Slashdot Mirror
Chilling Effects Cease & Desist Clearinghouse
Wendy Seltzer writes: "The Berkman Center for Internet & Society, EFF, and other major law school clinics have launched ChillingEffects.org to combat the chilling effect of Cease & Desist letters with ungrounded legal threats. (Slashdot readers got a site preview in the story on the Bnetd Cease & Desist, already in our database.)
If you have received a Cease & Desist, we invite you to add it to the database, where law students will analyze the legalese and annotate the C&Ds with Frequently Asked Questions and answers. The site already offers several sets of general legal FAQs."
FuckedCompany.com has plenty of them!
Hey slashdot crowd, you all should be excited about this. We finally have a place to go check out what the laws really mean (and how they're really applied), as opposed to talking out our asses all the time. This is indeed a Good Thing (tm) and I only hope the best for the affiliated schools.
Witty quotes suck.
Best Slashdot Co
because I am working :)
At first glance, this looks like a great thing. In fact, what the internet was supposed to be. My only question is - how long will they remain available and maintained? Operations like this tend to get their funding mysteriously cut. Sounds like a job for the EFF to fund?
political_news.c: warning: comparison is always true due to limited range of data type
How long until this site itself gets it's own Cease and Desist for whatever unfounded reason?
Lost his faith in democracy,
Don't Tread on Me
This is exactly what the internet is for: obscure information easily available to the masses. Be sure to tell your friends etc., as the only way the internet can remain a free place is through active individual self-education. A disturbingly low number of people actually read things like the DMCA or cease and desist letters; we need to be smarter and more aggressive if we want to stay free.
visit the hwky website for a lyrical genius infusion.
If the "Clearinghouse" manages to stay up, it will certainly become very useful. One of the worst things about cease-and-desist letters is that the lawyers throw all kinds of threats at you, which you then have to spend time checking into. If you're a small operation, this means a big company can basically bludgeon you to death with cease and desist letters. In fact, we've seen this happening a lot more in the past year.
I'm glad to see this site go up, IMHO it's a victory for the little guy. It'll be interesting to see what happens to the cease and desist climate after word of the site gets around; maybe people will stop throwing cease & desist at everything they don't like. (Heh, that's probably a pipe dream.) Anyway, just my $0.02.
---Crash Windows XP just by viewing a simple text file!
Join me in protesting for our freedoms! Remember, information (and especially movies like Good Will Hunting) want to be free!
If guns kill people, then CmdrTaco's keyboard misspells words.
Why do I have the feeling that some featured organization will issue a C&D onto ChillingEffect.com?
Mod Karma -1: I sed bad wurds. If I cep my mouf shut, I wud be at riyses.
The Berkman Center for Internet & Society, EFF, and other major law school clinics have launched ChillingEffects.org to combat the chilling effect of Cease & Desist letters with ungrounded legal threats.
Yeah, those lawsuits hurt me a lot too when they're not grounded - They build up lots of static.
How about groundless?
"Mod, mod, mod...and another troll bites the dust."
Slashdot effect is stronger than the chilling effect.
Yes but every time I try to see it your way, I get a headache.
It's nice to see that after all the talk and jokes about open-sourcing the law, that it is happening.
Is this that much different from submitting a patch to a peer-maintenance group and having it reviewed by various persons of various qualifications? Or from submitting an Ask Slashdot, for that matter.
I've been involved with businesses that have been threatened by letters about various things. Upon receiving the first of those letters, I started expanding my knowledge of legalese, law application, etc. A lot of google and a few dead trees later, and I'm much more informed... and can now spot the bullshit much easier than I once could.
This database should provide a short circuit, so that people can quickly learn about things that pertain to them, and get assistance on resolving them.
I think this sort of idea is important to free speech in an increasingly corporate medium. It's heartening to see that people care enough to actually devote their time to it.
-l
How about the chilling effect of putting up a site and being instantly slashdotted?
/. readers have had another prequel to this with the attack of Barney, the purple Tyrannosaurus rex.
Their tag line: "monitoring and protecting your brand equity."
Check the connotations of the individual words:
Again, I may be [and probably am] wrong.
Too bad the site appears to be slashdotted. :(
--
The real Raunchola isn't cool enough to have any imposters
Along that line of thinking: How long do you think it will be before C&D letters contain language specifying that you cannot publish them? (And even if you say that is not possible/legal/whatever, how many will try anyway?)
Unforunately I think it would only be helpful for those living under US law. Therefore not applicable to many people. Getting law students involved from many other countries would be a good thing.
It's kind of funny how the relationship between technology and the law have changed. Four years ago, who would have expected to see an archive of legalisms as a /. front-page story? I mean, this is a tech news site, right?
Ah well, at least there are still white hat lawyers on our side, for the moment at least.
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
Assuming you got one, and I'm pretty sure I know someone who did, if they aren't signed by a member of a state bar or plaing fantasy, any recourse, other than telling them where to shove it?
Examples may include, "Dear Sir/Madam, our attorney has advised us that what you are doing violates etc etc etc...", which, IMHO is hardly a C&D rather wishful thinking.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I wonder if EFF et al will be sending /. a Cease & Desist letter for a premeditated DOS attack on their web server? :)
Asikaa
Come in, twenty-seventy-seventy, your time is up.
The legal analysis is a bonus.
Now, I wonder how long it will be before chillingeffects.org itself receives a C&D demanding that it remove someone's "confidential" C&D letter they sent, after realizing the whole world will see what their legal thugs have done.
Dear Sir,
It has come to our attention that you maintain a web site operating under the moniker "chillingeffects.org" and through that service are engaged in the provision of legal services.
Since you are not licensed to provide legal services, we respectfully ask that you cease and desist from providing such services.
Respectfully yours,
Joe Q. Lawyer and associates.
Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid
so i cant see it right now - but if the eff is involved i say kudo's to them. im glad to see more sites (anit-dmca.com, fuckedcompany.com, eff.org, etc) popping up against the dmca. this way people will have a better voice rather than just the usual "thats shitty - burn the goverment anarchy - yay" statements made from people who complain and contribute nothing to the movements. i hope this site and the likes continue to grow.
Ave Molech Setting
Looks like the slashdot effect has put a cease and desist on their site.
But as a defense, you could argue that publishing these threats with analysis are of public importance.
Fight Spammers!
Unless the sender and recipient are under NDA, this would be laughed so far out of court it would land in the ocean. And not just in the Ninth Circuit.
Of course, some unscrupulous shark might push Congress for a law saying C&D letters are confidential, but I can't imagine that passing 1st amendment scrutiny.
sulli
RTFJ.
I had never read any of Jack Valenti's writings up to this point, and I must say he's quite poignant. Unlike many of my fellow slashdot posters, he makes sound and specific arguments which flows gracefully from assertion to conclusion.
I wish I could say the same for slashdot...
"Communism is like having one [local] phone company " - Lenny Bruce
Is the slashdot effect a Cease and Desist order?
Slashdot Effect: The virtual equivilent of a C&D
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
how about a cease and desist on page-widening motherfuckers ?
I alternate between posting +5 and -1 Comments. Karma: +53 -47 = 6
You idiot!
Anyone ever receive the C&D letter from the RIAA? Once I get home i-net access back next week, I'm going to add that one if no one else has yet. They threatened me with something like $100,000 per offense (of selling roughly 20 bootlegged, NOT pirated, recordings for $6 each, s&h included), years of jail time, etc. And they would decide exactly how they were going to punish me once I provided them with lists of A) every bootleg I have ever owned, B) where I obtained it, C) every bootleg I have ever sold, D) who I sold it do, E) for how much, etc. etc.
At least this is what I could decipher from the legalese.
Slashdotted...
main(i){(10-putchar(((25208>>3*(i+=3))&7)+(i ?i-4?100:65:10)))?main(i-4):i;}
Great informational site, I'm sure it will be invaluable to Webmasters and other web content providers. But does anyone know of a site like this, dealing with Non-Disclosure Agreements that may contain Non-compete clauses or force employees to give up various rights to work etc.? A friend was recently asked to sign such a NDA that would have precluded her from taking any web based work of any sort (the wording was intentionally vague) for 5 years after leaving the company, even if laid off or terminated, with or without cause. The employee would also have to agree that the employeer could terminate employment at any time without reason. As a web designer, this was un-acceptable and she's looking else where for employment. A site like the above dealing with NDA's would be invaluable to her and the rest of us working geeks.
While I applaud the makers of this website for providing important and otherwise unobtainable information to us, education alone will not make the C&D climate change. No matter how much you know about groundless C&D letters, you can never be sure without talking to lawyers etc., and that's the power of a C&D.
What we need to do is to lobby our representatives in government (generally this is best done with old fashioned "snail mail," although email is better than nothing) to devise harsh penalties for groundless C&D letters, so that companies will think twice before abusing their power. It wouldn't hurt if laws like the DMCA were revised into oblivion, too--even bogus C&D letters need ostensible reasoning.
visit the hwky website for a lyrical genius infusion.
Now as soon as the Slashdot effect fades, I can use the site.
He's pining for the fjords.
Now we'll have a place to put all the AvaGram C&D letters that Scientology lawyear Ava Paquette keeps sending out.
When the best crime that the "Church" of $cientology can throw at you is "Copyright Terrorist", you know you're in the right.
I had a similar experience. I hired a very good attorney and he shred it to tears. The trick of it is that the courts take a very dim view of any language that prevent employees from earning a living. There can be legitamite boundaries (such as working for a competitor, etc.)applied to the employee, but such over-reaching language is null & void right out of the starting gate. I would suggest that you get out of there as fast as you can. I would also suggest you contact those that have signed the NDA, to hire effective legal council immediately. This is a new world (for the worse). Little by little, all of your legal rights that have been hard won in the past, are being taken away. If you don't continually fight for them, you lose them.
Broken browsers just suck. Don't they, buddy?
Just like every other Microsoft product.
http://www.mozilla.org/
Now that they're sponsoring a Cease and Desist Clearing House, the EFF should change their motto to "You might be a winner" and hire Ed MacMahon as a spokesperson.
Ergonomica Auctorita Illico!
watching 200 episodes of "Ally McBeal" doesn't make me a legal expert? I'm flabbergasted. Gotta go have to have a hallucination about a dancing baby...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Good question, I would advise your friend to check the laws in the state she's in. I live in Texas and I've been asked to sign such non competition agreements, but for the most part they aren't binding. In Texas you have a fundamental right to earn a living, and you cannot sign away your fundamental rights.
So I'd tell your friend to just bite her tongue and sign the thing, knowing it's not worth the paper its written on. Check the laws in your state first though.
Of course, if they actually took you to court, you'd have to argue to the Judge that the current field you are in is the only one that a person with your education/background could maintain your standard of living. The duration of the non-competition agreement is important too, if the term is too long (5 years is excessive), the Judge may throw the clause out because it is excessive.
I've been swashdotted -- Elmer Fudd
Copyright infringement is NOT theft.
Yes it is a crime or at least a civil violation (tort). It may or may not be immoral - but it is NOT THEFT. Calling it theft does not make it so.
Theft involves obtaining something, and taking it away from someone else - not illegally using, making or distributing a copy.
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
yeah.
... they are a image security type company. The problem is they didn't bother to check on their own name before going into business and are due to be served soon for their lack of foresite. Kind of appropriate, isn't it.
Their scans are mostly manual, btw. If they came to your site, they are looking on the behalf of a client and they are lawyer and lawsuit happy.
... from chilling effects to frozen assets!
I posted it in another Slashdot story by mistake:
6 431
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=28519&cid=306
Liberty in your lifetime
He smart enough to know to let the expert witness answer those lines of questioning by playing dumb...
Too many people aren't smart enough to play dumb...
"Communism is like having one [local] phone company " - Lenny Bruce
It it legal to put C&D letters on a public website, or could the sender claim copyright infringement?
In Germany, there is something similar to C&D letters ("Abmahnung", slightly worse because you must pay a few hunderd dollers, or they'll go to court).
There is a database about it, but you must never quote the Abmahnung on a website - you'd get another one for copyright infringment.
Civil disobedience would be to use Microsoft Office on your laptop and desktop.
If I'm not mistaken, the new license agreements let you use it on both your laptop and desktop as long as they will not be used both at the same time. Well, at least that's what a Microsoft rep said at the Office XP launch.
Someone should start ChillingEffectsSUCKS.org, just to see what happens.... haha
I read of a very good reaction to this: The guy told the company that he couldn't sign it without having it looked over by a lawyer beforehand, and since it was a work requirement, he demanded that the company pre-approve the expense claim for the fees. Never had to sign. And if they do, then you've got a lawyer's read on the form. Win both ways.
Complexity is Easy. Simplicity is Hard.
So what do I do if I've received a Cease & Desist letter, but can't post it at the site because the sender is claimimg copyright on it?
The thing about things we don't know is we often don't know we don't know them.
Don't try this at home kids: apparently even Groucho's humor was lost on those dour lawyers.
BTW, does anyone know which Marx Brothers movie has something like the following exchange?
It's a great idea, but you really can't call it annotated. There are links in each C&D letter to a FAQ, but it's all boilerplate stuff - for example, the EnronOwnsTheGOP C&D and vivendiuniversalsucks.com C&D basically have the same annotation, such as "what constitutes trademark dilution."
It's a great introduction to those who aren't familiar with the difference between copyright and trademark, for example. It'd be nice to have some actual annotations by lawyers. A good site with this kind of content is Consumer Affairs. They have Real Live Lawyers who read consumer complaints and give their opinion on who's at fault, what the relevant laws are, etc. I'd love to see one of these C&D letters ripped apart by a lawyer, e.g. 'this is clearly a parody that falls under fair use.'
Ask for the company to provide you with a 5 years worth of salary in case of being dismissed in the contract....
So what she's basically saying is, she wants us to make the players of our game stop using any kind of military insignia/unit name in their online names. She's also been emailing various DoD "clans" asking the same thing. As you might expect of flame ready teens, some have started bombarding her with some pretty interesting (as I'm guessing) responses.
Now she's writing to us (the DoD Team) and Sierra (who we have ZERO connection with) asking us to make them stop emailing her.
Sheesh!
So - thank GOD for that website. I feel like we're not alone anymore after having it to read!
That being said, I wholeheartedly wish this site the best: a little knowledge about the law can go a long way in shielding oneself from abusive practices. I'm pleasantly surprised, also, to see that /.ers are not flaming the hell out of the idea, given the prevailing "why should I need a professional to explain my legal rights to me - life is supposed be simple, obvious and unfailingly fair" world view often expressed here.
No, no, no. This is not a sig.
This is a great service, I'll support it!
However, it's sad to see how freedom needs protection against the law:(
I'm an engineer, not a lawyer. But if I read the Reverse Engineering section 1201(f) correctly, it allows anyone to reverse engineer CSS in order to play a lawfully obtained DVD on a Linux system when player sofware has "not previously been readily available to the person engaging in the circumvention" and that such playback does "not constitute infringement" (meaning personal use).
DMCA would seem to require any and all persons wishing to view legally acquired DVDs on a Linux box to reverse engineer CSS and write their own individual versions of DeCSS from scratch. To this layman that is an absurd requirement.
More reasonable would be the legal availability of a DeCSS module that can be incorporated into the DVD player software of the user's choice. But this depends on one or more reverse engineering users being allowed to distribute their implementations to the legions of Linux users who only want to watch their DVDs without first having to purchase and install Windows (for which free DVD player software binaries have long been available).
Thus a single common DeCSS is considered unlawful infringement, yet each of tens of thousands of individually reverse engineered versions would apparently be legal. What's wrong with this picture?
I sure would like to issue quite a few Cease & Desist letters myself. What legal footing do I have to stand on if I send a spammer a Cease & Desist for harrasment?
My Cease & Desist
Dear Sir,
My penis is already too long, and I already know everything about my neigbor and don't need a net detective. I am already married so I don't care about finding a perfect mate, and my mathematical skills make it extremely unlikely that I will visit your on-line casino. I don't need your on-line porno, or your Nigierian.
Your repeated attempts to market to me are it harassament. If you were doing this over a phone I would already be seeing your sorry but in jail. Since you are hiding I must send this to everyone that has helped you in your endeavour.
Please remit 1,000 dollars to my swiss bank account or I'll sick my laywer on you.
Sincerely
Penis is to large and doesn't need to add another inch.
"Science is about ego as much as it is about discovery and truth " - I said it, so sue me.
As of about 10 seconds ago I have uploaded the first index.html of boycottblizzard.org.
Here goes nothin'. Boycottblizzard.org is an anti-dmca protest site, for the actions of Blizzard shutting down bnetd.
argh. I'm about to cry. I just donated money to mame.dk basically for the fact that they had all those lovely neo geo titles (metal slug *) and they just recieved a C & D this weekend. I knew I hadn't downloaded enough when I should have. Oh well. I now a few files which are going to be put on the gnutella network.
"It has always been this way and it won't change, god bless the fucked up USA" The Briefs
Civil disobedience would be to use Microsoft Office on your laptop and desktop.
How is this different from copying DVDs? In both cases you're depriving the corporation of potential additional sales, which is what you consider to be theft.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
...on behalf of slashdot.org, who had to remove my comments (3 of them) for violating US law. Its nice to know, that the American government, like China, also doesn't like people saying bad things about their politicians. Ahh, America, truly the land of the free
8 127&cid=3023 341
have a look: (the troll rating i deserved):
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2
"This comment has been removed since it was clearly in violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section 871 (Threats Against The President) and / or Section 875 (Interstate Communications: Extortions / Threats). You can Read More Here. We're sorry to have to do this, and while we don't necessarily agree with this, it is still the law. When the Secret Service gets involved, we don't have many options. We appreciate your understanding in the matter. Please call (202) 406-5000 if you have any questions."
I am going to **** that Bush using a high powered rifle and silver bullets. Censor THAT. ROFL:)
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
What about posting a letter for the purpose of receiving legal advice? Wouldn't that have to be allowed? Are they going to say you can't show it to your attorney? You can't show it to non-attorneys? You can't post it on a bulletin board with a note attached asking if anyone can advise you on a course of action? You can't post it on a website with your own comments attached and a request for legal advice? Where would the line be drawn, and why?
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
It'll probably get whacked down by the big boys if it becomes a nuisance. I remember reading a while back about the law firms for some big industry types getting some law passed to prohibit law students from helping low-income families deal with legal paperwork and filings in order to save their homes from being destroyed to make way for factories and industrial plants. The students were making it too easy for the families to fight the big companies, so they just got the practice outlawed. Suddenly the resistance dropped dramatically and they could move in a their leisure.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Except that law students -- and doctors and mechanics and farmers and everyone else -- are just as susceptible to unauthorized practice of law (UPL) rules as lawyers practicing in jurisdictions where they haven't passed the bar. Couching it as an "educational project" (i.e., legal clinic) is a step in the right direction, but the test will be whether the posters to the site think that they're getting legal advice, and relying on it as such. (Well, it's probably a "reasonable person" standard; I don't remember.)
The main problem is that they're accepting these letters from anyone, anywhere. The multijurisdictional issues that you bring up definitely rear their ugly heads, but even if it's in their state, it still might possibly be a UPL problem.
My point is really that no one should treat this website as giving legal advice. Sure, this will teach you some good stuff, but if you get a C&D you should touch base with your lawyer, unless it's just obviously wacko. If you do treat it as legal advice, the site could be ended or materially changed should a suit come up! That wouldn't be good for anyone except the C&D senders.
Actually, I realize now that by reading so much Slashdot I think I know more about the US legal issues on internet, copyright, etc. than those of my own country! There are or will probably be some overlaps but also some differences; it would make sense to have a European equavalent of EFF; does anybody know about equivalents of EFF in Europe (In a previous story I saw that there does exist an EF of Australia)? Are there a European versions of chillingeffects.org (in the making or already existent), do you have experiences with them?
No, no, no. This is not a sig.
Hey, somebody mod this guy up!
First of all many of you have commented on the possibility of some large law firm trying to shutdown the Chilling Effects Clearinghouse. I find this highly unlikely. It is run by divisions of the Harvard, Standford and Berkley Law Schools, whom have incredibly power. I doubt its possible for any law firm to intimidate Harvard. Its current alumni consist of 5 of the 9 supreme court justices and many members of Congress. So needless to say if any legal action was attempted against this site it would be met with a very powerful defense.
A rabbit in the hand is worth 4 in the cage
Does this only look at how american law would interpret the evidence, or international law. I know that many countries share that same policies, but if I live in Australia, and get a cease and desist, can I post it to this forum and get a response showing what rights I have avaliable to me based on Australian or international law.
its fishy because no one C&D would cause them to take all the roms offline
Has any attorney ever actually gotten in trouble because he posted legal opinion to the Internet and some butthead thought that it created an attorney-client relationship or constituted legal advice? I am a lawyer, and I post stuff from time to time, and I don't choose to .sig my posts with long disclaimers -- because commmon sense should tell you that my post, however opinionated or lawyerlike, doesn't create any duty or liability to readers. If someone knows of a court opinion that says otherwise, please cough it up.
There have been a number of comments in this thread regarding the legality of reproducing the cease and desist letters on the internet.
The legality of publishing these letters will vary from country to country, but as a resident of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, which is a signatory to the Berne Convention, I know that I am safe to do what I like with a cease and desist letter.
A work is copyrighted from the first date of its' publication in any tangible medium. A quick search of any dictionary reveals that 'publication' requires that the work be made available to the public (that's where the PUB bit comes from) - not for free, but nevertheless available. Any work which is not published cannot be protected by copyright in the UK - therefore private communcations between individuals are not subject to copyright law.
This does throw an interesting light on works which are sold, but are only made available to a small or limited audience - I would like to hear from anyone who can clarify the legal position of such works in the UK - the letter of the law would appear to read that they cannot have the protection of copyright.
Whether or not I am a lawyer is irrelevant.
I agree that anyone who thinks they are my client because I post something on the Internet is probably a "butthead." But I'm not sure all courts would agree, particularly because the context of /. is that one person states a position, and then others reply to it. Unlike generalized internet posting (e.g., on my own web site, addressed to no one in particular), I can't see that a "reply" to a particular individual's comment is categorically different from other informal discussions where atty-client relationships have been found. So I don't feel insulated from "buttheads" without the disclaimer, and we all know there are lots of "buttheads" around. (Maintaining strict anonymity and declining to post any email address, even an anonymous one, increases my comfort level also. If someone really wanted to consult me as their attorney based on what I've said on /., how would they ever find me? Even the "reasonable butthead person" probably wouldn't be justified in assuming they have an attorney-client relationship with an anonymous, unreachable creature known only as "raresilk.")
Although I don't know of cases where individuals have sued an attorney based on legal advice posted on a web site, I am aware that many state bar organizations are cracking down on what they view as unauthorized practice of law over the internet. Again, I see nothing about posting to a web site that makes it categorically different from other printed legal materials, all of which must conform with applicable state law rules on admission to practice. Although I make specific disclaimers in my posts where appropriate (e.g., I haven't read the court's opinion yet, I'm most familiar with California law, I'm not an expert in trade mark law, you should consult your own lawyer before making any important business decisions, blah, blah), I feel more comfortable with a general disclaimer that plainly indicates I do not intend to practice law or give legal advice anywhere I'm not authorized to practice.
No, no, no. This is not a sig.