its partner websites and used to target ads.

Facebook is a dangerous place to have a profile on - not because of maurading online predators, but because you don't know where you stand with it as a company. This research from the EFF proves that they are happy to re-jig their privacy rules in order make money from their users.

Facebook is moving people to their new 'Connections'. And it appears that your privacy settings have been dumped in the process.

This #Facebook lack of #privacy stuff is REALLY concerning me http://bit.ly/9nnk4j

Facebook's creepy new privacy settings

Freedom Of Information Act Search Engine

EFF's Freedom Of Information Act project has gathered thousands of pages of material. These shed light on controversial government surveillance programs, lobbying practices, and intellectual property initiatives. You can use the EFF FOIA Search Engine below to search and examine the documents' contents. If you find something you think is significant, send us an email: foia@eff.org.

EFF's document collection-obtained through requests and litigation under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act (FOIA)-covers some controversial government initiatives, including the FBI's Investigative Data Warehouse and DCS 3000 surveillance program and the Department of Homeland Security's Automated Targeting System and ADVISE data-mining project.

EFF's Freedom Of Information Act project has gathered thousands of pages of material. These shed light on controversial government surveillance programs, lobbying practices, and intellectual property initiatives.

Jailbreaking an iPhone constitutes copyright infringement and a DMCA violation, says Apple in comments filed with the Copyright Office as part of the 2009 DMCA triennial rulemaking. This marks the first formal public statement by Apple about its lega...

Fud!

The issue with Facebook's latest change is not that they force you to link your interests without permission, but rather that they remove an option to express yourself on the profile without links. As we noted, Facebook users now face a Hobson's choice between the new Connections and no listed interests at all. As Facebook explains, "If you didn't connect to any of the suggestions, the sections of your profile to which those suggestions corresponded will now be empty." (The transition tool also allows you to delay the choice by saying 'Ask Me Later'). Previously, you could list interests in your profile without linking; after the transition, you cannot. You do have options to adjust visibility on the profile page, for which we commend Facebook, but nevertheless, this is not a true opt-out because the all the "Facebook Pages you connect to are public."

An ordinary human is not going to look through the list of Facebook's millions of cooking fans. It's far too large. Only data miners and targeted advertisers have the time and inclination to delve that deeply.

"Once upon a time, Facebook could be used simply to share your interests and information with a select small community of your own choosing. As Facebook's privacy policy once promised, "No personal information that you submit to Facebook will be available to any user of the Web Site who does not belong to at least one of the groups specified by you in your privacy settings.""

Technical Analysis by Peter Eckersley Today EFF and the Tor Project are launching a public beta of a new Firefox extension called HTTPS Everywhere.

Encrypt the Web with the HTTPS Everywhere Firefox Extension | Electronic Frontier Foundation http://bit.ly/9PRtyX

This Firefox extension was inspired by the launch of Google's encrypted search option. We wanted a way to ensure that every search our browsers sent was encrypted. At the same time, we were also able to encrypt most or all of the browser's communications with some other sites: * Google Search * Wikipedia * Twitter and Identi.ca * Facebook * EFF and Tor * Ixquick, DuckDuckGo, Scroogle and other small search engines * and lots more!