Yesterday, news broke that the data could be at risk of deletion as early as this week, if Megaupload's former hosting service providers decide to do so. Well, not if the Electronic Frontier Foundation has anything to do with it.

For Megaupload Users, an Unclear Way Forward

Exactly how they will manage to resolve the issue is unclear at this early stage, as there are a number of technical and legal hurdles to overcome. A resolution could come in the form of a lawsuit against authorities, as has already been threatened by other groups. Alternatively, it could involve cooperation between the EFF, Megaupload, the hosting service providers and federal authorities, EFF Staff Attorney Julie Samuels told us.

"Right now the possibilities are almost endless," Samuels said. "We are open to anything." Whether legal or more diplomatic, the organization is seeking justice for the Megaupload users who were blocked from accessing their personal files despite not having broken any laws.

The Megaupload saga has put some users in a very weird position. Because the shutdown of the site happened without warning, they had no chance to retrieve any legitimate, non-infringing files they may have been storing there.

Uniquely Screwed

Of course, it also meant that people who were using the site for illegal purposes couldn't jump on and download the last season of "The Wire" real quick. Still, there's nothing stopping people from using MediaFire, RapidShare, the Pirate Bay or any number of other sources to grab copyrighted content. The users who kept personal files on Megaupload can't just tap into another service and get access to that content. They are uniquely screwed.

Normally, as Samuels explained, actions like this are taken using civil lawsuits rather than police helicopters and FBI agents. Thus, there's typically time for users to take the necessary precautions to back-up any files they couldn't afford to lose. Putting aside debates about the wisdom of keeping personal files exclusively in the cloud in the first place, the users of Megaupload never had an opportunity to salvage their stuff.

"That's what's really fundamentally troubling here," Samuels said. "People woke up, went to turn on their computer and found that they could not access their accounts."

Like the legal case of Kim Dotcom and his associates, it will be some time before this affair is resolved. For now, the EFF is hoping to open a dialogue with former users of the site and work with all of the parties involved in order to eventually come to a conclusion that works for everyone.

Today is American Censorship Day, and it happens to coincide with a hearing in the U.S. House about this censorship bill. To raise awareness of the importance of stopping SOPA, Tumblr has artfully censored everyone's blog dashboards and linked to a petition form at the top of the page under the heading, "Stop The Law That Will Censor The Internet!"

To learn more about SOPA, check out our infographic post about the effects of the bill. You can voice your opposition today at AmericanCensorship.org.

Thanks to Anthony De Rosa for pointing us to this poignant performance by one of the Web's most influential sites.

The background is this, if you haven't seen it already. An organization called Fight For the Future is trying to draw attention to Senate Bill 978, commonly known as the "illegal streaming bill." Because trying to draw attention to intellectual property legislation is usually difficult, the group tried a different approach: FreeBieber.org.

According to Bieber's lawyers, the site violates Bieber's publicity rights and intellectual property rights. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), however, says it's well within the Fight For the Future's First Amendment rights:

The right of publicity usually prohibits the unauthorized use of a person's name, likeness, voice, or other identifiable characteristic for a commercial purposes. However, the law is clear that an individual's right to control uses of his or her name and likeness must be weighed against important free speech rights. The First Amendment protects transformative uses (like the ones at freebieber.org), especially those that do not intrude on a celebrity's market for her own identifiable characteristics. So it's hard to believe that Bieber's lawyers really think he can prohibit this lawful (and effective) use of his image. More likely they, like so many others, were just hoping to scare Fight for the Future out of exercising its free speech rights.

It seems pretty absurd that Bieber's lawyers would even bother with a cease and desist here, but maybe they think that they'll get lucky. More than likely, all they'll do is trigger the Streisand effect. In trying to have the site taken down, they're probably just going to draw more attention to it.

Which might not be a bad thing. I'd really hate to see the "illegal streaming bill" make it to law, even if it might get Justin Bieber off the streets.

Silk, the Web browser that will ship with the new tablet, utilizes Amazon's powerful cloud computing infrastructure to help serve up Web pages faster and even predict your browsing habits. Naturally, this split architecture and its potential to capture private user data caught the attention of organizations like the Electronic Frontier Foundation, who inquired with Amazon about the privacy implications Silk presents.

Amazon also said that even when it's turned on, Silk's cloud acceleration would not affect pages secured with SSL. Thus any requests for any URL prefixed with HTTPS would not be passed through Amazon's servers.

Finally, Amazon assures privacy advocates that the data it does capture is completely anonymized and that it cannot be linked to an individual or Amazon user account.

Some Privacy Concerns Persist

Still, the EFF is not 100% satisified with Amazon's approach, although they said they are "generally satisfied with the privacy design of Silk." They note that some URLs contain identifying information, and that some content cached on Amazon's servers could as well. Even the aggregate, presumably anonymous browsing data Amazon will collect concerns the EFF, who says it could make "an attractive target for law enforcement."

Members of the U.S. Congress have also started asking questions about Silk. Last week, lawmakers from both political parties pressed Amazon about the browser's ability to track user behavior and what the company plans to do with the data it collects. Democratic Congressman Ed Markey gave Jeff Bezos three weeks to answer a letter containing a series of questions about the issue, while others pondered the necessity for legislation to protect consumers.

Either way, Amazon is set to start shipping the Kindle Fire on November 15. Any early adopters who are not convinced that their privacy is secured while using the device's Web browser can turn the controversial setting off.

The U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) seized the domains as a way to fight piracy on the Internet as part of its "Operation in Our Sites" campaign. The EFF joins Mozilla in fighting government domain seizures after Mozilla defied the Department of Homeland Security over Firefox extension MafiaaFire in early May.

"The Rojadirecta site does not host copyrighted videos or streams of sporting events, and the government does not allege that it does. It indexes links to streams of sporting events that can already be found on the Internet," the brief stated.

Rojadirecta.com and Rojadirecta.org were bought by Puerto 80 from GoDaddy.com and hosted by Verisign, both U.S. companies. The company is claiming hardship with an "entire halt to all traffic to the subject domain names." Puerto 80 claims that the "seizure constitutes an unlawful prior restraint on speech, in violation of Puerto 80's First Amendment rights, and Puerto 80 will continue to suffer deprivation of its First Amendment rights if the property is not immediately returned."

Puerto 80: We Link and Discuss, That Does Not Make Us Criminals

Essentially, Rojadirecta claims that it was just linking to the content that the U.S. government thinks is pirated. The company does not host the streams. Puerto 80 says that its primary function as a website is to host discussion forums and link to said content, which it says does not mean it is committing copyright infringement.

"This misguided intellectual property enforcement effort is causing serious collateral damage to free speech rights," said EFF intellectual property director Corynne McSherry in a release. "These domain seizures should cease unless and until the government can fix the First Amendment flaws inherent in the program."

ICE has seized 125 domains since it started "Operation in Our Sites," according to the EFF. Some of those sites are undoubtedly destinations that pirate content. The EFF protests that government actions of "unilateral seizure of domain names without a court ruling." If this were in the physical world, as opposed to the digital world, it would be the equivalent of the government shutting down a retail store without a court order because it believed the store was a location for drug trafficking.

I say "good folks" for a number of reasons. First, of course, it's another pay-what-you-want deal, with which Humble Bundle has had great success in the past. You set the price you want to pay for a package that includes 5 great DRM-free indie video games. "DRM-free" and "indie games" - two more reasons to like the Humble Bundle.

In the past, the Humble Bundle has offered games from multiple sources, but this time around the titles are all from the Finnish game makers Frozenbyte: Trine, Shadowgrounds: Survivor, and Shadowgrounds. As a bonus, you'll also receive Splot, which is currently in development, and Jack Claw, a prototype that unfortunately is only available right now on Windows (but the source code is included). The other games are available cross platform, in a couple of cases appearing on Mac and Linux for the first time, and can be redeemed on Steam and Desura (and Trine can be redeemed on OnLive).

These differences between platforms are interesting to watch as the Humble Bundle offer progresses, as in the past, Linux and Mac users have proven to be far more generous than Windows users. Linux users contributed twice as much as Windows users.

That generosity isn't simply about getting a good deal on 5 indie games. When you purchase the games, you can set your price, then allocate how much of that goes to the game developers, how much to charity, and how much is a "tip" for the Humble Bundle itself (as Humble Bundle doesn't have one of its own games in this package). As with the two previous bundles, the charities here are the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Child's Play. Last year, Humble Bundle raised over $1 million for these charities.

The Stored Communications Act (SCA) was passed in 1986 - "eons ago" in terms of the development of Internet technologies and our increasing reliance on email as a form of communication. The act, in part, prohibits ISPs from divulging email messages to anyone other than the intended recipients. But the law also addresses the circumstances in which the government would not be required to get a warrant to search messages - such as for messages over 180 day old. The weaker protections for email under the Fourth Amendment have been a contentious issue for a long time, but no clear court decision has come down, until today.

In making its decision, the court recognized how technology and communication had changed: "Since the advent of email, the telephone call and the letter have waned in importance, and an explosion of Internet-based communication has taken place," the 3-1 decision reads. "People are now able to send sensitive and intimate information, instantaneously, to friends, family, and colleagues half a world away. Lovers exchange sweet nothings, and businessmen swap ambitious plans, all with the click of a mouse button."

As a result, the Court of Appeals says that "It follows that email requires strong protection under the Fourth Amendment; otherwise, the Fourth Amendment would prove an ineffective guardian of private communication, an essential purpose it has long been recognized to serve." The EFF, which had filed an amicus brief, hailed today's ruling as a "landmark decision."

So the EFF's E-Book Buyer's Guide to E-Book Privacy comes at a good time - not just for holiday shopping, but for those of us that want to read that other famous trove of classified materials, The Pentagon Papers (or, okay, perhaps read other things too) with some assurance of privacy.

Who Tracks Your Book Searches?

Google Books logs all your search data with an IP address and will associate searches with your Google Account if logged in. Amazon also logs data about what you've viewed and searched for. The privacy policy for the Nook isn't clear, according to the EFF, but Barnes & Noble logs data on searches made and pages viewed on its website.

Who Monitors What You're Reading?

Google logs the books and pages viewed, and while Amazon does too, EFF says that the "exact parameters of information logged in unclear." It's not known if the Nook monitors your reading after purchase. But the other 5 e-readers in the guide - Sony Reader, FBReader, Internet Archive, the iPad, and the Adobe Content Server do not.

Who Tracks What you Buy?

Again, Google and Amazon track the purchases you make on their sites. The privacy policy is unclear for both the Nook and the Sony Reader. The iPad will keep track of purchases made on the iBookstore and via other Apple apps, but otherwise no.

With Whom Can This Data Be Shared?

The Internet Archive, FBReader, and the Adobe Content Server do not collect user-identifying information. For the other companies in EFF's guide, law enforcement and civil litigants may get access to data, as required by law. And Google, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple and Sony all share information within their own products.

In order to share information outside the company, users must opt-in with Google. Users may opt-out of having their information shared by Amazon, Apple, and Barnes & Noble for certain promotional and marketing purposes.

Can You Delete Your Data?

If you have purchased an e-book, in most cases deleting it or disassociating it from your account means - no surprise - you lose the ability to read the book. Google does allow you to remove book titles from your account and delete your search history. But other vendors do not allow you to access or delete parts of your search or purchase history.

Does It Matter?

The data that many of these e-readers gather does help them deliver a better experience in a lot of ways. iBooks needs to track the last page you've read, for example, if you expect it to be able to sync across devices. Amazon tracks what you search and purchase in order to make suggestions for items you might like.

But one's reading habits, perhaps because reading has been such a private endeavor, have typically been closely guarded. We may want to disguise the fact we never finished Ulysses (I confess). We may want to disguise having read all the Twilight novels - twice - (I haven't, I swear) or having a penchant for really low brow science fiction (no comment). And of course, we may want to read books that are politically unpopular.

You can read the full guide here.

According to a May 2008 memo by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, "Narcissistic tendencies in many people fuels a need to have a large group of "friends" link to their pages and many of these people accept cyber-friends that they don't even know. This provides an excellent vantage point for FDNS [Office of Fraud Detection and National Security] to observe the daily life of beneficiaries and petitioners who are suspected of fraudulent activities."

Social Networking Surveillance

As the EFF points out, there are good reasons that law enforcement be able to use all the tools at their disposal to identify fraud and other illegal conduct. But the memo doesn't indicate that immigration officials should have any other indications about suspicious behavior before conducting social networking surveillance.

The memo also doesn't say that officials need to be forthright about their real identities when "friending" immigrants, "leaving open the possibility that agents could actively deceive online users to infiltrate their social networks and monitor the activities of not only that user, but also the user's friends, family, and other associates."

As EFF notes, this sort of surveillance is predicated on the assumption that users of social networking sites are posting things that are a true and accurate reflection of their offline lives - that what we post (or don't post) about our relationships on Facebook really means something.

While the move is a significant step in the right direction for the social network and its users, a few significant players in the data portability discussion are here to remind us that we aren't there quite yet.

Data portability is the idea that users are, and should be, in control of their data, how its used, and have access to it at any time. Beyond this, data portability inherently implies data interoperability-- the ability for your identity and social graph data to be used across any site or service, as controlled by the end user, and therefore requires the use of open web standards. [...] Facebook continues to maintain, under their TOS, the last word on your data usage through an all-encompassing license to do what they wish with your data (including sub-license it to other entities).

Leonard goes on to point out that, while you may now be able to more easily download your data to manipulate separately, it will still remain on Facebook's servers. You cannot remove it.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation similarly lauded and chastised Facebook's efforts this morning, saying that the feature brought Facebook closer in line with its Bill of Privacy Rights for Social Networking. The EFF offered a series of recommendations for Facebook to make it easier for its users to switch services if they so desired. Part of those recommendations included the ability to export more of your social connections and contact information, the ability for users to opt-out of allowing their contact information to be exported, and even the possibility of contact information available as a separate file.

Both the EFF and Leonard seem to agree that Facebook has made a big step to data accessibility, but have yet another step (or two, or 10) to get to "data portability". Leonard urged the site to adopt the DataPortability Project's Portability Policy, which she calls "the first true step towards data portability, transparency and end user control."

So, for the new feature, we have a resounding "here, here!", but we're reserving the real applause for the day when users can actually download their data and delete it off of Facebook's servers.

The EFF brief, filed alongside 10 others - including ones from Facebook, Intel, and Apple - stems from the $290 million patent infringement judgement against Microsoft. In 2009, a district court found Microsoft guilty of infringing on the patents of the Canadian software company i4i. i4i holds a patent for building a method of processing custom XML, a method i4i claimed - and the courts agreed - that Microsoft violated with its 2003 and subsequent versions of Word.

Different Standards for Patent Plaintiffs and Defendants

Currently, in order to invalidate a patent, "clear and convincing" evidence is required. Microsoft argues in its petition that there is no need to have a standard that high. Rather, defendants should be able to challenge patents with the less onerous "preponderance of the evidence" standard. In other words, writes EFF, "'Clear and convincing' means that the facts are 'highly probable,' which is a much more difficult standard to meet when trying to invalidate a patent than just a preponderance."

That's the same standard that is required for a patent-holding plaintiff to prove that a defendant has infringed on a patent, and Microsoft argues that by making both parties adhere to the lower standard, it levels the litigation playing field.

The Impact of Patents - and Trolls - on the Tech World

Law.com cites John Thorne, deputy general counsel at Verizon, who submitted a brief alongside Google, as saying that "For the whole high-tech community, this issue of bad patents being asserted by trolls is a huge issue. More patents are issuing, products are getting more complicated, and lawsuits are increasing."

EFF argues in its brief that the requirement that an accused infringer prove patent invalidity by "clear and convincing" evidence unfairly burdens patent defendants, particularly those in the free and open-source software community.

The Supreme Court rarely hears these sorts of petitions, and earlier this summer "punted" when its decision in the Bilski case failed to address some of the core problems surrounding software patents, something that as the companies and organizations supporting Microsoft today contend, dampens innovation.

Photo credits: Flickr user Brian Turner

Highly granular version numbers of installed plug-ins and seemingly random orders in lists of installed fonts were the primary offenders. The EFF has concluded that the most viable remedy may be consumer pressure applied to software vendors to change these practices. Even if you're not particularly concerned about privacy on this level, the findings are quite interesting.

Reasonable Expectations?

Readers will need to decide for themselves whether the understanding of privacy found in the report is reasonable by their standards. The report notes that cookies, for example, are valuable as a way to deliver certain features, but suggests that users somehow balance that with privacy concerns. The EFF's stance on cookies can seem downright antiquated at times, though. "There is growing awareness among web users that HTTP cookies are a serious threat to privacy," the organization writes, "and many people now block, limit or periodically delete them."

While the ability to visit websites anonymously remains an important part of democratic communication and the preservation of liberty, more contemporary privacy debates tend to focus on sites sharing user data with third parties without consent. None the less, the fact that individual users' browsers have nearly unique fingerprints is disconcerting.

The EFF's call for software developers to stop using such granular version numbers might be reasonable, or it might be contrary to the core of software development culture. Likewise, the random ordering of installed font lists seems like an indication of the futility of expecting privacy as a casual user of such complex software with so many variables in play.

What do you think? Should users demand that browser and plugin software providers account for this dilemma or is the EFF barking up the wrong tree on privacy?

A U.S.-drafted chapter on Internet use would require ISPs to police user-generated content, to cut off Internet access for copyright violators, and to remove content that is accused of copyright violation without any proof of actual violation. The chapter also completely prohibits DRM workarounds, even for archiving or retrieving one's own work. Read on for details and implications.

As with other sections of the treaty, portions of this element have been leaked online. As it stands, the leaks suggest Internet users around the world are headed for a new regime of IP enforcement - a culture of invasive searches, minimal privacy, guilt until innocence is proven and measures that would kill our normative behaviors of file-sharing, free software, media downloading, creative remixing and even certain civil liberties.

Allegedly modeled on sections of the U.S.-Korea Free Trade Agreement, the treaty would require ISPs to police user activity for possible copyright violation, and ISPs would be held responsible for any infringing content being uploaded or downloaded. This all spells a huge boon to the established entertainment industry and a huge burden for ISPs.

"In order for ISPs to qualify for a safe harbor," writes Michael Geist, who has published the substance of the leaked material, "they would be required establish policies to deter unauthorized storage and transmission of IP infringing content. Provisions... include policies to terminate subscribers in appropriate circumstances." That means a three-strikes rule would apply to anyone who was accused of violating copyright in any way; ISPs would be required to terminate the user's account after three complaints from the content owner. For something as culturally accepted as downloading music, a user's entire household could be cut off from the Internet and access to information, communication, personal account management, et cetera.

Geist continues, "Notice-and-takedown, which is not currently the law in Canada nor a requirement under WIPO, would also be an ACTA requirement." In other words, whether or not a piece of content or media violates copyright would be arbitrary; the content would be removed by the ISP as soon as a takedown notice was issued. The takedown would be enforced regardless of considerations such as fair use. This policy, which mirrors the DMCA, would be enforced for all nations participating in the treaty.

Finally, the treaty includes a ban on circumventing DRM and other copyright-protecting measures in hardware and software, as well as a ban on the manufacture, import and distribution of circumvention tools. Again, this ban is irrespective of circumstance or content ownership and is inflexible.

Our friends at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, arbiters of freer use of copyrighted material, have this to say:

U.S. negotiators are seeking policies that will harm the U.S. technology industry and citizens across the globe. Three Strikes/ Graduated Response is the top priority of the entertainment industry... The ACTA text appears to leave the door open for major changes to the existing national Internet intermediary liability regimes that have been the global status quo since the mid 1990s, and which have underpinned both tremendous Internet innovation, and citizens' online freedom of expression and the rich world of user generated content that we take for granted today.

European citizens should also be concerned and indignant. As reported, the ACTA Internet provisions would also appear to be inconsistent with the EU eCommerce Directive and existing national law...

Are international treaties governing Internet content and intellectual property even necessary? Insofar as they fly in the face of normative cultural practices and contradict or tighten existing national laws, we find these suggested measures inflexible and unrealistic. But whether they become reality and shape the landscape of the Internet-to-come remains to be seen.

Traditionally the champions of Creative Commons and other, more open methods of IP protection and creative sharing of content online, EFF is now calling out a bevy of big-name media corporations to make examples of them for takedown abuse. According to the EFF blog, "Some of the web's most interesting content has been yanked from popular websites with bogus copyright claims or other spurious legal threats." Read on to see who made the list and why.

"But that hasn't stopped thin-skinned corporations and others from abusing the legal system to get these new works removed from the Internet. We wanted to document this censorship for all to see."

Some of the entities that have made EFF's roundup are as follows:

• NPR, for attempting to stifle a video criticizing same-sex marriage
• DeBeers, for its humorless response to an online parody
• NBC, for issuing a takedown for a satirical Obama video that went viral
• And a personal favorite, Ralph Lauren, who shot out a few takedowns after our good friends at Photoshop Disasters pointed out that, even in already thin models, a woman's head is not likely to be wider than her pelvis

Other honorees include Warner Music Group, CBS News, Universal Music Publishing Group, and the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association.

Is the EFF conducting a witchhunt here, dear readers? Are some of these copyright claims warranted? Or do you, in fact, have an egregious takedown of your own to report? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.

While groups such as the National Writers Union oppose the settlement on the grounds that Google is violating author rights, and Yahoo and Microsoft oppose the settlement for fear of a price fixing cartel, the latest objection adds new perspective.

The argument reminded us of John Battelle's "database of intentions" - an aggregated list of personal search results, page visits and bookmarks. He explains that while the database of intention lives in a number of places, four major players including Google hold the bulk of this information. He wrote, "This information represents, in aggregate form, a place holder for the intentions of humankind - a massive database of desires, needs, wants, and likes that can be discovered, supoenaed, archived, tracked, and exploited to all sorts of ends."

While this may seem like a paranoia today, it wasn't long ago that rumors surfaced of US intelligence authorities monitoring net usage to gain electronic evidence against members of al-Queda. In response, Darwinder S. Sidhu's 2007 report outlines how the majority of polled Muslim-Americans believe that their Internet activities are being monitored.

The latest Google privacy objection argues that this fear of being tracked is enough reason for consumers to change their behavior. For the complete filing download the PDF

If you thought your casual reading might have a slim chance of being subpoenaed, would you change your reading habits? Let us know in the comments below.