The Supreme Court took a major step in cutting back on abstract software patents last June when it issued its landmark ruling in Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank. In essence, the court said that abstract ideas implemented by conventional computer process are not eligible for patent protection. Since then,...

Last year, the current President of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Junker, declared that his number one priority was to “create a digital single market for consumers and businesses,” in which “consumers can access music, movies and sports events on their electronic devices wherever they are in Europe and regardless...

Attention California: the privacy and security of your driver licenses are under threat from a new scheme to massively expand how photo IDs are shared and analyzed by law enforcement agencies.Over the last few months, an obscure panel within the California Department of Justice (DOJ) has been taking steps to...

"We are deeply concerned about this situation in which important decisions for our nation’s culture and society are being made behind closed doors" reads a joint public statement from Japanese activists who are fighting the copyright provisions in the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). A group of artists, archivists, academics, and...

In Jewish religious law, there is an offence called lifnei iver (literally, “before the blind”), that prohibits placing stumbling blocks before blind people, deriving from a verse of scripture also accepted by Christians and Muslims. This offense seems so obvious that it hardly requires a scripture verse to call it...

Welcome once again to Sunshine Week! It’s that time of year when journalists, citizen watchdogs, community activists, data wizards, political gadflies, public-records litigators, and open-gov fanatics come together to champion the cause of transparency and commiserate over the obstacles we face everyday while chasing sunlight.A few weeks ago, EFF...