A California blogger has been arrested by the FBI and charged with a felony for posting nine Guns N' Roses songs on an unreleased album.

Kevin Cogill of Culver City kept the songs on his music blog for only a few hours until the band’s lawyers complained, the Los Angeles Times reports. He made them available for streaming but not for download. He was charged under a 3-year-old federal anti-piracy law and faces up to three years in prison.

...

Staff lawyer Corynne McSherry of the Electronic Frontier Foundation questioned the prosecution. "Bringing that hammer down on an individual music fan strikes me as entirely inappropriate," she told the Los Angeles Times. "Taxpayers should be concerned that they are picking up Hollywood and the music industry's legal costs, particularly when you are going after an individual like this."

The unprecedented decision by a U.S. district court judge to dismiss a copyright infringement case against video-sharing site Veoh is definitely favorable to Google, YouTube, and all user-generated sites, copyright attorneys say.

But the ruling doesn't mean that Google will necessarily prevail in the $1 billion copyright suit filed against it by Viacom, parent company of MTV and Paramount Pictures.

...

Fred von Lohmann, a senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an advocacy group for Internet users, was much more optimistic about YouTube's chances after learning of the Veoh ruling.

One of the lawyers who worked on the Grokster case, von Lohmann said that: "I think it was a complete victory for Veoh and for the 11 or so other user-generated sites that have copyright cases pending. The decision was pretty much a vindication for sites that comply with the DMCA."

Despite persistent concern from privacy organisations, leading printer companies are still using secret tracking dots that can identify which laser printer printed a document.

The printer companies say the use of the yellow dots - almost invisible to the eye - on each printed page to identify the printer's serial number is part of a US Government-sponsored effort to deter counterfeiters, but organisations such as privacy watchdog Electronic Frontier Foundation fear sinister uses of the technology.

One of the most closely-watched copyright infringement lawsuits brought by the RIAA appears to be coming to a screeching halt, much to the music industry's delight. A judge ruled Monday that a defendant had willfully and intentionally destroyed evidence of his P2P activities after being notified of pending legal action by the RIAA. Furthermore, since it was done in bad faith, it "therefore warrants appropriate sanctions"...

"What this really underscores is how difficult it is for individuals who can't afford counsel to defend themselves," EFF staff attorney Fred von Lohmann told Ars. "He never had an adequate opportunity to explain what happened on his PC, while the RIAA had forensics experts and lawyers to tell the story. I think if Howell had an expert and lawyer to speak for him, he would have told a different story."

The removal of content from the Internet needs more safeguards. Right now, it's just too easy to make unsubstantiated claims that lead online services providers to block lawful content.

As the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the American Civil Liberties Union pointed out in a joint blog post on Monday, user-generated content is playing a significant role in the political and civic debate, but "political speech has been threatened repeatedly by claims that controversial material violates a site's terms of use or infringes copyrights or trademark rights."

Everybody agrees. Stephanie Lenz’ video of her young son with Prince’s “Let’s Go Crazy” playing in the background was a fair use of a copyrighted work. But Universal submitted a DMCA takedown notice on the video and YouTube took it down for a month until Lenz was able to get it restored.

...

Universal moved (in a 12(b)(6) motion) to dismiss the claim on the theory that fair use is only a defense to a claim of copyright infringement and thus Lenz should not be able to use it offensively. Lenz and her Electronic Frontier Foundation lawyers argued that a fair use is a legitimate use of the work and that copyright holders should have to proactively exclude fair uses from their takedown demands.

A civil liberties group suing AT&T for helping the government warrantlessly spy on Americans isn't abandoning its lawsuit after Congress voted to give retroactive immunity to the nation's telcoms...

"If Congress wants to shut down one avenue, we will go down another," EFF legal director Cindy Cohn said, noting that the amnesty provisions in the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 do not apply the government itself as the Administration had first wanted.

Protecting its copyright, Universal Music Publishing Group went after this 29-second video posted on YouTube because of the music (“Let’s Go Crazy,” by Prince) audible in the background.

The mom who posted the video of her dancing toddler took Universal to court. Wednesday, in some what some are praising as a victory for the “fair use” of copyrighted material, a federal judge in California told Universal, Baby, you’ve got to slow down.

...

The saga began in February 2007 when one Stephanie Lenz posted the video, according to the suit filed by the nonprofit Electronic Frontier Foundation. In June 2007, YouTube notified Lenz it had removed the video because of a takedown notice from Universal. The San Francisco-based nonprofit Electronic Frontier Foundation filed suit representing Lenz, and although the video returned to YouTube, EFF has fought to keep the case alive, seeking unspecified damages from Universal.

In a victory for small-time music copiers over the entertainment industry, a federal judge ruled Wednesday that copyright holders can't order one of their songs removed from the Web without first checking to see if the excerpt was so small and innocuous that it was legal...

A 1998 federal law authorized copyright holders to issue takedown orders whenever they see an unauthorized version of their work on the Internet without having to sue and prove a case of infringement. Some advocates of Internet users' rights - including the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which represented the individual user in this case - contend the procedure has been abused.

More than a year after hearing oral arguments, a federal appeals court has declined to rule on whether lawsuits targeting the president's warrantless wiretapping of Americans are too secret to be challenged in court, according to an order released Thursday...

The EFF's legal director Cindy Cohn describes the dismissal of the appeal as a victory, since the government was arguing to the appeals court that even admitting an "espionage relationship with AT&T" to a judge in secret implicated state secrets.

"But if they want to get immunity, they have to confirm an espionage relationship," Cohn said. "They have to waive the state secrets privilege to get to immunity."

In the nation's first such ruling, a federal judge on Wednesday said copyright owners must consider "fair use" of their works before sending takedown notices to online video-sharing sites...

Corynne McSherry, an EFF attorney, said the digital rights group intends on convincing the judge that Universal acted in bad faith when it sent the takedown notice last year.

"We will overcome his doubts," she said.

The stony silence from the Recording Industry Association of America about the mysterious takedown of Muxtape earlier this week was broken Tuesday night, when a spokesperson for the trade association sent MTV News a statement.

“For the past several months, we have communicated concerns to Muxtape on behalf of our members,” read the statement. “Muxtape has not yet obtained authorization from our member companies to host or stream copies of their sound recordings.” Then again, a lawyer with the Electronic Frontier Foundation told RollingStone.com that Muxtape might be on pretty solid legal ground. Stay tuned for the latest developments of “As the Muxtape Turns.”

A federal judge in Boston this morning let expire a temporary gag order against three MIT students who were prevented from presenting a talk on security vulnerabilities in the Boston subway's fare tickets and cards.

...

"It's great news for the free speech rights for these students," said Rebecca Jesche, a spokeswoman for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which represented the students. "Although it's extremely unfortunate that the students were not allowed to give their talk at DefCon."

The three Massachusetts Institute of Technology students who have been barred by a court order from discussing subway card vulnerabilities are now free to say what they want...

Lawyers for the students, in a case that has generated more attention in local media concerned about problems in the transit system than it has among national media concerned about privacy issues, welcomed the judge's decision. "This was a case of shooting the messenger," said Cindy Cohn, a lawyer with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a San Francisco-based advocacy group that was representing the students along with the Massachusetts affiliate of the ACLU and the Fish & Richardson law firm.

A federal judge today lifted a gag order on three MIT students who were barred from talking publicly about security flaws they discovered in the state’s automated mass transit fare system, even as a lawyer acknowledged the system was "compromised."

A new controversy is brewing in the lawsuit pitting three Massachusetts Institute of Technology students against the Massachusetts transit agency: Whether or not their unpublished research notes and other material must be handed over to the state government...

So far, O'Toole has not proven especially sympathetic to the students, who are represented by the San Francisco-based Electronic Frontier Foundation. He refused to lessen the sting of the original temporary restraining order, even though the MBTA had suggested it. He also granted much of the MBTA's request for unpublished documents, which EFF says runs afoul of clear legal precedent.

Why Did the federal district court gag three MIT undergraduates who apparently discovered a flaw in the MBTA's electronic fare-collection system? The reason one judge imposed the unconstitutional gag order prohibiting the students from presenting their paper Aug. 10 at the DEFCON computer "hackers" conference, and another judge refused on Aug. 14 to vacate that order even after the conference ended, is the current excuse du jour for an epidemic of censorship: national security.

The International Olympic Committee has retracted a Digital Millennium Copyright Act takedown request it sent to YouTube over a Tibetan protest video.

According to Corynne McSherry, an attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the IOC requested earlier this week that YouTube remove the video called "Beijing Olympics Opening Ceremony." The video, posted by Students for a Free Tibet, is a montage of scenes from Tibet protests around the world. The Olympic rings are shown in the video briefly a couple times.

A federal judge today ordered three MIT students to release more information on what they know about security flaws in the MBTA's electronic toll collection system.

In a hearing in a lawsuit brought by the MBTA, Jennifer Granick, an attorney for the students, told US District Judge George O'Toole that the students had already provided the court with the "entire universe of information" the students had developed about the system.

THREE MIT students claim to have identified ways of hacking the MBTA's automated fare-collection system, and they could have spared themselves some trouble had they notified the transit agency of any security flaws right away. The T found out about their work only after they made plans to describe their discoveries last Sunday at DEFCON, a conference for hackers. On Saturday, the agency persuaded US District Judge Douglas Wood-lock to issue a temporary restraining order against the undergrads.

A federal judge in Boston today refused to lift a temporary restraining order preventing three MIT students from publicly discussing details of several security vulnerabilities that they found in the electronic ticketing system used by the city's mass transit authority...

At today's hearing, O'Toole also asked the MIT students to submit a copy of a class paper in which they detailed the vulnerabilities that they had found, according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a high-tech civil rights group that is representing the students in the case. The MBTA requested a copy of the paper in a motion that it filed, the EFF said.

Eleven computer scientists and researchers from institutions across the country have signed a letter in support of three MIT students who were barred from speaking at the DefCon hacker conference this last Sunday.

The letter was part of filings that the Electronic Frontier Foundation submitted to the U.S. District Court in Massachusetts asking a federal judge to reconsider his decision to gag the students with a temporary restraining order.

An advocacy group plans to appeal a 10-day temporary restraining order that halted the presentation on how to hack Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority's subway fare system. The Electronic Frontier Foundation will argue Thursday that the court order violates the free speech rights of three MIT students.

For its part, the MBTA is hoping to side step the free speech issue, reportedly planning to ask a Boston federal judge to reword the extended gag order to cover only "nonpublic" information.

The state of Massachusetts plans to ask a federal judge on Thursday to keep in place a restraining order that prevents three MIT students from publicly discussing vulnerabilities they discovered in subway card security...

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, which is providing a legal defense to the MIT students--Zack Anderson, R.J. Ryan, and Alessandro Chiesa--plans on Thursday to ask O'Toole to dissolve the restraining order completely.

Three French journalists have been ejected from the Black Hat hacking conference after 'sniffing' the log-in details of fellow reporters.

All three worked for Global Security Magazine - one of the conference's sponsors.

...

Kurt Opsahl of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said federal wiretapping laws may have been broken and is having his organisation investigate if legal action can be taken.

'It's not good manners to go in and try to crack into the press network here because it is so valuable to having the conference covered well,' he told Agence France- Presse.

'The press room is designed to be a safe harbour in a fairly stormy sea.'

Lawyers with the Electronic Frontier Foundation said a federal judge who granted a temporary restraining order on Saturday to halt a scheduled conference talk about security vulnerabilities came to "a very, very wrong conclusion." They said the judge's order constituted illegal prior restraint, which violated the speakers' First Amendment right to discuss important and legitimate academic research.

According to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a dangerous legal precedent has just been set that can potentially unravel existing federal privacy protections for e-mail and Internet usage. The alert from the EFF is not just to sound a general warning, but it also takes the form of an Amicus curiae (friend of the court) brief, filed with the federal 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals, asking for the court's legal finding to be overturned... The findings of this case could become the foundation of a legal precedent upon which other similar cases can subsequently be based. If that were to be the case, then the unauthorized retrieving of e-mails from an e-mail server would not be considered a violation of the federal Wiretap Act, which will then open the door for government-sponsored snooping.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation plans to appeal a U.S. District Court order imposing a temporary injunction on a Defcon presentation that would have detailed flaws in the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority's (MBTA) electronic ticketing system.

"The court ultimately came to a very, very wrong conclusion," EFF senior staff attorney Kurt Opsahl said during an EFF discussion at Defcon a few hours after Judge Douglas Woodlock of the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts issued a court order halting the planned talk about the transit-system security flaws.

There's a new service for conference speakers at the Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas this year: lawyers on call.

For the first time, the Electronic Frontier Foundation is staffing a booth at the show with lawyers, ready to take any skittish security researchers and give them a free legal consultation. The idea is to make it easier for hackers to talk about cutting-edge research, even when they're subject to what the EFF sees as bogus legal threats.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is releasing "Switzerland," a software tool for customers to test the integrity of their Internet communications.

"The sad truth is that the FCC is ill-equipped to detect ISPs interfering with your Internet connection," said Fred von Lohmann, EFF Senior Intellectual Property Attorney. "It's up to concerned Internet users to investigate possible network neutrality violations, and EFF's Switzerland software is designed to help with that effort. Comcast isn't the first, and certainly won't be the last, ISP to meddle surreptitiously with its subscribers' Internet communications for its own benefit."

Travelers beware: U.S. agents now have the authority to seize and retain laptops indefinitely, according to a new policy detailed in documents issued by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

...

The DHS document, issued July 16, appears to state publicly a policy that has already existed. Laptops and electronic devices have been subject to search in the past, and travelers have reported not getting their devices back. The policy has drawn strong criticism from lawmakers and nonprofit groups, who charged that the searches were invasive and a violation of an individual's privacy rights. Computers contain a vast amount of private information about family, finances and health, which could be easily copied and stored in government databases, the Electronic Frontier Foundation has complained.

In recent years, ISPs have taken an increased interest in faking packets, and for some mysterious reason, they don't always like to make this fact perfectly clear to customers. Hoping to bring power to the people, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) yesterday released a tool called "Switzerland" that can help users find out if an ISP is modifying packets or injecting packets of its own into any protocol. The tool is open source and available now for download, but there's a reason that EFF refers to the current release as "Version Zero."

The software, designed to see if an ISP is delivering packets "neutrally" (hence the Switzerland reference), has undergone in-house development for some time. EFF Staff Technologist Peter Eckersley coded the initial version, which has now been opened up and made available on SourceForge. Enterprising network hackers (and GUI experts) are needed to continue development of version 0.0.4.