The EFF should stick to its core mission. This is an overreach and is a mistake.
Worse it's a waste of time, money and valuable attention. If you want political action and have the money and resources then why not form a single-issue political action group, get involved and do something?
This is just writing a check and getting your picture and name in the media, something by the way at which Mark Cuban, whose hypocrisy knows little bounds, excels.
The EFF has long included intellectual property reform as one of its core focus areas, especially since patent and copyright law have long been used as weapons against free software projects and individuals. I think the EFF's first major patent reform project was this one, which started more than 8.5 years ago:
That seems like be a lot of harsh claims and little to back them up.
It's easy to see how you could argue that this is exactly the EFF's core mission, the link from software patents to digital rights is hardly ephemeral, and the EFF has a history with the (since expired, the system works!) GIF patent. I think that an opponent argument is conceivable, but you haven't made it.
And why would you form a single-issue political group, when you could join ranks with a sympathetic existing political organization, which brings enormous resources, relationships and standing to the table?
The EFF is supposed to be about protecting digital rights. Do you believe that either Apple or Samsung is violating the civil rights of the other?
I could see taking on a case on behalf of someone who is a victim of another abusing the system say by an NPE troll. Wading into legal reform and becoming a lobbyist organization is another matter entirely in my mind.
Generally speaking from the evidence we see around us on a daily basis, the EFF is failing to hold the line in its mission as it is. They have no easy task. I don't really see how biting off yet even more than you can chew and becoming further diluted helps. Should the ACLU be active in environmental causes? We can agree to disagree about how best to achieve political reform and maintain credibility. There are indeed many ways to skin a cat.
First of all, "civil rights" means (in the US context) a particular set of issues, which aren't actually the core ones defended by EFF or the ACLU, although they sometimes overlap. I think you mean civil liberties.
Second, EFF has been working on intellectual property reform since its founding. It's long argued that antiquated or misapplied ideas of how IP should be enforced are actually a free expression issue, since (among other ideas) code is speech. It's actually one of the core principles at the basis of mapping traditional civil liberties onto the digital realm, which is at least some of the (looser) ideas behind "digital rights". Patent reform is part of that. It's not just about Samsung and Apple, it's about people being able to express themselves -- in free software, or the application of algorithms, in a digital world.
Its mission is to protect against abuses of civil liberties in the digital arena. To protect against govt malfeasance. To protect and aid people who are being abused by willful ignorance of the law and miscarriages of justice and to inform the public about these wrongs.
Btw, I think we can all agree that it is failing in these goals. So now is probably not the best time to widen its umbrella.
I fail to see how the legal use of patent law is a miscarriage of justice. I don't disagree that the system is in need of reform, the EFF should be focused on its aims rather than trying to expand them.
ELECTRONIC FRONTIER FOUNDATION - MISSION STATEMENT
July 10, 1990
[...]
To that end, the Electronic Frontier Foundation will:
1. Engage in and support educational activities which increase popular understanding of the opportunities and challenges posed by developments in computing and telecommunications.
2. Develop among policy-makers a better understanding of the issues underlying free and open telecommunications, and support the creation of legal and structural approaches which will ease the assimilation of these new technologies by society.
3. Raise public awareness about civil liberties issues arising from the rapid advancement in the area of new computer-based communications media. Support litigation in the public interest to preserve, protect, and extend First Amendment rights within the realm of computing and telecommunications technology.
4. Encourage and support the development of new tools which will endow non-technical users with full and easy access to computer-based telecommunications.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation
One Cambridge Center, Cambridge, MA 02142
(617) 577-1385
Thanks for looking this up. I think campaigning in the area of software patents is covered pretty clearly by those, by items 3 and 4 but particularly item 2. If anything it's a better fit than I expected, because it's more detailed and more explicit about open technology than the simplified mission of protecting digital rights.
Worse it's a waste of time, money and valuable attention. If you want political action and have the money and resources then why not form a single-issue political action group, get involved and do something?
This is just writing a check and getting your picture and name in the media, something by the way at which Mark Cuban, whose hypocrisy knows little bounds, excels.