Judge Lets Gene Patent Lawsuit Move Forward

from the free-speech dept

A few months back, we noted that (finally!) someone was challenging the ridiculous and dangerous practice of patenting genes. The company being sued, Myriad Genetics, tried to have the lawsuit dismissed, claiming that the parties (the ACLU and some cancer patients) have no standing, but the judge was not convinced and is allowing the case to move forward, noting that there is a legitimate First Amendment issue to consider here. While just a preliminary step, this is definitely a step in the right direction.

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ACLU, Cancer Patients Sue Over Patenting Of Genes

from the big-news dept

For years, we've been among those who have questioned how the hell anyone (let alone the US Patent Office) can justify the concept of patenting genes. Yet, the Patent Office has continued to issue such patents, even as they have been shown to cause significant problems in diagnosing and treating certain illnesses. Finally, however, it appears that the concept of patenting genes is about to get tested in court. The ACLU has organized a group of cancer patients who have had treatments and medical analysis limited due to gene patents held by the company Myriad Genetics, and brought the issue to court. This is a big deal... and while the case and the resulting appeals will certainly take many years, this is going to be a case well worth watching.

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EFF And ACLU Sue FBI Over Seizure Of Activists' Computers

from the 4th-amendment-anyone? dept

The EFF and the ACLU has filed yet another lawsuit against the government, highlighting another scary abuse of power that feels straight out of a police state, rather than the free society we supposedly live in. Specifically, the FBI and other law enforcement officials raided the offices of two different activist organizations and seized all of their computers. There are two issues here that are important. First, if the FBI was concerned about the computers being used in commission of a crime, they easily could have followed the same policies used to get records off of computers at libraries (part of the issue is that these organizations offer public access computers to folks visiting their offices). The second issue is that both organizations act as publishers, and federal law makes it clear that the government can't just seize computers of publishers except in extremely narrow circumstances. So, in either circumstance, the Feds should not have seized the computers.

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EFF, ACLU Ask News Networks To Stop Sending DMCA Takedown Notices On Political Videos

from the right-idea,-wrong-approach dept

Following the McCain campaign's request to YouTube that it exempt both major presidential campaigns from the traditional process of notice-and-takedown to DMCA complaints (which YouTube rejected), the EFF and the ACLU have sent a letter to the various television networks who were responsible for the takedowns in the first place, asking them to stop sending bogus takedowns. On top of that, they ask YouTube to reconsider and start responding to counternotices and putting content back online more quickly.

While I can appreciate the stance taken by the EFF and the ACLU, and believe that they are correct that the networks' takedown notices are incorrect, I'm going to have to side with Public Citizen in suggesting that the real answer to this issue is fixing the DMCA, not through asking various parties to simply change their behavior. The real problem is the DMCA and the unclear boundaries of fair use today. While there's clearly not time to fix the law prior to election day, it doesn't seem right to just ask people to ignore the way the law works today. If the law is the problem, fix the law -- don't ask everyone else to play by different rules. That just sweeps the problems of the law under the rug, where they'll get a lot less attention.

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Don't You Feel Safer Now That Google Added A Link To Its Privacy Policy?

from the phew! dept

One of the more idiotic accusations thrown at Google of late was this idea that it was somehow a problem that it didn't link directly to its privacy policy from its home page. It had a privacy policy. That privacy policy was easy to find. Almost no one actually reads its privacy policy -- but a bunch of privacy groups who surely had more important things to spend their time on got all upset that Google refused to link from its front page. It appears that Google has now given in and agreed to link to the privacy policy, oddly removing the word "Google" from its copyright notice and replacing it with a link to the privacy policy.

Perhaps more idiotic is the response from a bunch of privacy groups claiming that this somehow makes a difference. It doesn't. It's privacy theater. It looks good, but it means nothing. People still won't read the privacy policy -- and even if they did, they probably wouldn't even remember what it said. Where a privacy policy is linked from a website is meaningless compared to what a company actually does to take the privacy of its users seriously. Getting up in arms over whether or not Google links to the privacy policy from its front page is a joke. And, oh yeah, some are noticing that just linking to the privacy policy probably does not fulfill the legal obligation required by California's law on linking to privacy policies. Perhaps these "privacy advocate" groups have something else to complain about now.

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Virginia Won't Stop Publishing People's Social Security Numbers; But Will Fine You For Republishing Them

from the backwards-thinking dept

Apparently, the state of Virginia has been publishing various government documents on its websites that reveal the social security numbers of various residents. Betty "BJ" Ostergren thought this was a problem -- and when the state wouldn't listen to her, she decided to try to get more attention by republishing those documents on her own website. Basically, in an effort to show why it's wrong for Virginia to post people's SSNs, she's reposting them.

So how did the state of Virginia respond? Did it stop posting documents that exposed SSNs? Not at all. Instead, it passed a new law that let it continue to publish documents exposing SSNs, but would fine anyone like Ostergren who reposted that info on their own websites. In other words, instead of fixing the problem, it simply decided to fine the woman who helped highlight the problem. The ACLU and Ostergren are now suing the state to protest this new law. While I don't necessarily agree with Ostergren for republishing the SSNs exposed by the state, it does seem pretty ridiculous for the state to go after her, rather than to stop exposing SSNs.

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Privacy Groups Miss The Point: It's Not Where Google's Privacy Policy Is, It's What It Does

from the focusing-on-the-wrong-thing dept

Last week, we wrote about the ridiculous concerns being raised by a few privacy advocates that (gasp!) Google doesn't include a link to its privacy policy on the front page. This seemed like a really pointless concern since almost no one reads these privacy policies anyway, and those who do often misunderstand the policy anyway. Besides, there are plenty of companies out there that don't even abide by their own privacy policies. In other words, the real issue isn't where the privacy policy is, but whether or not the company actually keeps its promises and treats its users' data properly.

And yet... a bunch of consumer and privacy groups, including ones I respect like the EFF and the ACLU are now trying to turn this into a big deal by publicly demanding that Google add a link to its privacy policy on its home page. This isn't about privacy. This is "privacy theater." It's about putting on a good show that has nothing to do with whether or not Google is doing right by its users. If there's a link to Google's privacy policy on its front page or not, it won't change what Google does with users' info, and it almost certainly won't change the way anyone (other than maybe these groups) view Google. It's all a big show for no reason. There are plenty of important causes that these groups should be working on. Worrying whether or not Google links to its privacy policy from its front page or one page deep is silly pandering.

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ACLU Joins In On Media Ownership Hysteria

from the stick-to-civil-liberties dept

I've said before that I have trouble understanding what all the fuss is about with media consolidation. At a time when there's an unprecedented explosion of new voices on the Internet, it's difficult to get worked up about rule changes that would allow very slight concentration of newspapers and broadcast television, two industries that are declining in importance. Radley Balko notes that the ACLU is jumping into the debate. I don't understand how lobbying for more restrictive media regulations promotes civil liberties. Even worse, the organization -- whose work I normally support and admire -- seems really clueless about the state of the media marketplace. For example, their Washington legislative director says: "Six major companies control most of the media in the country, including the most popular sites on the Internet."

She doesn't say who the six companies are, but I'm going to guess it's the "big six" of Viacom, Disney, Time Warner, GE, Bertelsman, and News Corp. There's just no way you can argue that these six companies own "the most popular sites on the Internet." According to Alexa, most of the top 10 sites are owned by Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft, all independent companies. Only MySpace, recently acquired by News Corp., is in the top 10. But maybe she meant the top 10 media companies? Well, a good source for the sites most discussed in the blogosphere is the Memeorandum Leaderboard. Three of the top 10 are controlled by the "Big Six": CNN at #3, the Wall Street Journal at #9 and MSNBC at #10. Four others -- the Associated Press, New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Atlantic, -- are mainstream media outlets not controlled by the "Big Six." The final three slots are held by the Huffington Post and the Politico (twice), pure Internet publications not owned by the "Big Six."

Indeed, the whole idea that "six major companies" are gaining monopolistic control over the media marketplace doesn't make sense. There are, in fact, a ton of independent media companies. In addition to the New York Times and Washington Post companies, there are other big, independent newspaper chains like the Tribune Company (owner of the LA Times and Chicago Tribune) and Gannett (owner of USA Today and numerous other papers). There are foreign outlets like the BBC and the Guardian. There are magazine publishers like Conde Nast, book publishers like Pearson, and music publishers like EMI. The "Big Six" own a lot of media outlets, to be sure, but it's a big world, and there is no shortage of prominent media outlets that aren't controlled by these major players. And as media critic Ben Compaine has documented, the media marketplace has barely gotten more concentrated at all in the last couple of decades. For example, between the mid-1980s and the late 1990s, the market share of the top ten media companies increased from 38 percent to just 41 percent. More importantly, there's been a lot of turnover. The list of top media companies in 1988 would look very different from today's top ten list. In short, there's no real problem here. Given how many actual civil liberties problems there are in the US, I wish the ACLU would stick to what it knows best.

Timothy Lee is an expert at the Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Timothy Lee and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.

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FBI Forced To Back Down On Secret Info Request To Internet Archive

from the civil-liberties-matter dept

Congress curtailed the FBI's ability to use National Security Letters (NSLs) a few years ago after it became clear that the FBI was widely abusing the process to request information from organizations with no judicial oversight and with built in gag orders forbidding recipients from talking about receiving the letters. However, the FBI is still using the letters in some cases. Last fall, it sent one to Brewster Kahle and the Internet Archive, demanding info on an Archive user while forbidding Kahle from talking about the letter to anyone but his lawyers. Kahle, the EFF and the ACLU fought back in court and have won, getting the FBI to rescind the demand and also removing part of the gag order, allowing Kahle to say he received the letter (though not discussing what info it demanded). As the EFF points out, this should serve as a blueprint for how others can challenge questionable NSLs as well.

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Various Rights Group Fight Back Against The Wikileaks Injunction

from the standing-up-for-freedom-of-speech dept

Last week, the decision by a California court to have a registrar attempt to force Wikileaks offline got plenty of attention -- not the least of which was because the injunction had no impact on the site's IP address: 88.80.13.160. Yet, much more troubling were the implications concerning why a judge in California would try to take down an entire site because of complaints from a Swiss bank about just a few documents on the site concerning a lawsuit in Switzerland. Now it appears that plenty of organizations who fight for various civil rights have shown up to file briefs against this questionable ruling.

Paul Alan Levy, of the group, Public Citizen, writes in to let us know: "We at Public Citizen are concerned with the First Amendment and the issue of prior restraint, but in attacking the orders we decided to focus on some more technical issues that neither the lawyers in the case nor, apparently, the judge had noticed. Thus, earlier today, along with the California First Amendment Coalition, we filed a brief pointing out that the case did not even qualify for federal court jurisdiction because there are subjects of foreign states on both sides of the case -- the Swiss bank on one side, and Wikileaks, many of whose members are abroad, on the other side. In addition, we point out that the main cause of action on which the bank relied, section 17200 of the California Business and Professions Code, applies only to unfair or unlawful "business practices" and hence does not apply to completely non-commercial web sites like Wikileaks. Our brief is discussed on the Citizen Vox blog, and in this press release.

A brief attacking the injunction on First Amendment grounds was also filed today by a coalition of media organizations. Finally, the ACLU of Northern California and EFF have also filed a brief arguing against the decision on First Amendment grounds."

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Supreme Court Won't Review Case Saying ACLU Has No Right To Sue Over Wiretaps

from the we-could-tell-you-has-standing,-but-we'd-have-to-kill-you dept

In a rather unfortunate ruling, the Supreme Court has decided to let an appeals court ruling stand, saying that the ACLU has no standing to bring a lawsuit over domestic wiretapping activities of the federal government. There's a bit of a catch-22 here. Neither the appeals court nor the Supremes are saying that the wiretapping is illegal. They're just saying that only those actually impacted by the wiretapping can bring suit -- which is tricky since the whole point is that there's no way for those being tapped to actually know they're being tapped. This would appear to be a rather ominous omission in the "checks and balances" our government is supposed to have.

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