Favorite At EFF, we believe that tech rights are worker’s rights. Since the pandemic, workers of all kinds have been subjected to increasingly invasive forms of bossware. These are the “algorithmic management” tools that surveil workers on and off the job, often running on devices that (nominally) belong to workers, hijacking our phones and laptops.…
All posts tagged Trade Agreements and Digital Rights
Apple to Australians: You’re Too Stupid to Choose Your Own Apps
Favorite Apple has released a scaremongering, self-serving warning aimed at the Australian government, claiming that Australians will be overrun by a parade of digital horribles if Australia follows the European Union’s lead and regulates Apple’s “walled garden.” The EU’s Digital Markets Act is a big, complex, ambitious law that takes aim squarely at the source…
Human Rights and TPMs: Lessons from 22 Years of the U.S. DMCA
Favorite Introduction In 1998, Bill Clinton signed the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), a sweeping overhaul of U.S. copyright law notionally designed to update the system for the digital era. Though the DMCA contains many controversial sections, one of the most pernicious and problematic elements of the law is Section 1201, the “anti-circumvention” rule which…
On the Road to Victory for Human Rights in Mexico!
Favorite Mexico’s National Commission for Human Rights has taken a crucial step towards averting a human rights catastrophe, asking Mexico’s Supreme Court to assess the constitutionality of the Mexican copyright law: The Commission stated that the law contains “possible violations of the rights to freedom of expression, property, freedom of commerce or work and cultural…
A Legal Deep Dive on Mexico’s Disastrous New Copyright Law
Favorite Mexico has just adopted a terrible new copyright law, thanks to pressure from the United States (and specifically from the copyright maximalists that hold outsized influence on US foreign policy). This law closely resembles the Digital Millennium Copyright Act enacted in the US 1998, with a few differences that make it much, much worse.…
Mexico's New Copyright Law Undermines Mexico's National Sovereignty, Continuing Generations of Unfair "Fair Trade Deals" Between the USA and Latin America
Favorite Earlier this month, Mexico’s Congress hastily imported most of the US copyright system into Mexican law, in a dangerous and ill-considered act. But neither this action nor its consequences occurred in a vacuum: rather, it was a consequence of Donald Trump’s US-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), the successor to NAFTA. Trade agreements are billed as creating…
Disability, Education, Repair and Health: How Mexico's Copyright Law Hurts Self-Determination in the Internet Age
Favorite Mexico’s new copyright law was rushed through Congress without adequate debate or consultation, and that’s a problem, because the law — a wholesale copy of the US copyright system — creates unique risks to the human rights of the Mexican people, and the commercial fortunes of Mexican businesses and workers. The Mexican law contains…
Mexico's New Copyright Law: Cybersecurity and Human Rights
Favorite This month, Mexico rushed through a new, expansive copyright law without adequate debate or consultation, and as a result, it adopted a national rule that is absolutely unfit for purpose, with grave implications for human rights and cybersecurity. The new law was passed as part of the country’s obligations under Donald Trump’s United States-Mexico-Canada…
How Mexico's New Copyright Law Crushes Free Expression
Favorite When Mexico’s Congress rushed through a new copyright law as part of its adoption of Donald Trump’s United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), it largely copy-pasted the US copyright statute, with some modifications that made the law even worse for human rights. The result is a legal regime that has all the deficits of the US…
Mexico's new copyright law puts human rights in jeopardy
Favorite Today, the Electronic Frontier Foundation joins a coalition of international organizations in publishing an open letter of opposition to Mexico’s new copyright law; the letter lays out the threats that Mexico’s new law poses to fundamental human rights and calls upon Mexico’s National Human Rights Commission to take action to invalidate this flawed and…