“EFF is launching How to Fix the Internet, a new podcast mini-series to examine potential solutions to six ills facing the modern digital landscape,” announces EFF.org: Over the course of 6 episodes, we’ll consider how current tech policy isn’t working well for users and invite experts to join us in imagining a better future… It’s easy to see all the things…
Tag: eff
HP Replaces ‘Free Ink for Life’ Plan With ’99 Cents a Month Or Your Printer Stops Working’
In a new essay at EFF.org, Cory Doctorow re-visits HP’s anti-consumer “security updates” that disabled third-party ink cartridges (while missing real vulnerabilities that could actually bypass network firewalls). Doctorow writes that it was just the beginning: HP’s latest gambit challenges the basis of private property itself: a bold scheme! With the HP Instant Ink program, printer owners no longer own their…
EFF Argues RIAA is ‘Abusing DMCA’ to Take Down YouTube-DL
While the RIAA has objected to a tool for downloading online videos, EFF senior activist Elliot Harmon responds with this question. “Who died and put them in charge of YouTube?” He asks the question in a new video “explainer” on the controversy, and argues in a new piece at EFF.org that the youtube-dl tool “doesn’t infringe on any RIAA copyrights.” RIAA’s…
Cory Doctorow Crowdfunds His New Audiobook to Protest Amazon/Audible DRM
Science fiction writer Cory Doctorow (also a former EFF staffer and activist) explains why he’s crowdfunding his new audiobook online. Despite the large publishers for his print editions, “I can’t get anyone to do my audiobooks. Amazon and its subsidiary Audible, which controls 90% of the audiobook sales, won’t carry any of my audiobooks because I won’t let them put any…
Cory Doctorow’s New Book Explains ‘How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism’
Blogger/science fiction writer Cory Doctorow (also a former EFF staffer and activist) has just published How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism — a new book which he’s publishing free online. In a world swamped with misinformation and monopolies, Doctorow says he’s knows what’s missing from our proposed solutions: If we’re going to break Big Tech’s death grip on our digital lives, we’re…
Stalkerware Detection Rates Are Improving Across Antivirus Products
Detections rates for stalkerware applications on Android and Windows devices are slowly improving, according to the findings of a seven-month research project carried out by independent antivirus testing lab AV-Comparatives and the Electronic Frontier Foundation. From a report: The study, published earlier this week, took place in two phases, with the first in November 2019, and the second in May 2020….
Court Upholds Public Right of Access To Court Documents
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Electronic Frontier Foundation: A core part of EFF’s mission is transparency and access to information, because we know that in a nation bound by the rule of law, the public must have the ability to know the law and how it is being applied. That’s why the default rule is that the public…
Twitter Accused of Obliterating Its Users’ Privacy Choices
The EFF’s staff technologist — also an engineer on Privacy Badger and HTTPS Everywhere, writes:
Twitter greeted its users with a confusing notification this week. “The control you have over what information Twitter shares with its business partners has changed,” it said. The changes will “help Twitter continue operating as a free service,” it assured. But at what cost? Twitter has changed…
Oracle Criticized For Questioning Google’s Supporters In Java API Copyright Case
America’s Supreme Court will soon decide whether Google infringed on a copyright that Oracle says it holds on the APIs of Java. But this week Oracle’s executive vice president also wrote a blog post arguing that Google “sought the support of outside groups to bolster its position” by using friend-of-the-court briefs to “create the impression that this case is of great…
EFF: .Org Sale ‘Threatens Instability and Dysfunction’
In a scathing editorial, EFF continues to oppose Ethos Capital’s plan to buy the PIR’s .org domain registry for $1.1 billion, arguing that “the current system is stable and functional, and changing it threatens to introduce instability and dysfunction with no countervailing benefit to the community…” “[W]hile there is nothing currently wrong with .ORG, there is a lot that could go…