RECOMMENDED: The Electronic Frontier Foundation gets my financial support

Wednesday, August 7, 2024

This is a friendly message from the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

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Membership Update

Dear Ferdinand,

Thanks to you, EFF championed aggressive efforts to protect user rights and secured significant victories in the last year. We wanted to let you know that your annual Sustaining Donor contribution is scheduled to be charged next week. Thanks for continuing your support for the coming year!

If you donate using a credit card on file and wish to update or change your recurring payment information, visit eff.org/recurring. If you donate using PayPal, please log into your PayPal account to make changes.

Please reply to this email if you would like assistance or have any questions about your recurring donations.

We can’t express how much we appreciate your commitment to supporting digital civil liberties and human rights. Sustaining donors help EFF continue to spot and thwart threats to online freedom wherever they arise, and it’s only possible with your ongoing support.

Thanks again, 

Christian Romero

EFF Membership Team

P.S. EFF is a member-supported U.S. 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization with a top rating by Charity Navigator. Donations are tax-deductible as allowed by law.

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I put my money where my mouth is.  Not a huge amount, but every little bit helps to steer the ship.

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Technology: Publishers seek a new form of monopoly; time to revisit IP and Copyrights

Sunday, July 10, 2022

https://www.eff.org/press/releases/internet-archive-seeks-summary-judgment-federal-lawsuit-filed-publishing-companies

Internet Archive’s Controlled Digital Lending Program Is Lawful Fair Use That Preserves Traditional Library Lending in the Digital World
Press Release
July 8, 2022

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SAN FRANCISCO—The Internet Archive has asked a federal judge to rule in its favor and end a radical lawsuit, filed by four major publishing companies, that aims to criminalize library lending.

The Internet Archive, headquartered in San Francisco, is a 501(c)(3) non-profit library which preserves and provides access to cultural artifacts of all kinds in electronic form. The motion for summary judgment, filed Thursday in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and Durie Tangri LLP, explains that the Archive’s Controlled Digital Lending (CDL) program is a lawful fair use that preserves traditional library lending in the digital world.

The brief explains how the Internet Archive is advancing the purposes of copyright law by furthering public access to knowledge and facilitating the creation of new creative and scholarly works. The Internet Archive’s digital lending hasn’t cost the publishers one penny in revenues; in fact, concrete evidence shows that the Archive’s digital lending does not and will not harm the market for books.

“Should we stop libraries from owning and lending books? No,” said Brewster Kahle, the Internet Archive’s founder and digital librarian. “We need libraries to be independent and strong, now more than ever, in a time of misinformation and challenges to democracy. That’s why we are defending the rights of libraries to serve our patrons where they are, online.”

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When do we put a stop to BIG X (Pharma, Auto, Government, Medicine, etc.), in this case Big Publishing, from trying to monopolize everything?

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