Free Speech

EFF filed an amicus in support of a John Doe who was denied attorneys fees under the California SLAPP law. The case was handled by the Stanford cyberlaw clinic. The appeals court agreed with Stanford and EFF and reversed the lower court ruling.

On May 1 2008 EFF and the law firm of Sheppard Mullin Richter & Hampton filed a motion to dismiss a lawsuit brought against the operator of the popular online encyclopedia Wikipedia arguing that federal law immunizes it against suits over statements made by its users.

On February 1 2007 EFF warned the Chicago Auto Show to back off attempts to muzzle protestors who posted a parody of the show's website.

EFF and a coalition of public interest groups and law professors have asked a California appeals court to protect craiglist from a lawsuit that could spur websites to be less helpful in responding to complaints about user behavior.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) asked a judge in Illinois to reject a Petition to identify an anonymous MySpace user who allegedly posted fake profiles of an Illinois official because the request would violate both the First

John Doe is an anonymous poster to two Internet message boards who made two statements critical of a publicly-traded company run by Plaintiff Cullens.

EFF is defending the First Amendment rights of a citizen-journalist to link from a public "wiki" to electronic copies of damaging internal Eli Lilly documents relating to the controversial prescription drug Zyprexa.

EFF has asked an Illinois Circuit Court judge to quash subpoenas aimed at outing opponents of a controversial city project.

EFF and the California First Amendment Coalition (CFAC) asked a California appeals court to scrutinize a chemical company's attempt to strip the anonymity from a participant in an online message board.

Software development company seeks identity of John Doe who obtained email initially sent by company's CEO to his mistress and forwarded the email to company employees.

EFF filed suit against Apple Inc. to defend the First Amendment rights of an operator of a noncommercial public Internet "wiki" site known as Bluwiki.

On December 8 2006 EFF and Professor Deirdre Mulligan and Jack Lerner requested the depublication of Novartis Vaccines and Diagnostics Inc. v. Stop Huntingdon Cruelty USA Inc. (2006) 143 Cal.App.4th 1284 Ct. of App. Nos. A107538 & A108292.

EFF along with Public Citizen and Public Knowledge are urging a U.S. court of appeals to reject jewelry-maker Tiffany's attempt to rewrite trademark law and create new barriers for online commerce and communication.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is fighting back against Uri Geller -- the "paranormalist" famous for seemingly bending spoons with his mind -- on behalf of a YouTube critic who was silenced by Geller's baseless copyright claims.

EFF has urged an Oregon district court in a friend-of-the-court brief to overturn a multi-million dollar defamation verdict against a blogger that could chill free speech.

EFF has urged a federal appeals court to block administrative subpoenas from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that would reveal the identities of three pseudonymous Gmail users.  In an amicus brief filed in the U.S.

Dajaz1.com, a website dedicated to hip hop music and culture, was seized by the Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) division of the Department of Homeland Security over the 2010 Thanksgiving weekend.  For over a year, visitors could not get access to any content on the blog.  However, as w

EFF set one of the first precedents protecting computer communications from unwarranted government invasion.

In 1990, the Secret Service seized the computers of a small company out of Austin, Texas, called Steve Jackson Games. The computers included the company's electronic bulletin board system, a precursor the Internet for exchanging private email. This case was the first to establish that it is illegal for law enforcement to access and read private electronic mail without a warrant.

EFF joined with attorney Venkat Balasubramani of the law firm Focal PLLC to represent The Oatmeal creator Matthew Inman in a bizarre lawsuit targeting the online comic strip's fundraising campai

In August of 2009, Pennyslvania-based company USA Technologies filed a federal lawsuit against two Yahoo! message board posters who roundly criticized what they claim is the the consistently poor performance of USA Technologies' management.

EFF filed an amicus brief in this case in support of a man who was indicted under the a federal anti-stalking statute for repeatedly tweeting caustic criticisms of a public figure, a Buddhist sect leader who herself made extensive use of social media. In December, 2011, the judge agreed with EFF and dismissed the case, ruling that "the First Amendment protects speech even when the subject or manner of expression is uncomfortable and challenges conventional religious beliefs, political attitudes or standards of good taste."

EFF helped protect free speech rights of users who provide online forums for the views of others. In this case, a breast implant awareness activist was sued for defamation in part for re-posting an article written by someone else. On November 20, 2006, the California Supreme Court upheld the strong protections of Section 230 of the federal Telecommunications Act of 1996, reversing an earlier ruling by the Court of Appeals. Agreeing with EFF's position, the court held that the 1996 law protects individuals from civil liability for posting to an Internet newsgroup a statement created by another.

EFF defended the free speech and fair use rights of an online newsletter publisher after the world's third largest pharmaceutical company that accused him of trademark infringement and cybersquatting. Since March 2004, AcompliaReport.com has published original news and commentary about clinical trials of Acomplia, a new medication. Drug maker Sanofi-Aventis asked an international arbitrator to transfer the domain name, claiming that the use of the drug's name created a "risk of confusion." With EFF's assistance, the site's publisher asked a U.S. district court to declare that his use of the drug name was a fair use, made in good faith. The parties subsequently entered into a settlement that protected the publisher's right to the site's address.

Email Is Free Speech, Not Trespass

When former Intel employee Ken Hamidi sent email messages to Intel employees complaining about the company's allegedly unfair labor practices, Intel brought suit. The company won an injunction on a "trespass to chattels" theory, arguing that Hamidi's emails had harmed Intel's computers. EFF stepped in to protect Hamidi's First Amendment rights, arguing in a friend-of-the-court brief that there was no evidence to suggest that his email had threatened the integrity of Intel's systems. The California Supreme Court agreed, ruling that the tort of trespass to chattels does not encompass, and should not be extended to encompass, email communications.

EFF has teamed up with the ACLU, the New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU), and

EFF fought for bloggers' rights, defending the anonymity of an online speaker. In two messages from September of 2004, someone writing under the alias Proud Citizen criticized Patrick Cahill, a member of the Smyrna Town Council in Delaware. Cahill and his wife sued for defamation and sought to unmask the critic. In the first state supreme court decision considering "John Doe" subpoenas and bloggers' rights, the Delaware Supreme Court ruled that the plaintiffs had failed to meet the strict standards required by the First Amendment to breach a speaker's anonymity. The statements at issue were "incapable of a defamatory meaning."

After EFF intervened in the case, an Oklahoma school superintendent dropped his attempt to unmask the identities of a website operator and all registered users of an Internet message board devoted to discussion of local public schools. The superintendent sued anonymous speakers who criticized him on an online message board. As part of the case, he filed a broad subpoena seeking to identify the site's creator and everyone who had posted or even registered on the site, violating First Amendment protections for anonymous speech and association. EFF filed a motion to quash the subpoena on behalf of the site's operator and a registered user, and the superintendent responded by dismissing the case.

EFF protected anonymous speech and fought off a controversial self-help group's abuse of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). The DMCA's subpoena process is ripe for abuse, because it lets content owners unmask an alleged infringer without first filing an actual lawsuit. Landmark Education sent subpoenas to Google and the Internet Archive to unmask whoever had posted a documentary criticizing the organization, even though the use did not infringe any of Landmark's copyrights. EFF defended the anonymous Google poster and the Internet Archive, and Landmark quickly backed down.

After a challenge by the Internet Archive and EFF, Washington state officials dropped their defense of a law aimed at combatting online sex trafficking ads by targeting Internet service providers.  SB 6251 was a vague and overbroad statue that statute threatened to impose felony liability not onl

EFF fought for open, transparent governance of the domain name system.

Karl Auerbach began asking for Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers's (ICANN) corporate records in November 2000, shortly after he was voted as the North American Elected Director of ICANN. ICANN management proceeded to obstruct his access to these records. Represented by EFF, Auerbach successfully sued to gain his rightful access under the law.

In February 2008, Swiss bank Julius Baer filed suit in federal district court against Wikileaks for hosting 14 allegedly leaked documents regarding personal banking transactions of Julius Baer customers. The court subsequently issued a permanent injunction disabling the wikileaks.org domain name and preventing that domain name from being transferred to any other registrar. EFF, the ACLU and the ACLU of Northern California moved to intervene in the lawsuit, joining other amici, arguing that the unwarranted injunction violated the First Amendment as an unlawful prior restraint. The court agreed with our arguments, dissolving the injunction and allowing the wikileaks.org domain name to go back up. Julius Baer subsequently moved to dismiss it case.

In this case, several businesses filed suit against Yelp, claiming that the popular review site manipulated and manufactured reviews in order to coerce businesses to advertise on the website.  However, in their lawsuit, the businesses largely speculated about Yelp’s role in authoring

The ACLU of Northern California (ACLU-NC) and EFF filed a federal class-action lawsuit to block implementation of unconstitutional provisions of Proposition 35 – a ballot measure passed by California voters that restricts the legal and constitutionally protected speech of all registered sex offen

Twenty-two organizations including Unitarian church groups, gun ownership advocates, and a broad coalition of membership and political advocacy organizations filed suit against the National Security Agency for violating their First Amendment right of association by illegally collecting their call

Online news publisher Respublika asked a federal judge in New York to clarify that officials in Kazakhstan can’t use a U.S. court order in a battle over leaked emails to censor news stories that are critical of the Kazakhstan government.

Code == Speech: Defending Publishers of DVD Descrambling Code

The DVD Copy Control Association (DVD-CCA), a mouthpiece of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), sued dozens of people in venues across the country and around the world for publishing DeCSS, software code that decrypts the data on commercial DVDs. EFF represented Andrew Bunner and Mathew Pavlovich to defend First Amendment rights in technically oriented speech, to fight the misuse of trade secret law, and to clarify the rules on jurisdiction. In the Bunner case, a California appeals court agreed with EFF and overturned as unconstitutional a 1999 trade secret injunction prohibiting Bunner from publishing the code. In the Pavlovich case, the California Supreme Court also found for the defendant, ruling that Texas resident Pavlovich could not be forced to stand trial in California.

In the digital age, repressive governments do not act alone to violate human rights. They have accomplices—often Western technology companies—with the sophistication and technical know-how that those repressive governments lack.