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Bloggers and Technologists Whose Voices Are Offline: 2018 in Review This year, we refocused our attention on Offline , our project that seeks to raise awareness of and provide actions readers can take to support imprisoned bloggers, digital activists, and technologists. Originally launched in 2015, Offline currently features six individuals from four countries whose critical voices have been silenced by their governments. Take Eman Al-Nafjan , the Saudi Arabian blogger and women’s rights activist who has long been critical of her government’s human rights abuses while living in the country. In May, Al-Nafjan was arrested along with several other women while filming a woman driving a car—just one month before the ban on women driving was officially lifted. A report from Human Rights Watch has found that a number of the women imprisoned in the crackdown have faced torture and sexual harassment in prison. Although Saudi Arabia has always been restrictive of speech, this year has...

Europe Speeds Ahead on Open Access: 2018 in Review Open access is the common-sense idea that scientific research (especially scientific research funded by the government or philanthropic foundations) should be available to the public—ideally with no legal or technical barriers to access and reuse. EFF is a longtime supporter of the open access movement: we think that promoting broad access to knowledge and information helps to ensure that everyone can speak out and participate in society. For over five years now, EFF and our allies in the open access world have been campaigning for the Fair Access to Science and Technology Research Act (FASTR, S. 1701, H.R. 3427). Despite broad support from both parties and barely any opposition from anyone besides major publishers, Congress continues to snooze on FASTR year after year. While Congress dragged its feet on important legislative fixes, the most exciting changes came in Europe and at the state level. This year, though, something cha...

Software Copyright Back Before Federal Circuit: Time for the Court to Get it Right Should a company be able to shut down competition by asserting copyright in a collection of software commands? Tech giant Cisco Systems thinks so: it’s gone to court to try to prevent its competitor, Arista Networks, from building competing Ethernet switches that rely in part on commands Cisco argues it initially developed. Cisco lost the first round in a California district court, but it’s hoping for a better outcome from the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. As we explain in a brief we’ve submitted supporting Arista, Cisco is wrong. First, where the collection of commands in question is simply a group of standard, highly functional directives, arranged based on logic and industry standards, it shouldn’t be copyrightable at all. Second, any copyright that does exist must be sharply limited, as a matter of law and good practical policy. Without such limits, the software industries will fin...