Electronic Frontier Foundation |
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is a non-profit organization advocacy and legal organization with the stated purpose of being dedicated to preserving First Amendment to the United States Constitution 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. The EFF 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 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 would infringe on personal liberties 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 unlawful 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 led by Cindy Cohn, 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.
The organization was originally located at Mitch Kapor s K.E.I. in Cambridge, Massachusetts. By the fall of 1993, the main EFF offices were housed in Washington, D.C., headed up by Jerry Berman. During this time, some of EFF s attention focused on the business of influencing national policy, a worthy business, but one perhaps not entirely palatable to parts of the organization. In 1994, Mr. Berman parted ways with EFF and formed the Center for Democracy and Technology. EFF moved offices across town, where Drew Taubman briefly took the reigns as director. In 1995, under the auspices of director Lori Fena, after some downsizing and in an effort to regroup and refocus on their base support, the organization moved offices to San Francisco, California. There, it took up temporary residence at John Gilmore s Toad Hall, and soon afterward moved into the Hamm s building at 1550 Bryant St. After Fena moved onto the EFF board of directors for a while, the organization was led by Tara Lemmey. Just prior to the EFF s move into its new and present offices at 454 Shotwell St. in SF s Mission District, long-time EFF Legal Director Shari Steele became, and remains as of mid-2005, the Executive Director.
==Books & References==
Books that cover EFF s history in-depth from a policy and legal cases perspective include: *Robert B. Gelman & Stanton McCandlish s Protecting Yourself Online: The Definitive Resource on Safety, Freedom & Privacy in Cyberspace . *Mike Godwin s Cyber Rights: Defending Free Speech in the Digital Age . *Several other books of the mid-to-late 1990s (Bruce Sterling s Hacker Crackdown , etc.) also go into EFF s activities in some depth. Their more recent work in the sphere of fair use and the abuse of intellectual property law is better documented at their web site and in periodicals.
=Major supporters=
*On . 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.
=Criticisms=
Some feel the EFF prioritizes wholesale changes to law (such as legalizing potentially unauthorized trading of copyrighted files over peer-to-peer networks, implying some change of the copyright laws) over stopping abuses of the law (such as stopping abusive patents and DMCA complaints). However, EFF s successes in its defense of Skylink and OPG against DMCA abuse as well as its Patent Busting project demonstrate real efforts to limit abuses of existing law.
Some feel the EFF prioritizes consumer rights at the expense of artists rights.
Some in the anti-spam community criticize the EFF for officially opposing certain anti-spam techniques that do not deliver all wanted messages to the end-user. The EFF argues that the decision as to what is spam and what is not resides with the recipient, not intermediaries such as ISPs, and that there are efficient spam filters available to the end-user.
Prior to the EFF s defense of with regards to their legal troubles.
=Milestones and accomplishments=
=See also=
*Apple v. Does
=Publications=
*[http://www.eff.org/effector/ EFFector] *[http://www.eff.org/Net_culture/Net_info/EFF_Net_Guide/ EFF s Guide to the Internet] *[http://www.eff.org/bloggers/lg/ Legal Guide for Bloggers]
=External links=
*[http://www.eff.org Electronic Frontier Foundation official website] *[http://www.eff.org/patent EFF Patent Busting project] *[http://www.alternativefreedom.blogspot.com/ Alternative Freedom Documentary featuring EFF Attorney Jason Schultz] *|
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