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."

Comments

This is wonderful.

[Daunting*Alligheri]

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.

How Long..

[Heem]

How long until this site itself gets it's own Cease and Desist for whatever unfounded reason?

Lost his faith in democracy,

excellent

[prizzznecious]

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.

This is a *great* idea

[syzxys]

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!

I agree completely

[Exmet Paff Daxx]

To do my best to prove to the Movie Industry that their attempts at scaring everyone is futile, I am proceeding on a path of complete and total Civil Disobedience:

• I have obtained a DVD copier (at great expense) and I frequently rent movies and copy them so I can view them later, like so:
• I use DeCSS-derived software to copy DVDs to my Hard Drive and later to DVD, only this time encoding free!
• I hand out free copies of DVD movies everywhere I can to as many people as I can, along with a 2600 flier about how bad the DMCA is
• .
• 
  
  Join me in protesting for our freedoms! Remember, information (and especially movies like Good Will Hunting) want to be free!
  

Re:I agree completely

[renehollan]

I have obtained a DVD copier (at great expense) and I frequently rent movies and copy them so I can view them later, like so:

O.K., cool!

I use DeCSS-derived software to copy DVDs to my Hard Drive and later to DVD, only this time encoding free!

Also cool, sounds like traditional fair use to me. I too use CSS-defeating software so I can view DVDs I purchased under [GNU/]Linux.

I hand out free copies of DVD movies everywhere I can to as many people as I can, along with a 2600 flier about how bad the DMCA is.

Unless these are movies you made, this is uber-uncool. You should be fighting for fair-use, and reductions of copyight protection terms, not blatently fueling the flames of oppression. Such piracy just proves "them" right. Handing out the 2600 flyer is cool. I wear my anti-DVD/CCA t-shirt proudly, too, and explain what it means when people ask.

I realize that you posted in jest, but civil disobedience isn't about completely ignoring bad law, just orderly refusal to obey those parts of the law that are ill-concieved.

Re:I agree completely

[smack.addict]

This is not civil disobedience, it is common thievery.

Civil disobedience would be to copy your DVD's and store them in a safe space as backups.

Civil disobedience would be to use Microsoft Office on your laptop and desktop.

In other words, civil disobedience is doing things that might be illegal but still carry the full force of morality. Your acts are both illegal and immoral.

Re:I agree completely

[Phanatic1a]

You should be fighting for fair-use, and reductions of copyight protection terms, not blatently fueling the flames of oppression.

I'm curious.

The issue of term limits and fair-use seems like a crucial one, but I'm not sure that it is. Wouldn't the DMCA be just as bad if copyright terms were only 75 years? 50? 14? Isn't the issue really the draconian laws that are being put into place to enforce copyright protection, and not the term of the protection itself?

Would any of us be satisfied with a world in which Skylarov and Johansen could be persecuted as they have been, in which the DMCA, WIPO regulations, and the SSSCA are enforced laws, but copyright terms were shortened to something reasonable?

I wouldn't be. I don't think fair use and copyright protection terms are the issue. I suspect the issue is that copyright laws simply can't effectively be applied to current and future technologies without draconian enforcement procedures being applied.

Shocking!

[Cutriss]

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?

Re:Shocking!

[goldspider]

Perhaps this site only deals with issues that will be decided by circuit courts.

It's Nice To See

[lblack]

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

put where your mouth is your money

[geckoFeet]

Join the eff already. No more excuses.

/. readers have had another prequel to this with the attack of Barney, the purple Tyrannosaurus rex.

Anyone have experience with brandimensions.com?

[tenzig_112]

I've seen them in my http logs a few times over the past few weeks. Their site says that they "empower our clients to retain control over their names and brands on the web." I may be wrong, but that sounds a lot like marketing-speak for "corporate bully."

Their tag line: "monitoring and protecting your brand equity."

Check the connotations of the individual words:

• Monitor is a fancy way of saying "invasion of privacy," but don't worry, we're invading someone else's privacy.
  
• Protect carries images of military campaigns and gunning down burglars in "self-defense."
  
• Brand is a corporate identity, an entity bigger than [and therefore above the laws of] governmental institutions.
  
• Equity = money.
  

Again, I may be [and probably am] wrong.

For Senders Too?!

[volsung]

If you go look at the site, you'll see that there are forms for entering your Cease & Desist letters if you are the receiver or if you are the sender. I expected to see the receiver form, but was surprised to see the sender form. How many businesses can you think of who would want to advertise that they are trying to indimidate people with C&D letters? I would imagine most businesses would be rather annoyed, actually, to have their letters end up in this thing and come back later to be a PR headache.

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?)

/.'d

[Asikaa]

It's /.'d already. Try Google's cache.

I wonder if EFF et al will be sending /. a Cease & Desist letter for a premeditated DOS attack on their web server? :)

Re:Good idea

[smack.addict]

That's actually quite false, though it is a common European misconception. Our problem is that we are a country that too quickly moves our problems into the courtroom. A C&D letter does not actually imply that the person sending it has any legal case; it simply means they took the time to try to intimidate you into believing they do.

Re:Cease and Desist Unauthorized Law Practice?

[raresilk]

cperciva meant to be funny, I think, but this issue could actually be a concern. Posting legal advice on the internet is a very touchy thing, because no lawyer I've ever known is licensed to practice in every US jurisdiction in which the postings could be read. (Hence, e.g., my disclaimer.) I suspect that's the reason the site is set up to allow only comments from law students rather than lawyers. Couching it as a community-service-based educational project for law students (who by definition are not practicing law yet) might help the site avoid such attacks.

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.

Re:Cease and Desist Unauthorized Law Practice?

[Danse]

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.