15 Things EFF Has Done This Year

2005 marks EFF's 15th anniversary. In honor of this, here is a list of 15 ways we've worked to defend your rights this year:

1. We fought at the Supreme Court in the Grokster case to protect innovators' right to create new tools. Even though the Court sent the case back to trial, it firmly held the line on the Betamax principle that protects technologies with substantial noninfringing uses and denied Hollywood's quest to control the standards for future technologies.


2. We sued Sony BMG for infecting its customers' computers with digital rights management (DRM) software that increases vulnerability to security threats and lets Sony track and control listening behavior.


3. We cracked the code of tiny dots many popular laser printers embed on printouts, exposing how they reveal the serial number, time, and date of the printing.


4. We pushed for processes that would ensure transparency in electronic voting machines, including verifiable paper trails and systems for real audits and recounts of election results.


5. We created "EFF's Legal Guide for Bloggers to educate bloggers about libel law, copyright law, labor law, adult material and political advocacy, including specific versions aimed at student bloggers and those blogging from work.


6. We fought against the broadcast flag, a proposal that would allow Hollywood design control over the next generation of digital TV receivers. We created a toolkit and sponsored "build-ins" to help people construct flag-free, open source digital television recorders. We also were part of a lawsuit that struck down the flag.


7. We launched the EFF Patent Busting Project and identified the worst patents affecting free speech on the Internet. We are about to file several "re-examination requests" with the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) asking it to revoke these overreaching patents.


8. We successfully opposed the DOJ in numerous jurisdictions when they requested permission to track cell phone users without showing the court probable cause of wrongdoing.


9. We've helped win several cases defending the First Amendment-protected right to anonymous speech in the digital age, as well as support technologies that enhance anonymity, including Tor.


10. We educated the public on the dangerous ubiquity of surveillance by exposing invasive tracking by data miners, national ID schemes, RFIDs, and biometrics.


11. We fought to prove that online journalists deserve the same legal protections for newsgathering as offline journalists.


12. We fought for the right to reverse engineer a product to make new interoperable technology. We were there when Lexmark sued over refilling printer cartridges, when Chamberlain sued over garage door openers, and when Blizzard threatened the open-source BNETD emulator.


13. We were on the front lines during last November's national elections, with an elite squad of attorneys specially trained in the problems arising from electronic voting machines increasingly used throughout the country.


14. We created a comprehensive privacy curriculum to educate activists and the nonprofit community about the law and technology of government surveillance.


15. We brought suit on behalf of Indymedia and established that the federal anti-terrorism laws do not trump the First Amendment.

And this is the short list! For more information about the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the work that we do, visit http://www.eff.org/about/ and http://www.eff.org/legal/victories.

To support us in this important work, visit http://www.eff.org/support/.