"Look at this!... That's over FOUR MILLION Google results for people on YouTube EXPLICITLY saying they're in breach of copyriđght, and yet, oh look, the videos are still up."
[UPDATE: July 2022] When I wrote this post, I was duped, as are so many people, into believing that the Electronic Frontier Foundation is a representative of the public interest.
After much investigation, it's become abundantly clear that the EFF is in truth a tech industry shill, lobbyist and litigation resource, built around an aggressive anti-copyright/anti-patent drive, which has been at the org's core for decades. The more you look at the EFF's litigation record, the more horrific the scale of its commitment to destroying intellectual property rights becomes.
The EFF is Silicon Valley's own weapon of war against any and all intellectual property rights that inconvenience elite cybertech's seize-all, gatekeep-all game of monopoly.
The EFF should not even be seen as a singular entity. It is part of an organised and deeply-affiliated cartel of elitist "champagne nonprofits" which collectively, manipulatively, advocates the brutal exploitation of artists and creators, and is driven from the back seat by Google. Other names in the cartel include Wikimedia, Internet Archive and Creative Commons.
But since the title of this post singularly references the EFF, let me give an example of an abuse that encapsulates the individual org's true regard for content creators...
In 2001, the Electronic Frontier Foundation set up a site called Chilling Effects, expressly to publicise and shame copyright holders who served Google with DMCA takedown notices. The cast-iron intention behind this thuggish move was to discourage creators from exercising their legal rights, by displaying their private actions to a baying mob of anti-copyright anarchists, whom the EFF knew would sometimes attack. That was the point of the site. To establish a punishment for victims of copyright infringment who sought rightful remedy. To create fear among victims of theft.
Whilst, if I were writing this post today, it would have a much more aggressive tone, and would assert that WE DEFINITELY DO NOT NEED THE EFF, I'll leave the document as a reminder of how easy it is to believe that even the most abusive actors have honourable intentions... [End of update]
It's inevitable. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act's “safe harbour” is always going to be championed by the tech oligarchs who exploit it to steal content by proxy. But bizarrely, it's also advocated by a lot of highly-respected people and organisations. One such example is the Electronic Frontier Foundation - more often cited by its abbreviation, the EFF.
As perceived by the public, the EFF is firmly against the abuses perpetrated by big tech. It's an organisation that small contributors to the Web desperately need. But it supports the DMCA safe harbour, and in so doing it awards licence to massive, multi-billionaire corporations to steal content by proxy. To exploit the small creatives who produce that content - many of whom have incredibly low incomes.
Big tech has not only knowingly exploited impoverished creatives to fuel and feed its multi-billion dollar advertising machine. It has also deliberately vilified copyright holders who have the nerve to insist that their creative work is not casually thrown around the Internet for other people's gain. How? By labelling their efforts to stop the grand banquet of content theft, as “censorship”.