I can’t say I was surprised when the Internet Association announced on Friday that the major internet companies would be halting their lobbying efforts against the Stop Enabling Sex Trafficking (SESTA) bill. While representatives for Google, Facebook, and Twitter were enjoying Day Three of occasionally intense inquiry by the Senate Judiciary Committee over foreign meddling in our politics via social ...
This refrain keeps playing over in my head lately: The EFF and its sister organizations are to cyberlaw as the NRA is to rational gun policy in America. That seems like a pretty harsh thing to say about a bunch of progressives (and one must even include the ACLU in this discussion), but in the context of policy debate, the ...
“I hate Illinois Nazis.” – Jake Blues, The Blues Brothers (1980) I think my first introduction to the complexities of living in a nation with a constitutional right like the First Amendment was in the 7th Grade. Our teacher had the class watch and discuss the film Skokie (1981), a dramatization of the circumstances surrounding the 1977 legal case National ...
When EFF co-founder John Perry Barlow delivered his Declararion of the Independence of Cyberspace in Davos, Switzerland in February of 1996, it was in response to the Telecommunications Act, which had become law just a month earlier. In this speech that would become a manifesto for the industry’s libertarian nature, Barlow proclaimed the web as a place beyond the scope ...
Photo by Elnur It’s depressing how often one reads news that makes the United States seem as though we’re reliving the 19th century rather than an enlightened 21st. With that comment, you might think I’m referring to the current administration (and I certainly could be), but at the moment, I refer to Americans across the political spectrum who seem willing to ...
