The TAKE IT DOWN Act: A Flawed Attempt to Protect Victims That Will Lead to Censorship

Congress has begun debating the TAKE IT DOWN Act (S. 146), a bill that seeks to speed up the removal of a troubling type of online content: non-consensual intimate imagery, or NCII. In recent years, concerns have also grown about the use of digital tools to alter or create such images, sometimes called deepfakes. While […]

Continue Reading

Protecting Free Speech in Texas: We Need To Stop SB 336

The Texas legislature will soon be debating a bill that would seriously weaken the free speech protections of people in that state. If you live in Texas, it’s time to contact your state representatives and let them know you oppose this effort.  Texas Senate Bill 336 (SB 336) is an attack on the Texas Citizens […]

Continue Reading

Fighting For Progress On Patents: 2024 in Review

The rights we have in the offline world–to speak freely, create culture, play games, build new things and do business–must be available to us online, as well. This core belief drives EFF’s work to fight the misuse of the patent system.  Despite significant progress we’ve made over the last decade, patents, and in particular vague […]

Continue Reading

Defending Encryption in the U.S. and Abroad: 2024 in Review

EFF supporters get that strong encryption is tied to one of our most basic rights: the right to have a private conversation. In the digital world, privacy is impossible without strong encryption.  That’s why we’ve always got an eye out for attacks on encryption. This year, we pushed back—successfully—against anti-encryption laws proposed in the U.S., […]

Continue Reading

EFF Tells Appeals Court To Keep Copyright’s Fair Use Rules Broad And Flexible

It’s critical that copyright be balanced with limitations that support users’ rights, and perhaps no limitation is more important than fair use. Critics, humorists, artists, and activists all must have rights to re-use and re-purpose source material, even when it’s copyrighted.  Yesterday, EFF weighed in on another case that could shape the future of our […]

Continue Reading

This Bill Could Put A Stop To Censorship By Lawsuit

For years now, deep-pocketed individuals and corporations have been turning to civil lawsuits to silence their opponents. These Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation, or SLAPPs, aren’t designed to win on the merits, but rather to harass journalists, activists, and consumers into silence by suing them over their protected speech. While 34 states have laws to […]

Continue Reading

Oppose The Patent-Troll-Friendly PREVAIL Act

Good news: the Senate Judiciary Committee has dropped one of the two terrible patent bills it was considering, the patent-troll-enabling Patent Eligibility Restoration Act (PERA). Bad news: the committee is still pushing the PREVAIL Act, a bill that would hamstring the U.S.’s most effective system for invalidating bad patents. PREVAIL is a windfall for patent […]

Continue Reading

Tell Congress To Stop These Last-Minute Bills That Help Patent Trolls

Update 11/14/2024: The PERA and PREVAIL patent bills were pulled at the last minute today, without getting a committee vote. Senators are right to have concerns with these deeply flawed bills. We hope to engage with the next Congress on real patent fixes—changes that will create a more fair system for small companies and everyday users of […]

Continue Reading

Judge’s Investigation Into Patent Troll Results In Criminal Referrals

In 2022, three companies with strange names and no clear business purpose beyond  patent litigation filed dozens of lawsuits in Delaware federal court, accusing businesses of all sizes of patent infringement. Some of these complaints claimed patent rights over basic aspects of modern life; one, for example, involved a  patent that pertains to the process […]

Continue Reading

Salt Typhoon Hack Shows There’s No Security Backdoor That’s Only For The “Good Guys”

At EFF we’ve long noted that you cannot build a backdoor that only lets in good guys and not bad guys. Over the weekend, we saw another example of this: The Wall Street Journal reported on a major breach of U.S. telecom systems attributed to a sophisticated Chinese-government backed hacking group dubbed Salt Typhoon. According […]

Continue Reading