On March 20 a coalition of advocacy groups, concerned citizens, academics, and web sites sent a letter to the White House urging the President of the United States to veto CISPA in its current state if it is passed by the House and Senate.

A letter signed by 33 organizations and nine individuals asks the top ranking lawmakers in the House of Representatives (Reps. Bob Goodlatte and John Conyers) and the United States Senate (Sens. Patrick Leahy and Charles Grassley) to make an exception for unlocking electronic devices to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). Recently a petition signed by over 110,000 Americans asked President Barack Obama's administration to make the same exception.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is shining a spotlight on a proposal currently before the World Wide Web Consortium's HTML5 Working Group to put digital rights management (DRM) into the next generation of core Web standards. The proposal in questions is called Encrypted Media Extensions, or EME. The EFF says that adopting EME into core standards would be a "calamitous development."

Putting the technical specifications of the proposal aside, why does the EFF think that certain parties are pushing this EME proposal? Here's their analysis on that:

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) offers some pretty frightening information on which government agencies could be given access to your private information under the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA).

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is asking the Internet community to let their elected representatives in Washington D.C. know that they support H.R. 845, better known as the SHIELD Act (check it out here (PDF)). What is the SHIELD Act? "SHIELD" stands for "Saving High-Tech Innovators from Egregious Legal Disputes."

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has issued an action alert asking the Internet community to fight against the newest iteration of the Cyber Intelligence Protection and Sharing Act (CIPSA). While the it may be a new year the House bill meant to protect companies and critical infrastructure from cyber "terrorists," and hackers, the bill has not changed at all since it was introduced in 2012.

The Electronic Freedom Foundation announced that it will fight for Reddit's 'Gaymer community' and against Chris Vizzini, owner of Gaymer.org. Vizzini holds a trademark on the term, but top moderators from the Subreddit /r/gaymers and the EFF believe that the trademark is invalid.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has received $500,000 in funding from Minecraft creator and Mojang co-founder Markus "Notch" Persson and serial entrepreneur (and Dallas Mavericks owner) Mark Cuban. Both donated $250,00 each to help the advocacy group fight for patent reform in Washington, according to GII. Cuban is also a star on the popular ABC television show "Shark Tank."

The battle over returning legitimate files and data stored on Megaupload's servers has hit a brick wall leaving anyone who made the mistake of storing important data there uncertain about whether they will ever get it back. Megaupload’s 1103 servers are gathering dust at Carpathia Hosting in the United States and Megaupload lawyer Ira Rothken tells TorrentFreak that, despite best efforts, efforts are stalled.

Organizers of the Humble Bundle have launched a brand new bundle today - Humble Bundle for Android #3. While it might be specifically named for Android-based devices, organizers emphasize that all of the five games in the bundle are also playable on Windows, Mac, and Linux.

As always, those who want to buy this bundle pay what they want for it, giving their cash to the developers or one of two charities: the Electronic Frontier Foundation or Child's Play.

Google has decided to play ball with rights holders, according to this Politico report. The world's biggest search engine revealed that it will now make search results from sites with "frequent copyright removal notices" appear lower in Google search rankings. Google announced late Friday that web sites with high numbers of "valid" removal notices would be affected by this new policy.

Internet rights advocacy and lobbying group the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has an interesting article offering five reasons why the National Security Agency (NSA) shouldn't be trusted to run whatever cybersecurity oversight comes out if the Senate passes the Cybersecurity Act of 2012 and manages to reconcile it with the House's Cyber Intelligence Security Protection Act (CISPA).

The United States government has a suggestion for Megaupload users that can't get their legal data from the file-sharing and storage company: sue them or the service provider for Megaupload. Basically they are saying that since they have gotten the data they wanted from the servers they seized, it's not their problem anymore.

Advocacy groups Fight for the Future, Democrats.com, The Liberty Coalition, and the Entertainment Consumers Association (ECA), have banded together to create a new website called Privacy Is Awesome, to fight against CISPA and the Senate version of the bill, SECURE IT Act. The site is designed to teach netizens how to defeat the bills in five easy steps:

Tomorrow the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) will ask a federal judge to finally establish a process that allows lawful users - including a number of government agencies - of Megaupload's cloud storage service to reclaim their files. The hearing in USA v. Dotcom is set for 9 a.m. on April 13 at the federal courthouse in Alexandria, Virginia.

Dulles, Virginia-based hosting firm Carpathia Hosting is tired of storing 25 petabytes of Megaupload data on more than 1,000 servers in North America because of the government's shutdown of the file-sharing site in January, and is asking a federal court to relieve them of their obligations and any liability.

Earlier this month the federal district court in Nevada issued a declaratory judgment that made it a lot harder for copyright holders to file lawsuits over excerpts of material being used on web sites and online forums. The judgment is a direct blow to law firms like Righthaven, who filed a ton of lawsuits against websites claiming that they had infringed on copyright holders it represented.

An interesting article on TorrentFreak points out something we should have suspected all along: that everyday Megaupload users are not the only ones that have lost access to legal data - the U.S. government has also had some of its data locked down. According to Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom, the Department of Justice and members of the U.S. Senate have stored data on the site, which, ironically, they don't have access to because the U.S. government shut the site down.

The other day we showed you an Infographic the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) made concerning the harm that the current patent system in the United States. Today we'll tell you what the advocacy group is doing about it on the legal front.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has posted an infographic showing how patents hinder innovation, limit competition and stop people from gaining access to knowledge and tools to further ideas. Of course, a great majority of the problems with patents have to do with patent trolls - companies that buy up patents for the sole purpose of conducting large scale litigation against companies to make a quick buck. It doesn't help that the overwhelmed and underfunded US Patent Office hands out questionable patents every day either.

Video game console makers Microsoft and Sony are squaring off against enthusiast hackers, academics, and organizations such as the EFF who would like to make the act of jailbreaking legal. There is already an exception in place that allows the iPhone to be jailbroken, so supporters of gaining similar allowances for the Xbox 360 and PS3 are urging the U.S. Copyright Office to make these exceptions. The copyright office is currently accepting public input comments on the subject until Friday, and will likely make a decision soon shortly thereafter.

A federal appeals court has concluded that a Florida man who refused to decrypt several electronic devices and was subsequently imprisoned, had his civil rights violated. This is the first time an appeals courts has ruled in favor of protections for encrypted devices and software. The court ruled in The United States v. Doe that the man's Fifth Amendment Rights were violated.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has asked all parties involved in the MegaUpload criminal case to halt any plans to delete or otherwise dispose of data hosted on severs once leased by file-hosting services. With its assets frozen and its operators in jail, MegaUpload is unable to pay for storage of the data.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has launched a site - megaretrieval.com - dedicated to helping legitimate customers of MegaUpload retrieve their lost data - put in limbo when the Federal government seized the servers and the assets of the file-sharing site. The goal of the site is to help innocent users who used the site to store data that was not in anyway infringing on other people's intellectual property (in other words, they were not engaged in any type of piracy).

Those who have data on MegaUpload and were concerned that it might get deleted on Thursday by the companies that facilitate the site's storage get some good news this morning - the data has been given a slight extension. And on a related note, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has begun a campaign this week to get "innocent users" of MegaUpload’s service to get in touch with them to explore possible legal measures for retrieving their data. MegaUpload’s online storage service was shut down by U.S. law enforcement earlier this month.

The Humble Introversion Bundle closed earlier this week, selling 190,261 bundles for a grand total of $778,643.57.  The dough will be divided up between Humble Bundle itself, the developers of the games included in the bundle, and two charities: the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Child’s Play.

As always seems to be the case, Linux users paid the most, averaging $8.78 with Mac users following at $5.90 and Windows users bringing up the rear at $3.40.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has asked the US Copyright Office to exempt jailbreaking devices such as the iPhone and PS3 from enforcement under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).

Left-leaning political blog DailyKOS joins the editorial pages of the New York Times and Los Angeles Times in opposition of the House's Stop Online Piracy Act and the Senate's Protect IP Act. In a post titled "Congress is close to destroying the internet (no hyperbole)," DailyKOS says that it is not hyperbole when they say that lawmakers, big Pharmaceutical companies, and the recording, and movie industries are out to destroy the internet.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation is taking up arms against the PROTECT IP Act in the Senate and the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the House and they want your help to do it. The advocacy that supports internet rights and freedom of speech online says that these new bills are "a threatening sequel to last year's COICA Internet censorship bill" and that this legislation "invites Internet security risks, threatens online speech, and hampers Internet innovation."

The Humble Voxatron Debut today added more games and an updated version of Voxatron as the "pay what you want" indie game promotion continues rake in hundreds-of-thousands of dollars for its developers and supported charities including Child's Play and the Electronic Frontier Foundation.