A Look at the EFF’s Year

This year why don’t you [give](http://www.eff.org/support/ “Give your Support!”) to an organization thats soul job in life is the defense of your digital civil liberties. The [Electronic Frontier Foundation](http://www.eff.org/).

A look at their accomplishments this year:

* We helped eVisa.com win its fight against the Visa
credit card dynasty over fair use of the word “visa”
in domain names.
* We (with your support) helped derail the government’s
CAPPS II passenger-profiling system (although we need
your help to continue to fight its evil reincarnation,
Secure Flight).
* We won the Grokster case in the 9th Circuit. The
Supreme Court has decided to hear this case in March
2005.
* We helped individuals assert their due process rights
in cases brought against them by the recording
industry.
* We put forth our voluntary collective licensing proposal,
explaining how artists could get paid without suing
music lovers.
* We won the case that got Diebold punished for misusing
copyright law.
* We won the Bunner case, which held that republishing
information about reverse engineering was not
prohibited by trade secret law.
* We started a patent busting campaign and identified
the ten most egregious patent threats to technology
and freedom.
* We were a leader in the fight for a verifiable paper
trail on electronic voting machines.
* We expanded our international work, participating in
the Digital Video Broadcasting group and in WIPO.
* We defended Jibjab’s fair use of “This Land Is Your
Land” in its presidential parody “This Land” and in
the process learned that the Woody Guthrie song had
fallen into the public domain.
* We defended technologists using smart card readers
from an overzealous DirecTV.
* We (with your support) helped make sure terrible
legislation like the PIRATE Act and the Induce Act
did not pass.
* We drafted a mock legal complaint to show how the
Induce Act would kill off technologies like the
iPod.
* We successfully challenged the Child Online Protection
Act at the Supreme Court.
* We wrote and circulated a paper on best practices for
Online Service Providers.
* We fought the expansion of the DMCA, writing amicus
briefs supporting Skylink’s right to make interoperable
garage door openers and Static Control’s right to make
aftermarket printer cartridges. (We helped win both
cases.)
* We represented (and continue to represent) Indymedia
in an effort to uncover why their servers were seized
and to assert their First Amendment rights.
* We formed an Advisory Board of some of the smartest
people working on these issues.

Ask yourself what you are doing to ensure that your rights are kept yours.

-a