Stanford Center for Internet and Society

Following a hearing in the San Francisco Superior Court today, DJs and party guests Justin Credible and Matthew Higgins had their illegally seized laptops returned to them. This is great news, and a real relief to the pair who have been without their machines for over a month.

For more, click here.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation and I are mentioned in this Wall Street Journal article about TI calculator hackers and the law.

In 1990, Bavarian actor Walter Sedlmayr was brutally murdered. Two of his business associates were convicted, imprisoned for the crime, and recently paroled. Who killed Sedlmayr? Its a matter of public record, but if one of the men and his German law firm gets their way, Wikipedia (and EFF) will not be allowed to tell you.

Great article on my Texas Instruments dispute in the IEEE Spectrum magazine, with a picture of one of my clients: For Texas Instruments, Calculator Hackers Don't Add Up.

One of my new projects is defending researchers and bloggers discussing how to put custom operating systems on TI calculators. The press release and explanatory blog post are on the EFF site.

On October 23, 2009, the UC Berkeley School of Law will host an all-day conference at the Bancroft Hotel to explore some of the most pressing legal challenges, ethics issues, and policy questions related to the use of social networking websites by the public and the legal profession. I'm speaking at the event, and so is Lauren Gelman.

In It's My Browser, and I'll Auto-Click if I Want To, Fred blogs about how EFF is representing SkipScreen, a Firefox browser add-on that helps users avoid ads and unnecessary wait times when downloading files from hosting sites.

The California Department of Insurance (DOI) is considering regulations that would enable insurance prices to depend on the precise number of miles a car is driven in a given billing period.

What does Facebook have in common with wireless phone companies like AT&T? Both companies try to lock customers in, even if we'd rather take our business elsewhere. Facebook is suing Power.com, a company that gives users a tool to pull copies of their own friends lists, postings and other information out of Facebook so that they can aggregate it with their other social networking platforms.

September 2008 amendments to the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act broaden the already extensive reach of the law, and fail to clarify the most vexing question about the statute, the definition of “unauthorized access”.