EFF press release: diebold and e-voting

Electronic Frontier Foundation Media Release

For Immediate Release: Thursday, October 16, 2003


Contact:

Wendy Seltzer
Staff Attorney
Electronic Frontier Foundation
[email protected]
+1 415 436-9333 x125 (office), +1 914 374-0613
(cell)

Will Doherty
Executive Director
Online Policy Group
[email protected]
+1 415 826-3532 (please leave message)


ISP Rejects Diebold Copyright Claims Against News
Website

EFF Defends Right to Publish Links to Electronic
Voting Memos

San Francisco - Defending the right to link to
controversial
information about flaws in electronic voting systems,
EFF
announced today it will defend an Internet Service
Provider
(ISP) and a news website publisher against claims of
indirect copyright infringement from the electronic
voting
machines' manufacturer.

On October 10, 2003, electronic voting company
Diebold,
Inc., sent a cease-and-desist letter to the nonprofit
Online
Policy Group (OPG) ISP demanding that OPG remove a
page of
links published on an Independent Media Center
(IndyMedia)
website located on a computer server hosted by OPG.

Diebold sent out dozens of similar notices to ISPs
hosting
IndyMedia and other websites linking to or publishing
copies
of Diebold internal memos. OPG is the only ISP so far
to
resist the takedown demand from Diebold.

"What topic could be more important to our democracy
than
discussions about the mechanics and legitimacy of
electronic
voting systems now being introduced nationwide?" said
EFF
Staff Attorney Wendy Seltzer. "EFF won't stand by as
corporations like Diebold chill important online
debate by
churning out legal notices to ISPs that usually just
take
down legitimate content rather than face the legal
risk."

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) passed by
Congress in 1998 provides a "safe harbor" as an
incentive
for ISPs to take down user-posted content when they
receive
cease-and-desist letters such as the ones sent by
Diebold.
By removing the content, or forcing the user to do so,
for a
minimum of 10 days, an ISP can take itself out of the
middle
of any copyright claim. As a result, few ISPs have
tested
whether they would face any liability for such user
activity
in the first place. EFF has been exposing some of the
ways
the safe harbor limits online speech through the
Chilling
Effects Clearinghouse.

"We defend strongly the free speech right of our
client
IndyMedia to publish links to Diebold memos relevant
to the
public debate about electronic voting machine
security,"
explained OPG Executive Director Will Doherty.
"Diebold's
claim of copyright infringement from linking to
information
posted elsewhere on the Web is ridiculous, and even
more
silly is the claim that we as an ISP could be liable
for our
client's web links."

For this release:
http://www.eff.org/Legal/ISP_liability/20031016_eff_pr.php

Cease-and-desist letter Diebold sent to OPG:
http://www.eff.org/Legal/ISP_liability/cease_desist_letter.php

IndyMedia Web page subject to Diebold cease-and-desist
letter:
http://www.indybay.org/news/2003/09/1649419_comment.php

Security researchers discover huge flaws in e-voting
system:
http://www.eff.org/Activism/E-voting/20030723_eff_pr.php

Link to Chilling Effects on DMCA safe harbor
provisions:
http://www.chillingeffects.org/dmca512/


About EFF:

The Electronic Frontier Foundation is the leading
civil
liberties organization working to protect rights in
the
digital world. Founded in 1990, EFF actively
encourages and
challenges industry and government to support free
expression and privacy online. EFF is a
member-supported
organization and maintains one of the most linked-to
websites in the world at
http://www.eff.org/

About Online Policy Group:

The Online Policy Group (OPG) is a nonprofit
organization
dedicated to online policy research, outreach, and
action on
issues such as access, privacy, the digital divide,
and
digital defamation. The organization fulfills its
motto of
"One Internet With Equal Access for All" through
programs
such as donation-based email, email list hosting,
website
hosting, domain registrations, colocation services,
technical consulting, educational training, and
refurbished
computer donations. The California Community
Colocation
Project (CCCP) and QueerNet are OPG projects. OPG
focuses on
Internet participants' civil liberties and human
rights,
like access, privacy, safety, and serving schools,
libraries, disabled, elderly, youth, women, and
sexual,
gender, and ethnic minorities. Find out more at
http://www.onlinepolicy.org/

About IndyMedia:

Indymedia is an international network working to build
a
decentralized, non-commercial media infrastructure to
counter an increasingly consolidated corporate media.
Indymedia collectives have spread rapidly since the
WTO
protests in Seattle 1999, with IMC groups now working
throughout North & South America, the Middle East,
Europe,
Africa, Asia and Oceania, accessible through
http://www.indymedia.org/

-end-

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